The Pencil Pouch

Roger Pratchett

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:33:17 GMT

However, I found my chance when Ethan came over to our house just after exams. Since he didn't turn sixteen for another year, the Pratchett parents wouldn't let him get his license, so he and Ella depended on either our parents, his parents, and the older siblings for transportation. On that day, Ethan was at our house, watching a movie with Ella on the couch, when his brother came to pick him up. I was in the kitchen making myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so I answered the door and, upon seeing who was waiting with an agitated expression on his face and his key ring swinging around his fingers, grinned and relaxed.
“Hey, Roger,” I said, leaning against the door frame. “You here for Ethan?”
“Yeah, the little mongrel's gotta be home in ten, Mom's orders,” he grumbled.
I nodded, then turned my head over my shoulder and shouted back into the house, “Ella! Roger's here to take your boyfriend home!”
“Just a minute!” she yelled back, her voice dulled by the space between us. “There's only a few minutes left in the movie!”
“You've seen that movie ten times in the past month!” I yelled back at her, amused.
“Come on, Libby, it's Young Frankenstein!” Ethan called at me. I turned back to Roger, who shrugged.
“I really don't care when he gets home,” he said.
“You wanna come in?” I asked him, opening the door more so he could pass by. He shrugged again and passed over the threshold, and I led him back to the kitchen, where I finished making my sandwich while he looked around at the room and sat down on a stool at the counter.
I inspected him through my bangs as I smoothed peanut butter over another slice of bread to make m sandwich a double decker. While Ethan was cute, with his startling blue eyes peering out from underneath shaggy straight black hair that Ella probably thought was the softest thing on the planet, his brother looked like a man. He wisely kept his soft black hair cut short, just a bit longer than the length I had made Owen cut his down to, and his eyes, although the same blue as Ethan's, didn't make him look girly. He looked like the bad boy that could have his pick of the girls, but for some reason was too chivalrous, too proud, or too secret gay to pursue that interest. As a senior, he could be the equivalent of a high school god, if he ever cared.
I picked up the paper towel I had made my sandwich on and took it around to the bar and sat next to Roger. He was leaning on his elbows on top of the counter, rubbing his hands together idly.
“So. Your brother is dating my sister,” I said awkwardly as I bit into my sandwich.
“Yup. And you're dating my best friend.”
“Mm hmm. Sounds about right.” There was one of those awkward silences I seemed so fond of making for a second before I heard the door open to my right. I leaned to look through the doorway to the foyer to see Jessie walking in like she lived here – which she practically did. She saw me leaning out and grinned, waving the bottle of rum she had brought with her.
“Hey, it's the day after the last day of the first semester,” she said, approaching the kitchen and sliding towards the refrigerator, taking out the two liter of Coke she had stashed behind it for this very purpose a week ago. “You know what that means?” I rolled my eyes. Every semester after finals, Jessie tried to get me to drink my sorrows away, knowing that she would fail. I guess it wasn't fun to drink with her brother at that point, since they did that all the time anyway. He was probably hiding in his room anyway, trying to get away from her alcoholic wrath.
She hadn't seen who was hiding on the other side of me, so when Roger offered, “Getting sloshed?” she stopped in her tracks, her eyes widening slightly as she turned around on the balls of her feet. She saw who was sitting at my bar at long last, and I knew that if we had been alone she would have had a dramatic reaction, like whistling or fainting. As it was, she laughed nervously and clonked the bottles of rum and Coke on the counter top across from us, then turned nonchalantly to get down three glasses from the cabinet above the sink.
Mom and Jon were both gone today, Jon off at work doing the routine maintenance on the Eileen Rose Ferguson Civic Center that seemed to need repairing after every show, Mom gone for the afternoon to her biweekly grocery shopping trip to the mainland to get the stuff not shipped out to our relatively tiny island. Otherwise, Jessie would have never chanced bringing alcohol directly into the house; she would have preferred drawing me out to the old hammock stuck in the woods at the halfway point between our houses that was hidden enough for under aged drinking.
“Libby? Aren't you going to introduce me?” Jessie asked, pouring out equal parts rum and Coke into the three glasses and gesturing with her head to Roger.
I struggled to swallow the giant bite of sticky peanut butter and bread that I had just bitten into. “Jessie, this is Roger Pratchett, Ethan's brother,” I sighed, pointing to the respective people. “Roger, this is Jessie Kant. She's my neighbor and childhood friend.” She smiled at him, closed lipped and slightly creepy, but he didn't seem to notice. He just nodded a greeting at her, then peered around the other corner to where Ella and Ethan were sitting.
“Aren't they done yet? Mom was pretty urgent about getting back before six,” he asked, trying to figure out what was going on on the television past the dining room.
“Ella said a few minutes, so they'll probably be done in twenty,” I responded, leaning far over the counter and grabbing Jessie's forearm which hand clutched the glass bottle of rum before she could pour it in the last glass. I glared at her, and she sighed, giving in, and put the rum down to get the Coke again and finished filling mine completely with flavored carbonated water versus fermented sugar. She handed that one to me and one of the others to Roger, then walked around the bar to sit on his other side, putting on her flirting eyes.
Oh, no. I knew that heavy lashed, smirking expression well. I couldn't let Jessie hit on my step sister's boyfriend's brother, not to mention my boyfriend's best childhood friend, when she had a no good, worthless, lovable piece of scum waiting for her in jail. I didn't need that extra drama in my life.
She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything embarrassing, I interrupted her with “So, Jessie. How's Andy doing?”
She scowled at me while Roger's face was turned towards me, but she changed it to bright and sunny when he flipped it around to hear her answer. “Oh, he's fine,” she answered, waving it away with a flap of her hand. “I got a letter from the jail yesterday, actually, saying that he might get out a few weeks early on good behavior-”
“Wait,” Roger stopped her by an outstretched hand. “Andy? Jail? Are you talking about Andy Lowe?”
Both Jessie and I were shocked. “Yeah, I am,” she answered, turning towards him on her stool with a puzzled expression on her face. “He's my boyfriend. How do you know him?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “I work with him – well, when he's not in the slammer,” he amended. “So you're his girlfriend?” he asked her, suddenly interested in what we had to say.
“Yeah, for almost a year now,” she said, nodding. “God love me, I have a twisted attraction to long- haired men in bad heavy metal bands with pickup trucks,” she said, tutting in pity for herself. “I just can't resist a nice head of hair, y'know?” she said, reaching up and scrambling her hand in Roger's spiky black hair. He laughed, and I was amazed. Somehow, she had the ability to get any guy to come out of his shell and be an actual human being instead of just a surly teenager.
The television's background noise shut off, and Ella and Ethan ran and slid in to the room on their socks simultaneously a few moments later, although Ella over shot it by a few feet and ran into the doorless frame of the dining room softly.
“You ready to go, Eth?” Roger asked him, downing the rest of his drink and grabbing his keys from the table. “Mom said we had to be home by six, and it's ten after.”
“Dammit,” he cursed at his mother's obsession with punctuality. “Yeah, lemme just go find my shoes,” Ethan said, disappearing back around the corner and reappearing a moment later, shoving on a ratty pair of blue and white checkered Vans while snaking his arms into a dark blue soccer jacket. “Bye, Ella,” he said, giving her a quick hug before he ran out the door.
Roger raised an eyebrow at Jessie and me. “See you around, Libby,” he said. “I'll come back by for another one of those rum and Cokes, Jess,” he promised with a Boy Scout's two finger salute, then followed his little brother at a more leisurely pace, closing the screen door behind him gently.
The three of us watched the door they had just exited until we heard his car start up and drive to the right of the house, crunching gravel for a minute before they were out of hearing.
Ella left to go put up the DVD, far too used to her boyfriend's brother's charms to care. I breathed a laugh, then turned my attention back to my double decker sandwich and Coke sans rum. Jessie didn't move from her position, leaning back slightly, eyes glazed. I looked over at her with a disgusted frown and pushed her to get her out of her trance. She came back to reality with a small gasp, staring at me in shock.
“I think I need to go... vacuum something,” she said in a small voice, standing up slowly and wandering back through the house to the stairs to the second floor.
“Don't suck up a mechanical pencil by accident again!” I called after her, laughing.
“Screw you!” she yelled back, her steps up the stairs causing the house to echo. I just laughed harder.

Movie Makeout Scene

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:14:55 GMT

That Saturday afternoon I found myself waiting uncomfortably alone in a crappy movie theater, waiting for the movies to start. James and I had worked it out over the week; I'd get to the movie early and find a spot near the back, and he'd come in after it was dark and find me.
The lights went down, and the trailers began, but still nothing from James. I looked around the theater, craning my head to try and see into all of the seats. It was empty except for two people near the front; the guy's red hair and the girl's red-brown ponytail, combined with their heavy petting, identified them to me as Chris Fraiser and Angela Elliot, the couple of the senior class. I quickly turned back to the screen. I really didn't need to see all of that.
|Libby?| Finally!
|Yes?|
|Do me a favor.|
|Okay. What?|
|Close your eyes.|
I smiled slightly and obliged, watching the opening credit's images flit across the other side of my eyelids as multicolored lights.
I listened to James's thoughts, unusually unguarded, and physically heard footsteps approach that could only be him.
He was nervous. Even though I knew I wasn't going to open my eyes again, he fidgeted with his appearance, wondering if his hair looked okay, if he should have brushed his teeth a third time.
The seat to my left squeaked as he sat down. Now it was my turn to be nervous. I knew what we were actually doing, but what if I was bad at it? What if he stopped talking to me? What if...
He pushed the armrest between us up, taking his time turning his body, turning mine – his hands were softer than they had a right to be – cupping my face and bending down to touch his mouth softly to mine.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that he was delicious. I reached up and laced my fingers in his hair, pulling him down to kiss him again, more thoroughly this time. He made a surprised noise, then smiled against my mouth. His hands slid down my neck and around my body, carefully skirting my breasts, and circled around to my back to grip me firmly. He obviously liked how I tasted as well; he wouldn't release me after that.
'So this is what all the fuss is about!' I thought as he pulled me in closer, easing my mouth open with his. Ever since I'd known, I'd wondered what caused fools in love to disregard common sense for a woman or a man; what caused people so unsuitable for each other to have stormy, sexy relationships, knowing they would end in disaster, but going deeper anyway. After that first real touch – the fated kiss of lightning didn't really count, since I didn't really get anything from it for obvious reasons – I finally understood. It was this desire, this bone-chilling knowledge that in that moment, you're the center of that person's world, and they're the center of yours. It was the rush, taking place in places you'd forgotten existed in yourself, that drove thoughts from your head and you wanted time to stop, life to cease. It was the senses, touch working together with taste and smell and sound, creating the sensation that was as old as humanity itself and as timeless as the universe. It was the combination of all of the above into one blind entity of lust that, when just the right people stoked it, devoured them until all they could do is desire, rush, and sense. It was nothing but appetite.
For me, I had already grown attached with his mind in complexly intimate ways, and now was my chance to forge those same attachments in more physical ways. I took to the action like a duck to water, all of the prepossessing feelings of awkwardness banished by the fact that this was James, the voice in my head, and comforted by the fact that he wanted this just as much as I did.
I was straddled across his lap – I wasn't sure when exactly this had happened, but I liked it - when his hands, which had been keeping me in place, drifted up underneath my shirt. I let him explore, drifting away from his mouth to kiss his jaw bone, the hollow under his ear, his neck, trying to memorize everything in this hour and a half we shared. They felt cold, but nice, and the unusual feeling of someone else's hands on traditionally covered areas made me sigh in delight. His hands hesitated around my bra strap, then slid underneath it, and I squealed against his collarbone. He laughed, his own lips in my hair, his chest rumbling under my hands – the first real sound either of us had made so far in this bizarre experiment. The mind-speak was long gone, shaken out by the shocks of physical contact and the pleasure kissing was turning out to be. We were just responding, and responding.
The shrieks and contortions on the screen behind us didn't even have to be playing, if it came down to it. Deep down, in the crevices of my mind, I knew that we were missing out on a supposedly good scary movie, but I really couldn't care less then. I just didn't want it to end.
Eventually, though, even kissing has a stopping point, and this was my first time, if not his as well. We hadn't yet discussed that. I sat more comfortably across his lap and buried my face in his neck with my arms loosely draped over his shoulders, my mouth dry, listening to the movie with one ear, and listening to him breathe with another. He still held me close, his head leaning against mine, staring at the movie screen without taking in what was playing.
“Hey, James?” It was weird to talk to him out loud.
“Yes?”
“Have you ever done this before? Like... kissing and stuff?”
He chuckled. God, I loved feeling him laugh. “A few years ago at summer camp, I met this girl from... where was she from? I think it was Birmingham - named Ali Brantley. She was a year older than me, but she thought I did something better than others and didn't leave my side the entire month I was there. I was flattered, y'know? Besides, she was pretty, in a mousy sort of way, even if she was more than a little intense. She soon pulled it out of me that I had never kissed a girl before, and took it on herself to teach me. She was pretty scary sometimes, but she was a good kisser.”
I forced myself to ask, “And after summer camp?”
“I never saw her or heard from her again.” That suited me just fine, really. I absorbed his sweatshirt's smell of citrus and cinnamon, the one I remembered from that night - it seemed like it was so long ago now – and just breathed.
We could have sat there, just soaking in the other's presence, for forever. Unfortunately, movies didn't last that long, and the credits started rolling before I'd had my fill of James.
“Should I go now?” The movie guys seemed to know that this theater was unofficial make-out central, because the lights were still down, for now.
“I guess. Just because you should doesn't mean I want you to,” I mumbled into his collar.
“That makes two of us, my dear.” He took my wrist wrapped around his front and kissed its inside, holding his mouth there. How did that feel sexier than anything else we had done so far? “Should we do this next week?” he asked against my skin.
“Same time, same place?”
“Sounds good to me.”
He let go of my wrist, and I automatically started caressing his face. He had a slight acne problem, but that just made his skin more interesting to feel, in my opinion. He leaned into my hand slightly, and I felt him smile slightly. The movie's credits finally ended, but it was a moment or two before he started disentangling us. “I really should go now,” he said, his accent thick.
“All right,” I sighed, blindly sitting up. He helped me flip around to sit on my old, now cold chair next to his so he could stand up. He straightened himself out a little, then bent down and kissed me a final time, lingering.
“See you next week,” he whispered, then he was gone again. He was making a habit of kissing and running.
When I heard the movie theater's door close somewhere behind me, I finally opened my eyes and leaned back, smiling at the ceiling. When I was finally ready to go, I spared a glance to where Angela and Chris had been sitting. They were still there, oblivious to their surroundings. Now, I finally understood why.

Tammy NaNO

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:01:09 GMT

This idea is failing already.

Alanna and Neal’s Excellent Adventures
By Caroline Cash

‘The work of a knight is never done. There is always some damsel to save, some village to protect, some dragon to slay. That is why it is such a difficult career path for many, but so very rewarding to those who choose it.’ ~ A Knight’s Tale: Working for the People by Sir Leonas of Malorie’s Peak

I was shaken from the lamenting words of Sir Leonas by a thick, heavy set dog jumping onto my back. I scratched his ears as my younger friend Keladry of Mindelan, also a first-year squire, entered my room. “I’m off to the practice courts,” she said, leaning against the door frame. “You want to come?”
I lowered my book and raised my eyebrows at her. “I’m about to commence four years obeying the call of a bruiser on a horse,” I told her dryly. “I refuse to put down what might be the last book I see for months.”
Kel eyed me with her no nonsense stare. “I thought you wanted to be a squire,” she pointed out, putting her hands behind her back.
I sighed sorrowfully. “I want to fulfill Queenscove’s duty to the Crown,” I reminded her. “A knight from our house-”
“Has served the Crown for ages, is a pillar of the kingdom, I know, I know,” Kel finished my sentence.
I made a face at her, but continued, “Well that about being a knight. Squire is an intermediate step. It’s a pain in the rump, but it’s a passing pain. I don’t have to like it. I’d as soon read. Besides, Father said to wait. Another knight’s supposed to show up today,” I finally told her. I’d been keeping that knowledge in for a while now, and it was finally a suitable point in the conversation to say it. “I hate it when Father gets mysterious.”
She stared at me, her emotions forever impossible to decipher. That Yamani face of hers. “Well, I’m going to go hit something,” she told me after a moment. “I can’t sit around.”
That wasn’t good. I sat up, laying my book face down beside me. “No one still?” Sympathy was easy to fill for Kel; I mean, she was The Girl of the knights-in-training; most people wouldn’t want her on first sight. Personally, I thought she was the best squire in the lot of us - myself included - but she would never let me tell her that. She was too humble sometimes.
She shook her head. “I thought if I survived the big examinations, I’d be fine. I thought somebody would take me, even if I am The Girl.” She didn’t say it, but I could feel her harsh disappointment at her hero and idol, Sir Alanna the Lioness, not showing up to pick her. Kel knew that she wouldn’t be able to, because of stupid people and appearances, but that wouldn’t stop a teenaged girl from being unhappy - even as one as serious minded as Kel.
I, however, happened to know this. “There are still knights in the field,” I reminded her gently. “You may be picked later this summer, or even this fall.”
She forced a smile for me. “I know, and until then, I mean to practice. Last chance to collect bruises from me.”
I shuddered. For some reason, her bruises hurt almost as much as those the Stump, Lord Wyldon, occasionally gave to me. “Thanks, but I’ve gotten all the bruises off you this year that I want.”
“Coward,” she teased me, then whistled for Jump to follow her and left.
I scowled after to her no effect, then tried to turn back to my book. Even though it was written by a knight about knights, it was still inexplicably my favorite book. Maybe it was the fact that Sir Leonas didn’t sugar coat anything, or maybe it was his sense of humor so like my own. I didn’t tell people about it, though - they would just laugh at me for liking a book about what had become the bane of my existence. Unfortunately, Kel’s desire to get up had wormed its way under my skin, and I gave up after I couldn’t even get to the next page. I had to get to my father’s surprise meeting anyway. It was about time.
I walked through the dark hallways of my favorite palace in the world, not to mention the only palace I had ever been to, greeting my friends and servants until I arrived at my father, the Duke Baird of Queenscove’s, door. I heard voices through the wood and tried to make out words, but they were muffled. All I could do was make out three people talking.
I sighed and gave up my eavesdropping, rapping on the door. I heard a chair scrape against the floor on the other side, followed by my father’s face appearing behind said door. “Neal! You’re early!” he said in surprise.
“I can do that, you know,” I said. He laughed. He was in a really good mood, for no apparent reason. He opened the door wider for me to pass through, and I got my first glimpse of his two companions in my awkward interview.
I stood frozen at the threshold, my eyes wide at who was there. King Jonathan was there, sitting on my father’s couch in everyday blues and blacks, but even more surprising than a king was the other person - the knight Father had been so vague about. The King’s Champion, Alanna the Lioness, was laughing at something that had been said before I entered, her red hair shimmering in the lamp light.
This couldn’t be happening. Not to me. This should be Kel, standing right where I am standing.
“Oh,” was all I could manage to say. What could I say? This was the king of Tortall. What reason did he have to be here at the interview of a too old squire?
“Don’t just stand there, come on in,” Father told me, gesturing to a free chair. I walked over and plopped down in it. After he got settled, they all leaned forward to lean on their knees. It was rather intimidating.
“Let’s cut to the point,” the king said, his low voice rumbling. “Because of your specific skills set, Neal, we think it’d be best for you if Alanna here took you in as her squire.” Well that was blunt.
We sat there in silence for a moment. I didn‘t know what to say, and they were waiting on me. I stared at Alanna herself, who raised her eyebrows in a question. “So call me a Stormwing and sign me up for dance classes,” I said to try to relieve the tension. “Why me?”
“Because you’re a double threat,” she said, finally speaking in a matter that really only concerned the two of us. “You can take life, but you can also give it.”
“Excuse me?” Why was she spouting philosophy?
“You’re a healer,” she explained with a little sigh. “We need healer knights on the field, now more than ever.”
“And Alanna can train you for this double task better than anyone else,” Father finished for her. “Neal, you’ve always said you wish you had more healer training. Now you can get it.”
I sat and thought it out for a minute. “But what about Kel? I can’t betray her like this- I mean… Alanna, you have to know that she’s looked up to you like some sort of goddess since forever.”
She actually beamed at me. Beamed. The Lioness! “That’s nice to know, since I feel the same about her,” she replied. Would Kel love to know that! “But there are… complications… to the two of us being knight master and squire.” She sent a pointed glare at the king, who scowled royally at her, then pinched the bridge of his nose.
“We’re not doing this again, Alanna,” he told her with a groan.
“I know, I know, don’t worry,” she said with overdone sarcasm. “I understand your reasonings. It doesn’t mean I have to like them.
“This would be for the best, though,” she told me. “Besides, she’s getting a very good situation right now. She won’t miss me too much,” she said with a small, sour smile.
“Do it, squire,” the king said. “I need you as a healer-knight, just like I need Alanna.” Appealing to my ego. I silently applauded the king’s persuasive strategies.
Should I? Kel would probably understand. She is like that. This would be the perfect situation for me. But I’d be taking her rightful place as the first official female knight to be! Not even to mention the Lioness herself. Her temper rivaled my own in strength and sound.
“I need to talk to Kel about it,” I said after a long while spent thinking. “But I think I will.”

Unwilling Lesbian Goddesses

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:03:06 GMT

This goes with this http://luna-wannabe.deviantart.com/art/Pantheon-Dump-138031336

Once, on a day since past, Romnen, the Goddess of the Afterlife, was young. She was a flighty, beautiful god's-equivalent teenager who flirted with the moon and whispered with the earth. Her glorious hair, now since forgotten, was be-spelled so that any who smelled it fell instantly in love. Any, of course, but for the four great gods.

On her fated final day as a maiden, Romnen went too far in her advances on the earth god and, at the first whiff he took of her hair, his consort, the Wind Mother Pariani, bore down in a storm on the rival goddess that drove Romnen back to her home underground. Pariani followed, leaving behind the tempest. Left to its own devices, it blew against the southern reaches of the desert and stayed there, creating the bizarre rock formations and angry winds of the Azna Canyon.

In the underworld, Pariani caught Romnen and banished her to her realm of death and cursed her with the sourness and matronly ways she has since become famous for owning. As an addition, the wind goddess tied up the other's magicked hair with twin clasps of alabaster and onyx, declaring that only another's hand could remove them, and Romnen would have to marry whomever did so, no take-backs allowed.

Eons passed. With the time gone by, Romnen's history as a fickle flirt was lost to legend; new gods were born; humans and animals played out the dance of the generations.Romnen herself grew into her suddenly-older self, and Death, which was once rather easily battled, became an irreversible fact of life; none could trick Romnen into giving up anything.

There came a day long after her banishment, but long before our time, when some of the gods were dangerously idle. Humans were in the early stages of civilization, and life hadn't yet picked up the speed of modern times. To relieve themselves of their boredom, the gods began a rather large game of Truth or Dare.

Since these are gods, nothing they told or did was small. Along with this tale's consequence, the game created the Sky Island Mountains, melted glacier fields in the east, and founded the animosity between the wilderness god and the wine god. Those, however, are stories for another day. Today's section concerns Bao, Goddess of Tricks and Thieves.

When it came to be her turn, the first of the competing gods to dare her was Athrab, God of Justice. He had a vendetta against the trickster goddess, who had helped more than her share of humans escape his grasp. He dared her to steal the alabaster and onyx hair clasps from the stingiest Goddess in the world, Romnen of Death. Bao was eager for the challenge and set off immediately, not knowing about the curse on the goddess, nor hearing the cries of the gods there who did. She was still a young goddess, and had never learned the story of Romnen's ancient ways.

Bao set out for the underworld, which is not that hard to get to if you knew the way (the problem most humans have trouble with is acquiring that information). She crossed the desert overnight, not being mad enough to try it by day, and reached the gateways that morning. She snuck past the guards and traps set out for those trying to approach and quickly found Romnen's bedroom, where the matron was just getting up for the day. Bao was surprised and disappointed to learn that the goddess slept with her clasps in her hair, and was slightly mystified at how she managed to keep every hair looking as if it had just been pulled back. Maybe she used a special hair ointment.

Bao dismissed the mystery as a god's will and thought of the best way to approach the goddess to retrieve her prize. Being the Goddess of Thieves, she was the best in the business, equipped with all manners of hidden talents and tricks that gave her her title, and intended to prove it by stealing this most guarded item. It was no longer solely about Athrab's dare, but about her reputation as a whole.

Bao waited. A god's patience has no end, so she was able to wait in the same spot for several days, observing Romnen's routine and considering the best time to steal the clasps.

She made her move in the evening. Romnen was settling down for a few hour's rest, and her emotional defenses fell for just a few moments before sleep. Bao crept down the wall from the high windows and snuck up behind Romnen, her feet barely touching the floor. She didn't make a sound as she gripped the clasps and pulled them away.

Romnen shrieked as her hair fell around her shoulders, an alien touch that had been forgotten for millenia. Her hair's scent, once so useful to her wills, backfired as Bao was hit in the face by the aroma and fell instantly and deeply in love with Romnen. Instead of running back to the game like she had intended, Bao stood frozen where she was. Romnen was furious, but before she could unveil her anger, Pariani appeared and told her that her curse had come into effect, and she'd best be ready to get married to whomever had pulled out her clasps. Seeing who it was with the hairpins, Pariani laughed. Romnen was disgusted with the idea of marrying such a loose, brazen goddess whose goal was to relieve everyone of their belongings and had no problems saying so, but she had no choice. Pariani bound them in a brief ceremony, and Bao was starry-eyed with her forced love.

Nowadays, they're still married, Bao devoted to the underworld goddess and Romnen unwilling to be near her in every aspect of life. But their tale has taught our culture a lesson, as every god's legend does - whether it is an aesop against stealing or against flirting with those in higher power is up to you to decide. Maybe it's neither. Only the gods really know.

And that is that.

other college essay

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:08:20 GMT

To describe my summer volunteer job to someone who doesn't know about the McWane Science Center is difficult, to say the least. McWane isn't a cookie-cutter type of museum or amusement park. It's four floors of hands-on science, dinosaurs, and mayhem,and I love every inch of it. I've worked there for three summers now, so I actually know every inch of it. There's a miniature whirlwind, a shadow wall, and plenty of kids running around to add to the confusion. I'm happy when I'm there. Everyone who works there is a laid-back nerd, just like me. We're the kind to walk around with a megaphone in one hand and a gallon of glue in the other, wearing a food-coloring-dyed lab coat and whistling the Star Wars theme song. I'm important there; I fit into a hole carved specially for me. No one questions you, no one stresses out. The people at McWane are content to watch the fish swim by in the basement and talk about religion and skydiving. Half the skills I have are from something, be it related to science or not,that happened at McWane. Being a summer teen volunteer, I've met many new people and re-met some old friends who come to play inside on rainy Saturdays. I've been exposed to so many different breeds of people that it's impossible to keep them straight, although that isn't saying I haven't tried. Real people fill the scraps of paper I carry around as I walk the floors, challenging myself to capture the essence of a person in a few simple pencil lines. I rarely succeed, but that's why it's called a challenge. No single event has changed my life more than volunteering at McWane. I get to joke around with great people all day, and I get to soak in the envy of my other friends who don't work (well, volunteer) there.It's much more than just a place to work/volunteer for me; it's my retreat, my comfort zone, and my classroom.

It's just... me.

possible college entrance thing

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:54:44 GMT

I roll down the back windows and smile on the inside as I pull away from the crowded parking lot. It's Friday; I've just dropped my sister at the park to meet with some friends to watch a free out-of-theaters-but-not-on-DVD-yet movie together. We had left an empty house - my dad's in Chicago on a work trip, and my mom's taking a miles-long walk - and I'm in no hurry to return. Quick as thought, I flip my left blinker and decide to take the long way home.

It's a few minutes before twilight. Everywhere is dark green and gray, a common theme in suburbia, but the shadows give it a flair it only feels once a day. The wind twists through my blonde hair - it'll be a mess when I get back - and the strands cross each other idly. I've forgotten my sunglasses again. I know exactly where they are - I can picture their location in my head and everything - I just forgot them. Really, I don't mind. A little sun never hurt anybody (of course, a lot is a different matter, but that's not this story).

Two mega-churches flash by my left eye. I struggle not to sneer. Christianity and all of its baggage never appealed to me, which is both ironic and hypocritical, since I grew up with both a Baptist and a Catholic parent and have been heavily involved in my church since my memory ends. I love religions, but I hate religion. It's complicated; I haven't finished exploring my own spirituality. I'll have time for that one day.

I've found myself in the area of my old middle school and take a detour to drive by. The radio switches from an expired commercial about floors to the station's evening host while I weave through parked cars and dog walkers to the one-way street in front of the school. It's a field now, an expanse of weeds and gravel that serves no purpose beyond nostalgia. It was torn down my freshman year of high school after the new school was built not even two hundred yards away. My eyes trace the outlines of my sixth grade classrooms - golden years of old women and roly polys - for a glance before the road ends, and I turn away, headed to the new school. Compared to the grassy ruins, the new school is a mess of steel and concrete. My invisible nostalgia glasses prefer the vegetation.

I've finally come to a main road once more. I turn left again, considering dropping in on my best friend's house a short while away. It's been a while - a few days, to be specific. I should go pick her up and take her back to my house so it's not so empty, but the reminder of the paint on the porch persuades me not to. I've got a portfolio to fill by Monday, and watching somebody paint isn't interesting enough to warrant a surprise chill session.
Car Ride

It's surprisingly quiet for a Friday sunset. I toy with the idea of turning up the radio, which has settled on a song that I can sing along with but with an unknown title, but somehow it feels like that would break the peaceful content resting in my brain. I didn't want to wake it up just yet. I wanted a few more moments of peace.

I drive past my friend's street and finally think about heading home. Squeezing the last few moments of time from the drive, I go slow through the neighborhood, trying to notice all of the details around me. Familiarity breeds contempt for my surroundings, but the slowly emerging artist that inhabits my shell wants to remember the gilded leaves and swarming kudzu of the golden hour for future times, where I'll be knee-deep in snow or dust this time next year. The artist in me is autistic.

I've come full circle. The noise of the growing audience at the park's outdoor movie theater entices me, entreats me to join the party. I head home instead. Painting, and talking to friends I've never met, sounds more like me than being outside in a crowded field with other people.

The wind tangles my hair with invisible noise a final time before I roll my windows up with a sigh. My home is here again, but my heart stays in the driver's seat when I leave, letting captured winds whisper to it about far away places and the illusions of heaven.

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:04:11 GMT

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Created with angelamaria's Icon Table Generator @ Bauble

wait part four

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 04:23:42 GMT

They were married on the second day of summer
Watched the beauty turn to wrinkles over time

She knew.

She knew as soon as Roku told her to go on without him that she would never see him again. Ta Min coughed up the last traces of ash from her lungs while watching their island recoat itself in earth from the center of it, hoping for one last glimpse of him-

There! Against the burning light of the magma, a lanky silhouette, clothes billowing, was fighting the volcano... and losing badly.

It was almost bizarre, watching Roku lose. It so rarely happened anymore. As she watched their very sustenance rebel and overwhelm her husband, she prepared herself to say goodbye to him without contact, a feat usually left to the mystics-

Another dragon, not Roku's Fang, flew over her head towards the island. She squinted and recognized a figure much like Fire Lord Sozin on it's back... Ta Min wasn't entirely sure if that was a good sign, and she didn't know why...

She watched the fierce struggle to save their home make a comback with Sozin's arrival, and her hopes for her husband's survival rose with every gesture of the two small shadows of men. She watched lava hiss on contact with the ocean, turning black, and sparks flare into the night before vanishing completely. It would have been beautiful if she wasn't focusing on the human element, but she couldn't take her eyes off her husband.

A moment later, though his death rattle shook in her head again as the other volcano erupted, enveloping the two in smoke for a final time...

She knew.

She knew before the ash cleared away, before Sozin's dragon took flight again, that it was all over; Roku was gone. She watched the dust begin to settle over a newly made island, the fury of the world settling into a lazy, but no less terrifying, flow down the slopes of their - her - home.

She closed her eyes and thought of him; not of him alone, buried alive without ritual on the top of a mountain, but of the man he had been, the moments they had shared. She didn't cry. His time had come. She didn't wish for more years with him; they had had decades. Together, they'd done all they had wanted to do in one lifetime. At their age, that was all that they needed.

She opened her eyes, staring down into the water off the side of the boat. Her wrinkled face, stained by ash and sweat, was staring sadly, silently, surrounded by the weeping and the stricken. She reached up and pushed some iron gray hair from her face.

When her hand came down again, she was young.

Her eyebrow shot up; the same eyebrow shot u in the reflection. It wasn't young, really, but in her prime, about thirty years younger than the present Ta Min. She was beautiful, and she wasn't alone.

A younger Roku, though not as young as her, was bent down behind her, hands on her shoulders, shining with a golden light that encompassed both images. She reached up slowly and put her hand on her shoulder. It was empty physically, but her reflection's hand rubbed over his and clasped it.

And before he died she told him that she loved him
And it was when she said these words he realized

'I love you,' she thought. His reflection nodded, smiling through incorporeal tears.

'I know. Look,' he said, the hand not clasped by hers gesturing to their images. 'This is how the earth remembers us,' Roku's voice said in her mind, echoing strangely, but somehow she took it all in stride. 'It remembers our prime, not how we die,' he continued. 'Because life isn't about the number of breaths you take-'

'-It's how many moments take you breath away,' Ta Min finished, starting to cry at last. Her tears had ash in them. 'Wait for me?' she asked. He nodded.

'I will.' With that, the golden couple faded into water as suddenly as they had come, leaving her real, old face again, her hand absently running over her shoulder. A moment later, her daughter's reflection took the place of Roku's.

"You okay, Mom?" she asked her tentatively. Ta Min swallowed and put on a smile, turning to face her.

"I'll be fine, eventually," she said, wiping the salty ash from her cheeks with the heel of her hand. She looked back at the slowly-calming volcano. "Your father's dead," she said quietly.

"What?" her daughter exclaimed. A pause.

"Are you sure?"

"As sure as I've ever been," the old woman whispered with a nod. Mother and daughter started at their home turned tomb.

"I guess it's air's turn now," her daughter said softly.

"Yes. Air will have to save the world now."

"Save it? Since when did the world need saving?"

"Oh, it doesn't right now, dear, but it will."

"... Are you sure?"

"I know."

If you think that this was good
Wait until the next life

Wait, part three

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:01:30 GMT

again, Shay wants to read. :)

Despite this, the Avatar spirit flowed through its elemental cycle, choosing a woman again, one destined for great deeds, great power, and longevity.

It was a Friday
1983
He was a parking lot attendant in a little town in North Tennessee

Living forever sucks.

Avatar Kyoshi knew this better than most, having been alive one hundred fifty years, and still going strong. She hated it, and she couldn't figure out why she didn't just get old and die like everybody else. It was downright depressing most of the time. Everyone she had been childhood friends with had died, their children had died, and their grandchildren were almost her equals in physical appearance. Hell, she'd gone through a husband already, and even though some of her age-defying... stuff seemed to have rubbed off on his beloved head, he, too, had passed to time almost twenty-five years ago - and he'd been eleven years younger than her!

She stopped her carriage in front of the Earth King's palace. The forty-sixth Earth King had passed away recently, another bitter reminder of her "enviable" prolonged life, and she was required to attend his funeral as the Avatar despite her secret disgust of him and his lineage. An Avatar's duty is an Avatar's duty.

A car approaching
And when they met eyes
They sort of smiled at one another for a while but they didn't know why

Kyoshi drove her own ostrich-horses. She had too many arguments with carriage drivers over directions that resulted in their physical harm to make hiring one practical. She handed the reins to the valet in attendance, who bowed, greeting her with a smile.

"Avatar Kyoshi," he said. She turned up the corners of her mouth for a moment in return, meeting his eyes briefly...

Some force caused them to stare at each other for longer than necessary, brown on green, broad but polite grin against a small but polite smile, frozen.

Kyoshi broke the silence. "Do I know you?" she asked, decades of refinement controlling her curiosity.

"Not that I know, Avatar," he said, though he seemed doubtful as well.

"You remind me of someone... oh, who is it..." Kyoshi tapped her chin as she tried to remember who in her many years looked and seemed so much like this young man. Meanwhile, he held onto her reins, patiently waiting, as per his training for the job.

"Oh! ... No, that's not it..." she said, going back to her thinking after a false start. "Wait, it'll come to me... just wait..."

"As you wish, your All-Powerfulness," he said with another extraordinary bow. She slapped his arm with a closed fan.

"Don't be cheeky, boy," she said sternly, but her eyes betrayed amusement.

"Hey, Rye! Hurry it up, we've got a line back here!" someone yelled from farther down the line. The valet, whose name seemed to be a grain, rolled his eyes and yelled back, "Hold your ostrich-horses, I'm working on it!" He looked at Kyoshi apologetically, mindlessly dropping the blank and orderly manners, leaving his roots showing through. "I'm really sorry, ma'am, but we're up to our yinyang in stupid country nobles today - maybe if you came back at a more convenient time..." he trailed off as he realized she was staring at him like he was a ghost, hand over heart. "Ma'am?" he asked, concerned, taking a step closer. "Are you okay?"

"My - my husband-" She paused. "You remind me of my husband," she breathed, falling back against her carriage, not taking her eyes off him.

Then something made her shudder like a butterfly set free from her cocoon
A flash of indistinguishable moments shared in rainy afternoons

"Really now? What happened to him?" he asked, since he obviously wasn't there.

"He died," she said quietly, struggling to regain her composure. "Twenty-five years ago."

"Oh." He watched her fight back a wave of some peculiar emotion until the voice yelled at him again, "Come on, Rye! Get your lazy ass up and moving!"

"Um... Avatar Kyoshi?" he said tentatively, touching her shoulder lightly. "Do you want to go somewhere quiet for a minute? The funeral doesn't really start for another hour, and, to be frank, you look like you could use it," he offered with what he hoped was an encouraging smile. She nodded shakily.

"I guess my nerves aren't quite what they used to be," she said, bringing herself to her feet once more. "A break before the storm would be nice." She smiled, her white face paint cracking slightly.

"Get in," he said, jerking his head at the carriage. She complied, ascending jerkily, but regally. 'Too bad she can't be a queen,' he thought as he yelled back another retort and climbed onto the front of the carriage. 'She'd make a damn good one.'

Rye took her past the back valet lot to the servant's kitchens, where he handed her down and led her into the main room. It was deserted but for the head cook, who was sleeping at the other end of the vast table that ran the length of the massive room. He sat her down on the bench at the end and turned to the counter. "Would you like a drink? There's water, tea, juice-" he glanced at her face again - "or perhaps something stronger for the lady?"

"A beer would be divine," she grumbled, not quite surprising him. He'd heard almost-rumors concerning the Avatar's fondness for alcohol. He poured two - one for her, one for him - and sat down across from her, sliding the mug across the table into her waiting glove.

"You wanna talk about it?" he prompted her after a few minutes of watching her stare at space and sip at her drink. He wasn't quite sure what had set her off, but he knew he may never get another chance to talk to the Avatar over a pint.

"I haven't heard someone use that phrase in over twenty-five years," she finally spoke, keeping steady eye contact with nothing.

"What phrase?"

"'Up to our yinyang,'" she answered, giving the air her little half-smile at the crudeness of the saying. "Not since my husband passed on."

Rye looked down at his hands. "I'm sorry."

"Immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be," kyoshi said randomly, taking a larger gulp of her liquor. "It would only be worth if it everyone was made that way, and that's impossible."

"Wait jsut a cotton-pickin' minute," he said, raising a hand sloppily to stop her elegant rant. "Are you saying that you're immortal?"

She laughed - a snorting, nasty laugh that made her seem more human than anything else so far in the bizarre events of the past half-hour. "No, you silly boy, I'm not immortal." She sobered quickly. "Sometimes it feels like it, though."

"Now that I think about it, it would be depressing to live forever," he said, contemplating his reflection in his drink. "Everyone would die... rulers come and go..."

"Your children grow old and die before you look fifty..." He looked up at her and saw a hundred fifty years of pain, sorrow, joy, and torture under the famous makeup.

He reached over the tabe and put his hand over hers. "I'm sorry," he repeated, but with feeling. "Is there... anything I can do?" It was a feeble offer.

"I'm afraid there isn't," she said, standing abruptly, her glass drained and all business once more. "I need to be going to the funeral. Thanks for the drink." She nodded to him before heading back towards the door, back in Avatar mode-

"Wait!" he called, jerking to his feet and stumbling after her. She turned and caught his wrists just before he crashed into her. He started babbling, "I can help you! I can help you feel really young again!" His eyes danced as he continued, "There's a party underground over in the Lower Ring - you especially know how much they hated the Earth King - and there'll be dancing and lots of young people and if you take off your makeup and change into something less like you no one will know-"

"But I- I have an obligation to the Earth King - I'm supposed to speak on his behalf -" she tried to protest, but he dismissed it with a 'pfft' sound.

"Well, fine, say a few sentimental words over the lazy slob's ass, but then... then will you come with me?"

She searched his friendly, handsome country face for a minute, then tilted her head to the side, curious. "I would eat you alive," she breathed, eyebrows drawing together as she considered the youth in front of her. His excited mouth widening, nearing a cheeky grin.

"Is that a challenge or a promise, Lady Kyoshi?"

"Ow! Hey, what was that for?" he cried in pain as he rubbed the band of his head. "Lady Kyoshi" had released his wrists, drawn her fan from her belt, and whacked him upside the head before he'd had time to blink.

"That was for being smart with the Avatar," she said smugly, snapping her favorite weapon open and fanning herself casually, walking outside towards the Hall of Mournful Cries. Rye shook his head like a dog, then leaned out the door and yelled after her, "Is that a yes?"

"You may pick me up at sundown," she called over her shoulder. "Don't be late, I'll be waiting." With that, she sauntered around the corner, taking all the time in the world because, for all practical purposes, she had all the time in the world.

'Damn,' he thought as he watched her go, 'what a woman!'

As Kyoshi secretly suspected, Ryota - or Rye, and most people knew him - was her first husband reincarnated. Rye brought her to life in the same way that he had, and in a way she loved him more the second time. Of course, their was some controversy over her taking a man a fifth of her age as her lover... okay, a lot of controversy, but they didn't care. Kyoshi was ageless. Eventually, though, her years cauht up with her, and she died at two hundred thirty, followed closely by a hundred five-year-old Rye. The companion spirit followed the Avatar into fire again, and their lives seemed normal enough for the Avatar and his lover. They fell in love, married, had kids, grew old. They were normal lives, until the close...

Wait - parts one and two

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:28:29 GMT

On the request of Shay, here are parts one and two, temporarily posted here until I finish typing three, four and five.

LJ cuts are being stupid. sorry about the long post.... OH WAIT NOBODY CARES

She was born in April
1783
The only daughter of a lawyer in a little town that skirted the sea

Being born in a temple inhabited entirely of women most of your life can bring on a disturbing wake-up call when you first venture into reality, Yangchen noticed as she and her sky bison Jie landed on the decks of the Northern Air Temple. There were men everywhere - flying, meditating, laughing; boys playing, shouting, learning; those in between in age turning, smiling, approaching...

She came out of her awe with a gasp to see a teenaged monk not much older than herself with his hand raised at her side to help her down. She blushed - she didn't know why - and reached her two hands to grasp his one, using his support to slide to the ground and land gracefully on her feet-

- Except, much like she feared, her toes tripped over her very element and she feel forward, eyes clinches together, fearing the snide jeers and laughs she'd get - oh, what a great first impression-

Ever-so-slowly, though, she realized she hadn't hit the pavestones yet, and the only sounds she heard were the same she had been listening to on the wind for the past hour, along with something much like very close breathing-

Yangchen's eyes popped open and found themselves staring at her savior. He was the boy who had smiled at her, held her hands, was still holding her hands firmly enough to keep her upright even if she completely lost her balance - oh dear.

With a start, she jumped up to a straight-backed nun's nun's posture, dusting off her robes with her newly-freed hands and avoiding his odd stare. "Thank you," she said as she imagined an Avatar would say it, turning back to her bison to retrieve her bag and staff from the saddle.

"Shen," he called down to her from the saddle in question that he had airbended over her to and was already getting her things. Her shocked expression didn't change as he jumped and actually succeeded in landing gracefully in front of her, handing over her belongings. "The name's Shen," he repeated as she shook herself - she seemed to be doing that a lot lately - and accepted his offering with a nod.

"Okay, Shen. Thank you. I'm Yangchen," she responded, then felt like a fool a second later. Of course he would know who she was, she was the Avatar, here to complete her airbending fully before continuing to the North Pole to start on water-

"That's an awesome name," he - Shen - told her with a smile. She gave him a 'oh-really?' look. "No, seriously! The way it rolls off the tongue... Yangchen... Yangchen..." he repeated as he gathered Jie's reins and started walking, Yangchen scurrying to his side. "Come on, I'll take you to the stables and then the masters, Yangchen." He didn't seem to want to miss out on a chance to say her name again.

Along the way, he pointed out interesting architecture and important areas of the temple, but Yangchen wasn't paying attention to him exactly. Oh, she was paying attention to him, but she was watching his face change, how his every gesture affected the way he looked in the light, and his smile... oh, Spirits, his smile...

What was she thinking? They were airbenders - monks, nuns, figures of celestial cleanliness and detachment! She couldn't suddenly become a teenager and have a crush on the first male she'd ever seen for more than a glance!

But that seemed to be what was happening to her. Her carefully-tendered Avatar emotions were going in all directions as she drifted closer to his side, her hands coating her staff in sweat, and she wondered how her hair looked, if her master arrows made her look distinguished or smug, if she smelled from traveling for so long on her bison to get there... oh, why did she care? It wasn't like it mattered; it wasn't like she was going to see him again after he left her with the masters... was she?

They had just left the stables, where Jie was getting the royal treatment as the Avatar's animal guide, and were almost at the masters' chamber when she suddenly stopped and asked him, "Will I see you again?"

Shen, who had been in the middle of a rant about the sky bison fountain's inner working, stopped mid-word and stared at her questioningly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean maybe later today... or tomorrow, whenever... can I talk to you again? Before I, you know, go to the North Pole?"

"Well, I didn't know that plumbing was that interesting..." He scratched the back of his head awkwardly, and her heart sank. Then he glanced furtively up and down the hallway that they were on to check for other monks, and upon finding it clear he knelt in front of her, taking her hand in both of his. "But I promise, Yangchen," as long as you're here I'll stay plastered to your side like clouds to the mountainside, like honey to your fingersm and regale all of the trivial nonsense I know onto your beautimous ears until you have to use five men and a staff to get me to leave you alone," he swore in an overly posh voice, kissing her hand.

She blushed scarlet and giggled. He smiled; her heart fluttered. "Promise?" she asked him quietly.

"Promise." His pale grey eyes held her own for a few seconds more, and would have for eternity if sounds of approaching feet hadn't carried down the hall. He stumbled to a standing position, leaving her hand bare, just as five elderly monks came around the corner - the masters, Yangchen presumed.

"Shen, what was taking you so long?" the one on the far right said. "That Avatar hs urgent business to ttend to. You ere told to lead her directly to us!"

"I just gave Yang- the Avatar a tour of the temple, master," Shen said with a bow. The master looked at him disapprovingly, then turned their gazes to Yangchen. "Come, Avatar, there is much to be done," the same master said, beckoning for her to follow. She obeyed, but when their backs were turned she looked behind her and mouthed at an angry-looking Shen, "See you later?" The anger disappeared, replaced by another smile.

"Until next time," he mouthed back, waving until she was out of sight, then running in the opposite direction to go quiz his source off useless information for more pointless facts to tell Yangchen... Yangchen... man, her name was so cool to say...

Shen stayed with Yangchen for the rest of her visit to the Northern Air Temple and wanted to stay with her for the rest of her years of mastery, but tradition said she had to fufill them alone. Just after she left, Shen used a little-known exit low in the mountain to follow her. Armed with only his glider and some food, he set off after the girl he'd madea promise to - a promise he didn't plan on breaking. It was rash, brazen, and foolhardy, but she promised not to tell as long as he never left her. He promised he wouldn't. She spent her life devoted to the balance and the peace of the nations, but he spent his holding the backbone of the world up with a straight-backed nun's posture, being her shoulder and her smile when she needed it. Every time she asked, he patiently reassured her that he would never, ever leave her.

At least, not voluntarily.

She showed her mother's beauty
And when she caught his eye
He was taken by her innocence it'd only be a matter of time

She was pretty like her mother, they told him. He didn't believe them. Maybe she bore some outward resemblance to her mother, but the light from within that defined her was all hers.

Now she was gone, and he didn't even get to say goodbye.

But then one day a cold wind blew and she took ill and wouldn't make it long
And all that he could do was sit and wonder how something so right could go so wrong

He was still shivering from the Spirit Oasis when the doorway covering swished behind their backs - "It's shock," they said, "the Avatar'll be fine with time" - and he curled tighter under the blankets they had covered him in, eyes wide open, staring at the darkness......

To this day he has no idea how he fell asleep. All he knew was that one moment, his dry eyes were adjusting to the moonlight flitering through the ice, and the next, he was dreaming.

He knew it was a dream because Ummi was there. She was sitting on their favorite spot on the outer wall overlooking the ocean. He walked the last few paces to her side. She looked up at him, and he knew this would be one of those once-in-a-lifetime dreams.

He sat down next to her and reached over to pull her close, almost from habit, but she stopped him.

"Don't touch me," she warned him, but not angrily. "It's difficult enough to be here without that." She smiled at him, and he smiled back - thouggh he didn't know why.

"How are you here?" he asked her. She turned to stare out at the ocean. There was no wind in this dream, but but something shifted her hair to flow around her face in an otherworldly manner, and he realized it looked like she was underwater.

"As a spirit in Koh's grasp, you are allowed one dream visit to the mortal world," she explained, the moonlight shining in her eyes, but only her eyes. "I chose you."

"Koh?" He hadn't heard of the name before.

"The Face-Stealer," Ummi said. "He's an old spirit, Kuruk, older than the Avatar. He took me-" she swallowed, trying to keep from crying - it was all he could do not to touch her in comfort - "-he took me to punish you, Kuruk." At that she turned to face him, her drowned hair following her serenely, floating.

He sucked in a breath. "What?"

She bit her lip and looked down. "Apparently he's been watching your life - he doesn't like the Avatar, Kuruk - and thinks you've become unworthy to bear the title without some... sacrifice."

"And he chose you." Kuruk stood; the comatose manner of the day had abandoned him now, and he paced to try and control his fury. "He chose you over me! I may have been reckless as a teenager, but everyone goes through that phase! Why single me out? Why single you out?"

"Because you're the Avatar, whether you like it or not - or even whether you always understand what that means," Ummi said seriously. Kuruk stopped pacing and stared at her. She turned and looked up at him, her blue eyes solemn, her lip color starting to match. She was drowning again before his eyes.

"It's a heavy responsibility, being the physical manifestation of the earth," she said with a hint at humor. "Always being the peacemaker... always being the final word, always being in the public eye - but it's a responsibility that has to be taken, and you have to learn consequences."

Kuruk sighed and plopped back down next to her. "You're right, as always. I should have been more conscientious as a youth." He pounded the ice beneath him, forgetting that it was a dream and that he wouldn't feel anything, really. "But why is that serious enough to take you away from me? You changed me, you turned me away from all of that! Doesn't that make it all better?" he finished weakly, reaching inches away from her before recoiling his hands to avoid the doomed contact.

She shook her head, her heavy clothes waving slowly. "Not to Koh. He sees imperfection in the Avatar as a stain against the Spirit World itself. He's terrifying, Kuruk," Ummi told him with a shudder, "but I think that once I get used to it, it won't be so bad." She paused, listening to something beyond his hearing. "My time's almost up. Listen to me, Kuruk," she pleaded, her skin as pale as the moonlit snow around them. "I want you to do something for me, okay?"

And before she died he told her that he loved her
He said, "I know we'll be together sometime soon"

"Anything," he told her, pulling his legs underneath him to kneel, facing her.

"Remember me, wait for me," she said as she was lifted in the air, sinking into the sky, reaching out to him. "Wait for me on the other side."

His hands followed her ascent helplessly. "I will - Ummi, I will - I love you -"

She smiled down at him with colorless lips. "You have to understand what it means to be the Avatar-" she began, but his hands found hers at last, and they were cold, so cold -

But then his fingers closed on themselves, and their eyes widened -

She turned into water, floating for a breath in an eerie but perfect replica of her shape before collapsing into a puddle on the ice, freezing upon contact, becoming another section of the landscape -

Kuruk turned his face to the icy stars and roared, an unidentifiable sound of rage and pain that filled the night while a monster's civilzed laugh carried over his yell, piercing his mind -

He said, "I don't believe in heaven" as he brushed his tears aside
And he added just before he closed her eyes,

- and he jerked awake, gasping, sweating under layers of dead animal skins in a fortress of ice. He threw them off and left the room, ignoring the time of night, and beat on the wall next to the wise man's door. The other man came slowly, rubbing his eyes and cursing the person who would wake him in the middle of the -

Oh.

"Avatar Kuruk," he said to his former pupil, taking his disheveled appearance and wild eyes in with a glance. "How can I help you?"

Kuruk seized the front of his shirt, his expression dangerous but unreadable beyond that. "Koh, the Face-Stealer," he growled, his breath hot in the wise man's face. His teacher knew that tone, and feared for this Koh's health.

"What do you know of him?"

"If you think that this was good
Wait until the next life"

Kuruk spent most of the rest of his life learning everything he could about the ancient spirit that stole his precious Ummi's face, unaware of the real meaning of her last words to him. She understood about the reincarnation cycle, see, and was trying to get him to wait for the next life, not the afterlife - an afterlife that he spent most of his earthly life preparing to steal her back from the world's most successful thief. He was still a flawed Avatar, even after Ummi.

I need a Taang icon

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:55:05 GMT

WHAT IS THIS? TWO POSTS IN ONE DAY? Blasphemous.

Anyway. The song is called 'Wait' by The Benjy Davis Project. Personally, I think it should be called 'The Reincarnation Song', because that's basically what it is. As we drove through endless heather, I found myself listening to this song on repeat and, unsurprisingly, found myself thinking of the Avatar Spirit.... but wouldn't there be more than one spirit that would get reincarnated? Like, say, the Avatar of that generation's perfect match, their soulmate? So I made up this crappy thing called the companion spirit, with various other names, and started writing, literally making up the characters as they came and just... writing.

This is the paragraph of introduction. I'm waiting to finish typing it up before I decide how many chapters it'll take for it to be a reasonable read.

~~~~~~~

If you think that this was good
Wait until the next life

The story of the Avatar's companion, though not as popular as the Avatar itself, is vastly more complicated than the simple air-water-earth-fire cycle of the Avatar spirit. While it is obvious as to the identity of the Avatar almost from birth (and the glow doesn't help, either), there is no outward indication as to which person holds the spirit of their natural soulmate, nor is the elemental cycle always the same. One thing that's sure, however, is that it has a pull to its natural other half, even if it is unknown as to why, because it is the strongest presence in each reincarnation's lifetime to help it realize what humanity is, which is the entire point of the Avatar's reincarnation cycle. Here, let me show you -

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

mwahahahaha

Get Zen With It: A Song in Prototype

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:31:02 GMT

Get Zen With It

There's a glimpse of golden in the moonlight
A sense of silver in the sun
Shifts and sighs define the changes
Before you know it, life's begun

It's not a fight to the finish
It's not a battle to be won
You've just got to get zen with it
Then you'll feel what you've become

So tell me, friend, what's your story?
What's your universal truth?
Do you draw clouds in sunny weather?
Do you stick to your roots?

It's not a fight to the finish
It's not a battle to be won
You've just got to get zen with it
Then you'll feel what you've become

Do you sit still in the breeze
or sway like mountains in the wind?
Are your flowers harsh like fire?
Are your flowers the ocean's end?

It's not a fight to the finish
It's not a battle to be won
You've just got to get zen with it
You've just got to get zen with it...

(this verse spoken)
My friend, whatever you take from this ride called 'life'
The secret of strings or death metal rock-
Remind the everlasting and the hopeful
To turn the key on nature's lock

You don't have to be perfect
You just have to let live, because,
When they ask, "Was it worth it?"
You should say, "Yeah...
"It really was"

Diamonds & Marble - Introduction

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:37:23 GMT

This is the second draft of the beginning of my EPIC AVATAR FANFIC. The official version will be uploaded to ff.net when it's approved by the peer review squad.

Diamonds & Marble: Letters from A Night Owl-Dove

This documents the actions of the Avatar Aang, Toph Bei Fong, myself, and various others during the mission set to me by my ex-boyfriend and his spymaster to investigate the rumors of an uprising in the streets of the Fire Nation capital.

I didn't start this assignment with the belief that people other than Ty Lee and Tom-Tom would be interested in the details. However, after listening to the increasingly flamboyant versions of this previous autumn, all of those closely involved felt clarification was in order, and my letters to my best friend and little brother were the clearest and most detailed versions available. I wanted to censor this to keep out the personal effects strewn throughout the letters, but the two of them insisted on keeping them in their unedited, uncut format - it was a more interesting read, they said. Whatever. If people are so deprived that they feel the need to live vicariously through the stale retellings of others' lives, then so be it.

I'm getting off track. What you want, my honored reader, is to hear what was really behind the rise and eventual fall of the Taiyang Rebellion, led by Piqi of the Qiyiniao family - people known for being powerful and powerfully insane, a fact which should have been a direct indicator of future events... anyway.

Because of the format of the original documentation, some explanation of the back story is necessary. My name is Mai - normally I would try to hide my identity, but the simple and already oversaid statement that Zuko is my ex-boyfriend, combined with all of the other easy deductions that can be made throughout these letters would make it futile and stupid. I used to be an upstanding member of the Fire Nation noble society, but four years ago I relinquished those rights temporarily to work as a spy for the Fire Lord and, subsequentially, my ex. Contrary to popular belief, we broke up under the most amiable terms possible, and no, I have no intentions of trying to win him back. Now I'm just a normal twenty-one-year-old with an active, demanding job and a cat.

Tom-Tom, the main recipient of my letters, is just over eight years old. He's my little brother, and is currently residing in the custody of my best friend since school and a retired Kyoshi warrior, Ty Lee. My parents, who have not (temporarily) given up their aristocratic ways like me, are busy being ambassadors of the Fire Nation in the southwestern reaches of the Earth Kingdom, where we lived before Sozin's Comet during the occupation/colonization of the Earth Kingdom - depending on which perspective you take. Because they felt like a growing young boy needed stability in his environment and didn't need to be romaning up and down the Earth Kingdom performing boring, peace-making duties, Ty Lee agreed to take him in for an unspecified amount of time. Now they and her fiance Ling live in a small but modern house on Ember Island where they have opened a day spa with ample funds from my relieved parents. Even though I'm taking a break from the aristocracy, Tom-Tom is still my family and, like a good little brother, he idolizes me and thinks I have the coolest job in the world, so I send him a little embellished summary of whatever assignment I just finished. Ty Lee reads the letters to him - apparently my overlarge vocabulary combined with my stylized handwriting makes it very difficult for an eight-year-old to understand - but also begs me for the older, girly parts of my life. Because it was Ty Lee, I consented, giving her special inserts to be read at her leisure of anything romantic or unsuited for Tom-Tom's prepubescent ears. I would usually write up an extended summary with exciting details elaborated on and the boring bulk omitted, but this time happened to be different even before the unusual events came up.

To uphold my undercover illusion, I moved in with Kikai, a popular female firebender who still works behind the bar of the Coral Comet. Her apartment is situated around a lovely scenic courtyard with several trees, a pond, and a flower garden tended by the landlady. Unfortunately for me, in those trees resides an animal that soon became the plague of my life - a very large, very outspoken owl-dove. Apparently, Kikai and everyone else who lives in the building is completely immune to the nighttime calls of the thing, but it kept me awake almost every night. To try and induce sleep, I would write rambling details of the day, getting a head start on my letters to Tom-Tom and Ty Lee, even though I wouldn't send them until the mission was over for secrecy purposes. What resulted was the account that you have just begun to read, a surprisingly captivating true story of one of my rare exciting assignments and the chaos it created.

I hope you enjoy... actually, I don't care if you enjoy the letters, they weren't meant for your eyes anyway, but I do care that you dispell whatever nonsense you heard about the Taiyang Rebellion and replace it with my verision - the right version.

Along the same timeline as my letters to Tom-Tom and Ty Lee, I have enclosed my transcripts of Master Toph Bei Fong's oral messages to her friend in Gaoling, her hometown, detailing the developments of the relationship ofthe master and the Avatar Aang upon her specific request. She was tired of - and I quote - "people coming up to me and asking if ridiculous lies about how the two of us got together were true! They're not! Ugh!"

This... this is the truth.

Flashback - WIP

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:53:02 GMT

|You just totally blew him off when he was trying to be nice to you!| James sputtered.

|I'm a mean person, get used to it.|

|That's beyond mean, that's heartless.| Okay, ouch. |I'm glad that hurt! You've obviously gotten some kind of problem with people trying to be nice and friendly to you because from what I've seen, that's all he's ever been, and you still hate him.|

|I- I don't have a problem!| How dare he accuse me of having a people problem! I didn't have a people problem!

|Libby, I hate to - actually, I don't hate to tell you this. You do.|

I stomped down the stairs, getting slightly puzzled looks from the others on the stairwell. |Screw you,| I thought to them and to James.

|See? Have you always been this - this unsociable?|

My rage deflated as soon as it had come. I knew that, somehow or another, this topic would come up. |No,| I sighed miserably as I walked into my Chemistry class and sat down behind the empty desk where Jessie would be at the last second, instantly assuming daydream mode. I could sense a full screen flashback coming up. I'd get the notes from Jessie or Grey after class if anything important came up = which I doubt it would. The student teacher Mrs. Marsden had been assigned didn't know shit about chemistry or high school.

I curse when I'm frustrated.

|No?| James asked, dragging me back to the topic of my sociability. He sounded surprised; a reaction not totally unexpected.

The bell rang; Jessie walked through the door and plopped down in the desk in front of me. Grey was already in her seat, engrossed in her phone underneath her desk despite the rather strict rules against electronics. Jessie took one look at my sad, glassy-eyed stare and made a face. "Are you being serious again?" she asked me. I smiled weakly.

"Unfortunately. Take notes and cover me, please?" I asked her.

The greatest thing about Jessie was that she didn’t pry. Instead, she shrugged and turned back around in her desk and pulled out her notebook, ready to be responsible.

|No,| I repeated, retreating back into my mind. |You ready for a flashback?|

|Uh-oh.| There was a slight pause. I wondered briefly why it was that he knew my senses and I didn't know his, but I dismissed it as unexplainable and probably better because of it. Either way, it made this whole ordeal more interesting. |Okay, I'm ready.|

I settled more comfortably on the heels of my hands and fixed my eyes on the bubbly blonde with an inferiority complex at the board. |It hasn't been long that I've been so...|

|Callous?| he offered. I wrinkled my nose at his word choice; he really was too blunt sometimes.

|Sure, let's go with that. Anyway, it all started almost a year ago on Thanksgiving-|

"... Libby, dear, would you go get the door?"

I blinked, and I was sitting at my dining room table, a year younger and a lot more naive. My mother looked at me, expectant and slightly exhausted. She had spent all week making this dinner for the five of us, Grandma Moria and Grandpa Morgan, Aunt Daisy and her boyfriend Caleb, and the three Kants. We'd had to put the extra leaf on the table and use the armchair from the living room for Grandpa Morgan's bad hip, but it was worth it. Family was family.

"Sure, Mom," I said, scooting back my chair and standing up as the unknown idiot who came to someone's house on Thanksgiving beat again on the door. I was one of the closest to the door, but it was still around the corner from the dining room. I heard Aunt Daisy finish a joke and laughed; I didn't remember what she had said, but apparently it was funny, because I was still laughing when I opened the thick wooden door.

I stopped laughing and my eyes widened as I looked up into my face on the other side of the screen door.

My face - I now noticed it was male - smiled down at me with my smile as I gaped. "Hello, Libby." He tried to look around me into the house. "Mind if I come in?" he asked politely in a deeper version of my voice. I could only stare, but I pushed open the screen door so he could come in. He stepped backwards to avoid the wooden frame, then strolled into the foyer like he had lived here his whole life. I moved out of his way in a daze. Who was this man who looked so much like me? It couldn't be-

"Libby, who is it?" Mom called from the dining room.

I stayed standing there, the doorknob in my left hand. "I think it's my father," I mumbled. No one heard me. Instead, the man called out, "Mollie? Is that you?"

Silence fell at the out-of-sight table. I heard a chair slide back noisily - Mom - and her footfalls, followed by the frantic scratchings of four other chairs and a thunder approaching.

Mom appeared around the corner. "Richard?" She looked as stunned as I must have. "What are you doing here?" she said in a nasty tone. Oh boy, Mom was angry. She never gets angry.

"I was in the neighborhood and I thought I-"

"'In the neighborhood,' my ass!" she interrupted him. Wow, she was really angry - she never, ever curses. "It's been over sixteen years!

As Far As Forever

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:17:28 GMT

"Tell me," she ordered. I wasn't sure I understood.

"Sorry?"

"Tell me why it's beautiful," she said softly, closing her sightless eyes and turning her face into me.

We were going nowhere - killing time to watch it die, so to speak. We were nineteen and in love, a fact that never ceased to be a topic of debate among friends and enemies alike. We didn't care.

It was raining when we set out, a fine drizzle that would periodically shift between a downpour and a mist. She wanted to get out of the cold and the wet; I was only too happy to comply. Peace and fellowship are fine ideas in theory and moderation, but too much of either and a man starts to go a bit over the wall. Besides, we hadn't gone flying in such a long time.

Appa was restless when I finally coaxed him from the stables. He hated rain almost as much as he hated fire or being underground. She was waiting for me, shivering under the eaves of a building, expectation in her stance. I wondered at this; she hating flying even more than Appa hated being underground. I didn't comment on it, though - I was smarter than that by now - and I climbed onto my sky bison's head and helped her up as well, all the while sharing an amicable silence.

"Take me away from this city," she grumbled, gripping my waist just tight enough to show she was scared. That one sentence explained a lot; she was just as tired of Ba Sing Se as I was. I wrapped my own arm around her tightly and 'yip-yip'ed Appa into the sky.

The rain-heavy clouds hung low over the expansive city. It was in the downpour stage right now, beating down on our heads and shoulders, but spurring Appa to rise quicker and her to pull part of my robes over her head as a shield. I smiled at their obvious discomfort while tilting my head back and taking in the raindrops in their entierty, welcoming their thouch even as my skin prickled with her contact.

It didn't take long for Appa to break through the cloud barrier and get above the weather. Cautiously, almost disbelievingly, she poked her head out from under my robes. "It stopped," she observed, her tone aweful. Appa shook himself of the water in midair, causing her to shriek and clutch me tighter and me to laugh as he twisted precariously in all directions.

"What did you expect?" I said in reply to her earlier statement after Appa recovered his balance. She didn't relinquish her grip. "Clouds don't go up forever." I looked around, giving Appa slack so he could meander across the air as he pleased. Out here above the clouds, the sun still shone, brighter and purer than ever seen on earth. "It's beautiful up here," I thought aloud quietly, almost in a whisper.

"Really?" she said sarcastically, and I winced. I hadn't forgotten her blindness, but my words made it sound like I had. "I wouldn't know."

"I know you don't," I consoled her, rubbing her back. She leaned her head against my chest.

"Tell me," she ordered. I wasn't sure I understood.

"Sorry?"

"Tell me why it's beautiful," she said softly, closing her sightless eyes and turning her face into me.

It was hard enough to think with her draped over me like that, but add on to that trying to explain sight to someone who's never seen? My eyes widened and my jaw dropped at the task. She waited, measuring my heartbeat for stability. I swallowed, then stammered out, "I-I'll try."

She nodded. She understood. I would do the best I could do.

I leaned back against my sky bison's body, unfolding my legs from under me and stretching them out between his horns. He groaned, but only as an acknowledgment of our new positions. I knew it took more than the two of us to unsettle him. She leaned back with me, not willing to part with her support in the sky, and was possibly even more closely entwined with me than before. I tried to banish the butterflies in my stomach as I pulled her in closer. She turned to lie on her side against me and wrapped both of her legs around my right one. Didn't she know how distracting that was? She started rubbing one foot up and down my shin, and my mind went blank, my heart sputtered. She grinned.

"Tell me, Aang," she repeated, reminding me of my assignment. I shook my head to clear it and tried to show her with words.

My mouth open to begin, I fished for words to start with, but I reeled it in without even a bite. How could I tell her about light and reflections? She had no prior knowledge to base it off of. I couldn't define colors for her without some prior knowledge.

Maybe I was approaching this the wrong way. I couldn't tell her using sight; maybe the other four senses could help.

I closed my eyes and focused on what I could translate from them. She was being overly patient with me; I guessed she wasn't in a rush to get her answer. She knew I would eventually get to the point, given time. her foot kept sliding up and down my leg, begging me to be distracted. I pushed it out of my mind with all my Avatar force and listened.

It was very quiet above the city noise. The clouds and space acted as a buffer for the sound. A bird of unidentifiable origins cried out in the distance. I found my start.

"Imagine you can feel empty space as far as you're able," I mumbled into her hair, my eyes still shut. She made a small noise of agreement. "As far as forever, all there is is nothing, flat space forever, and you know it goes even farther beyond your reach."

"There's never nothing," she whispered, imagining.

"Sorry?" She smiled at my confusion.

"If you can feel something, than it's not nothing," she explained. I blinked.

"You're right. Let me rephrase that, then," I continued. "Imagine you can feel something forever, but it's undisturbed by human or animal actions, even when they try to do so. Now, give that something a color."

"Aang..." she warned. "You know how I feel about colors."

"I'm trying, give me a sec," I said. Colors were the hardest part about this. There was no substitute for sight in defining colors.

"Blue is the sky's color," I started. I tried to assign meaning to 'blue.' "But 'blue' hardly covers it. There's so many different shades, hues, tints, blends with different color to create green or purple, gradual changes from light to lighter-"

"Twinkles Toes," she cut me off. "This means nothing to me."

My train of thought came to a grinding halt. She was right, again. All of those were sight-based observations.

"Okay, let's try again." I tried to think of something that could be felt, smelled, tasted or heard that was the epitomy of blue.

"Pretend you're touching water," I started.

"Water is good," she mumbled, imagining again.

Her fingers caressed my sides, which was even more distracting than the foot rubbing.

"What does water feel like to you?"

"Wet. Generally cool or cold. Slimy, but not. Secretive."

"That's blue," I told her.

"Really? But isn't it transparent, too?" she asked, continuing to explore water with her mind.

"Well, that's not the only side of blue," I admitted. Suddenly a darker purpose of the color blue appeared in my mind. "Azula."

Her hands stopped moving. "What about her?"

"When she would firebend at or around you, did it seem... different than most bent fires?"

"It was hotter."

"Yeah. That was blue, too." We were quiet for a moment.

"Lemme get this straight," she said clearly through my clothes. "Blue is both fire and water."

"Yes. No. Augh!" I felt like pulling on the hair I didn't have. "Only sometimes."

"Okay." She seemed unconvinced.

"Normal fire is orange - the opposite of blue," I continued. "But the hotter it is, the bluer it becomes. It is strange, now that I think about it."

"Moving on."

"Right, so we have an endless space of nothing that is something the color of fire and water."

"Makes perfect sense."

"You're the one who wanted the description!" I retorted.

"Keep talking, Aang," she told me. "I love it when you talk," she added, almost as an afterthought. Her foot stopped its rubbing to wrap itself more securely around my leg. By now she was halfway on top of me. Appa was having the time of his life, reveling in the feeling of wind and freedom again. I pulled her tighter to me, partly to make her feel safe as he flew higher and crazier, and partly because I just wanted to.

"Okay. Add to the blueness a brightness that feels like the sun on your skin and the shine- no, that's not right... tell me, Toph, what's blinding to your feet?"

"I'm gonna say the pun was not intended."

"Just answer the question."

She sighed. "Blinding to my feet? I guess the city is. So many different kinds of vibrations... possibly a herd of elephant-deer stampeding, or Appa landing really really hard-" said animal bellowed. "It's true, you giant beast of burden! You're huge!" I chuckled.

"All right. Now, add all of those feelings together and put it in the warmth of the sun and that's how bright it is up here."

She paused, taking it in. "That's pretty blinding."

I was getting better at explaining things now. "Clouds are even better," I told her. "They're air and water combined together-" I stoppe, remembering with a pang what those two elements used to mean to me. Katara. She was ever a schoolboy's fantasy to me, a beautiful older girl only in my reach because of what I was, not who. It took me too long to realize the only feelings she had for me in the romantic area were those I imagined she had, but years of crushing just don't go away quickly, even when someone like Toph steps in to do damage control.

"Twinkle Toes? Air and water?" I jolted out of the reverie and blushed. I didn't need Katara anymore; I had Toph, and she was almost more than enough. If she had any idea about who I had been thinking about, she didn't hint at it.

"Right. Air and water. Clouds are more water than air, although they float across the sky in gravity-deying shapes that could only be achieved by the wind. Clouds are ust as different from each other as shades of blue - sometimes they're thin and wispy, other times colossal and breathtaking."

"Are they blue, too, because of the water?"

"No, they're white, like - like the feeling of clean, ocean foam, snow, the ends of your fingernails, Appa's fur-" I took a clump of it and placed it in her hands to emphasize my point - "but they're not always white - sometimes they're grey like moonlight, even darker grey in storm, bright pink or purple or orange - like flowers or flame - in a sunset. They're like prisms or metal, an ampliier that absorbs all the light in the world and throws it back at you in a focused image that bowls you over if you actually look at it closely."

I stopped my rant naturally, then realized I had ranted, not all of it comprehensible. I was flushed by the time she spoke, but her words were so unexpected that I forgot to be embarrassed.

"But people don't always do that, do they? Look at it closely." When I didn't answer immediately, she went on, "I mean, here you are, spoutin' out this poetry about sun and sky, but I've never heard anyone else - even you - be so dramatic about it. Mostly it's just 'sun sure is bright today' or 'looks like rain,' or even 'the clouds arepretty right now'."

"I guess you just get so used to seeing it that you take it for granted," I said as a means of explanation.

"What's it like right now, Twinkles?"

"Now?" I'd forgotten my eyes were closed until then. It required effort to open them, but open them I did.

Skies don't change much too quickly, I noticed. Everything was basically the same as a few moments before. A blanket of clouds covered the view of the earth below - a metaphor that could be taken to so many levels, I knew - but they weren't at all smooth. Bumps and ridges highlighted individual clouds in the bank as far as forever, blending into the lightest blue of sky at the horizon line in the distance. The eggshell curved above us, cresting in the middle without having curved up or down at all.

"Blue," I said first.

"Blue-water or blue-fire?"

"Blue-fire." We were high enough now that the air was getting thinner and harder to breathe. I bumped Appa's head with my ankle. "Down a bit, boy," I said, reminding him he had passengers. He grunted, but dove a hundred feet or so to a more respectable altitude.

"There's blue-fire all the way around us and above, lighter- paler- dustier towards the bottom, and deeper- no, darker- wait... more intense the higher up you look. Below is a cloud carpet, blocking out the view of the ground - you can't even hear the city - all bumpy and ridged and fluffy, like an endless koala-sheep blanket covering an infinite range of rolling hills, hills that are both bigger and smaller than you would think."

"What color are they?" she asked in a whisper, trying not to disturb the image I was creating.

"White. Grey, in places. A bit of pale yellow or brighter white from the sun's light here and there - it's mostly yellow during the day."

"What's yellow?"

"Butter is yellow," I said. I was really getting into this. "Sulfur. Saffron. Dirt without soil. Gold. Daffodils. Deserts. A lot of airbender clothes when they aren't orange."

"Wait - so you're telling me fire is the same color as airbender clothes?"

"I guess so."

"Hmph. You'd think those old-time Fire Nation guys who have more respect for people who shared a color with them."

Her logic blew me away with its simple profoundness. Being blind put more of a perspective on things than I'd ever imagined.

"Go on about yellow," she urged.

I looked down at the clouds again. "They're not all the way yellow - just a little accent here and there, like - like moss on a boulder."

She smiled. "I get that metaphor."

"It's not a metaphor, it's a similie," I corrected her mindlessly. Before she had a chance to protest, though, I went on, "It's a very faint twinge of yellow - it's a really new boulder, it just stopped rolling - but it's still there if you look."

"I think I get it now."

"Really?" I asked, hopeful and ecstatic. My descriptions had actually worked?

"Mmhmm." She burrowed her face deeper into my robes, no longer almost lying on top of me but fully. Her mouth was so muffled by fabric that I barely made out her say, "You're a sap."

My jaw dropped again, but this time in indignation. A sap? I was her boyfriend!

"Don't worry, I love you for it," she said, sliding up my body a hair to kiss me softly. "Thank you."

I huffed. "I don't like being called a sap."

"I know you don't," she consoled me. "I love your sky," she told me.

"My sky?"

"Of course! You're the last airbender, right? To all common knowledge, you and Appa are the only sky people around." I smiled sadly at the fact. "Anyway, even if you weren't, no one else could or would have talked so pretty for me." My sad smile changed into a grin as I closed the remaining inches between our lips and kissed her. Her hands slid up my back to rest on my shoulder blades, my own securing her to me at her neck and lower back. Her weight comfortably rested on me and drove all thoughts of poetry from my head as I drew her even closer, both protecting her and embracing her. Her hands went everywhere, exploring me with a blind person's curiousity, even though she already knew everything about me, ending up on and behind my face. At nineteen, we still had the residue of teenagers' lust in our veins, which showed whenever we even touched, much less when we made out. Eventually, she broke it off.

"Tell me more," she demanded, her lips slightly swollen and her blind eyes eager.

"What?"

"Go on! You were doing great! I want to hear about all the colors, about what I look like, what you look like, what's the difference between night and day, what human beauty looks like-"

I stopped her by putting my hand over her mouth, laughing. "Okay, okay! You have to be quiet, though, so I can!" Her mumbled protests behind my palm stopped. I slid her to my side again so I could breathe properly.

"So, what do you want to see first?"

NaNoWriMo Day 3 - WIP

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:36:43 GMT

"I'm telling you, one is not a prime number!"

Remember how I said that my family was weird?

"And I'm telling you that no one cares whether one is prime or not, that's not that point!"

Compared to my lunch table, they only have a mild case of the eccentricites.

"The point is that you two need to shut up so we can get back to the problems at hand and stop worrying about stupid things like math equations!"

My lunch table, a place I also called the Cafeteria Court, was more like therapy with a tray of what-was-once-food, or a bizarre reenactment of one of those salons from the Enlightenment back in the 1700s. There are seven of us that make up the seating arrangement, and each of us are completely different, but totally fun to be around. Over the years, we had stuck together, and I had had the time and the notion to give us all titles, like this was actually a real court. When I unavoidably let one slip, I had told them each what I called them. Instead of laughing at my imagination, though, they took to the idea like flies to honey and adapted even more to their assigned role.

The 'problems at hand' today were the upcoming party; somehow, Ella had managed to invite the entire Rose family tree, living and undead. Knowing her and our earlier talk, I wouldn't put it past her to have snuck in some of the rival family's members, the Drakes, into the invitation box. I also wouldn't put it past Mom to not notice as she spent all those hours typing up the names on the invitations - or, even more likely, for Ella to have 'given her a break' and typed them up herself. A crazy equality girl, my stepsister is.

Back to the seven of the Cafeteria Court. Jessie Kant is the morbid one - the General. "I don't really see your problem, Libby, just kill the guy," she advised me suavely, waving around some mashed potatoes on her fork.

"Gee, thanks for the tip. I'll be sure to put your name under 'accomplice' when I'm arrested for murder," I rebutted. The logical one of the bunch, I had given myself the title of Scientist - always the one to bring up the facts to spoil an emotional argument.

"It'll be fine, Libby," Sherri Chang assured me, reaching across the colder Jessie to pat my arm. "You'll get through this, it's only one night!"

"Always the optimist, Doctor," Jessie said, pushing her arm away from herself and me. I grinned over at Sherri.

"I like optimism. Thanks for the reinforcement," I told her over Jessie's doubtful snorting.

"Reinforcement? Have you seen the guy?! He's like a walking, breathing slime bomb!" the Orator, and Jessie's twin brother Evan Kant, said, ranting just like his sister, only without the morbidness. "You could probably snap next to his hair and set it on fire! I'm telling ya, Libby, stand up the guy and go solo. Even if you're alone, it'd be a lot more fun than being tied down all the time! Besides, that dress just looks great on you - it'd be a shame to waste it on a jerk like him."

We're not really sure about his sexuality all of the time.

"Just go with Doug, Libby," my Historian, Amber Rose, told me over her book. "What's the worst that could happen?"

"How about falling into a romantic trap constructed of raging, pent-up hormones and blue hair gel?" Evan snapped.

"Or he could ditch you for a Bulgarian supermodel that he bribed with the secret stash that his grandparents have from their outlaw days!"

"Charity, that doesn't even make any sense," I said to my other neighbor, Charity Flint, the Foreigner. She shrugged.

"Hey, my parents swear on the elders' graves that Edith and Arthur Lamar were celebrated hustlers in the forties."

"Seriously, Charity? They weren't bank robbers, they were secret agents," the Spymaster Grey Augustine said across the table. "They were pretending to be con men to catch the other bank robbers in the area! Honestly, what do those Navajo teach you out there?"

"... Stuff?"

We fell silent for a moment and stared at Charity. "It's classified, you wouldn't understand," she said with her nose in the air.

"Probably illegal," Evan muttered.

"Well, there's always the idea that he could rape you in a dark corner when no one's looking and say that you were asking for it when you went to the police!"

We turned away from Charity and stared at Jessie, this time in disgust. "It's just a thought." She shrunk down into her chair.

"A bad one," I told her darkly.

"He's just a teenager, like us," Amber said, closing her book and straightening up in her chair.

BRAINS :9

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 01:10:18 GMT

Once upon a time there lived the aged Queen Amygdala, an enchantress with a fiery temper, and her daughter Medulla who could stop the heart of any man under the sun with her beauty. Queen Amygdala, however, had no other thought but hatred of men so she said that whoever wished to marry her daughter must first perform a task or die. Many had been dazzled by Medulla's beauty and had actually risked this, but they never could accomplish what the old woman enjoined them to do, and their heads were struck off. A certain King's son Prince Pituitary had also heard of the maiden's beauty and said to his father Hypothalamus, "Let me go, I want to demand her in marriage." Hypothalamus was originally against the deadly journey, but Pituitary became depressed onto physical illness, so his father was obliged to lt him go.

For this journey, the Prince had six unusual men in his service. The first was a fat man called Cerebral Cortex who could stretch himself out to three thousand times his size. Second was a man called Corpus Callosum whose eyes were so sharp that whatsoever he looked at split in half, so he kept his eyes covered at all times. The third man was named Occipital Lobe, and he had such clear eyes that he could see into every forest and field, and hill and valley, all over the world. Another fourth man was called Spinal Cord, and he was so tall that when he stretched out his limbs he was taller than the highest mountain on earth. The fifth man's name was Temporal Lobe, and nothing escaped his giant ears. The sixth and final man was called Reticular Formation, and he was always alert and had never slept or needed to sleep a day in his life.

And now the King's son and his six servants came to the town where the aged Queen Amygdala dwelled. He did not tell her who he was, but said, "If you will give me your beautiful daughter Medulla, I will perform any task you set me." The enchantress was delighted to get such a handsome youth as this into her net, and said, "I will set you three tasks, and if you are to perform them all, you can be husband of my daughter. First, you must fetch me the ring which I have dropped into the Red Sea." So Pituitary went to his servants and said, "The first task is not easy. A ring is to be gotten out of the Red Sea. Come, help me find some way of doing it." Then Occipital Lobe said, "I can see where it is lying. It is sticking there, on a pointed stone!" Spinal Cord carried them there, and said, "I would soon get it out, if I could only see it." "Oh, is that all!" cried the Cerebral Cortex, and lay down and put his mouth to the water, on which all the waves fell into it just as if it had been a whirlpool, and he drank up the whole sea till it was as dry as a meadow. Then Spinal Cord stooped down a little and brought out the ring. Then Pituitary rejoiced when he had the ring and took it to Amygdala. She was astonished, and said, "Yes, it is the right ring. You have safely performed the first task, but now comes the second. Do you see the meadow in front of my palace? Three hundred fat oxen are feeding there, and you must eat these - skin, hair, bones, horns and all. Then, down below in my cellar lie three hundred casks of wine, and these you must drink up as well, and if one hair of the oxen, or one little drop of the wine is left, your life will be forfeited to me." "May I invite no guests to this repast?" inquired the prince, "no dinner is good without some company." The old woman laughed maliciously, and replied, "You may invite one for the sake of companionship, but no more."

Pituitary went to his servants and said to Cerebral Cortex, "You will be my guest today and you can eat your fill." Hereupon the fat man stretched himself out and ate the three hundred oxen without leaving one single hair, and then he asked if he was to have nothing but his breakfast. He drank the wine straight from the casks without feeling any need of a glass, and he licked the last drop from his finger-nails. When the meal was over, the prince went to the old woman, and told her that the second task also was performed. She wondered at this and said, "No one has ever done so much before, but one task still remains. You will not escape me, and will not keep your head on your shoulders! This night I will bring my daughter to you in your chamber, and you will put your arms round her, but when you are sitting together, beware of falling asleep. When twelve o'clock is striking, I will come, and if she is no longer in your arms, you are dead!" The prince thought, "The task is easy, I will most certainly keep my eyes open." Nevertheless, he called his servants, told them what the old woman had said, and remarked, "Who knows what treachery lurks behind this? Foresight is a good thing. Keep watch, and take care that Medulla does not go out of my room again." When night fell, Amygdala came with her daughter and gave her into the princes's arms, and then Spinal Cord wound himself round the two in a circle, Cerebral Cortex placed himself by the door, so that no living creature could enter, and Reticular Formation stood by Spinal Cord so that if anyone would to fall asleep he would wake them up. There the two sat, and the maiden spake never a word, but the moon shone through the window on her face, and the prince could behold her wondrous beauty. He did nothing but gaze at her, and was filled with love and happiness, and his eyes never felt weary. This lasted until eleven o'clock, when the old woman cast such a spell over all of them that they fell asleep, and at the self-same moment the maiden was carried away.

The witch had forgotten about Reticular Formation, though, and her spells had no effect on him. When Medulla was magicked from the room he was able to wake up the other servants and the Prince so that they would have time to find her before midnight and bring her back to the chamber. Temporal Lobe listened for an instant and said, "Medulla is on a rock three hundred leagues from here, lamenting her fate. You alone, Spinal Cord, can help her; if you will stand up, you will be there in a couple of steps."

"Yes," answered Spinal Cord, "but Corpus Callosum must go with me, so we may destroy the rock." Then Spinal Cord took Corpus Callosum on his back, and in the twinkling of an eye they were on the enchanted rock. Spinal Cord immediately took the bandage from the other's eyes, and he did but look round, and the rock shivered into exact halves. Then Spinal Cord took Medulla in his arms and carried her back in a second, then fetched his companion with the same rapidity, and before it struck twelve they were all sitting as they had sat before, quite merrily and happily. When twelve struck, Amygdala came stealing in with a malicious face, which seemed to say, "Now he is mine!" for she believed that her daughter was on the rock three hundred leagues off. But when she saw her in the prince's arms, she was alarmed, and said, "Here is one who knows more than I do!" She dared not make any opposition, and was forced to give him her daughter. And then the wedding was celebrated, and he who has told you all this, wishes that he, too, had been present at it.

END

New This I Believe!

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:41:43 GMT

READ IT.

“You know some people would be happy to have those muscle cramps.”

It’s an average scenario in my house. My sister is at swim practice, Dad isn’t home from work yet, and I’m in my room, wasting time playing Tetris online. Mom is talking to me at the base of my stairs, oblivious to the fact that I’m only half-listening, if that. I had been complaining about how sore I was from the monotony of long-distance running, and she was preaching to me about how I should be glad, that she was happy to be sore when she walked up stairs, that she bet my dad, who has heavily-operated-on knees and, as a result, a bad physique, would be glad to be sore since it showed that we were using those muscles. My school-sore mind and sport-sore body rejected most of her words, though, focused on the game on the computer screen, but for some reason, that line stuck in my head, reawakening a topic I had been thinking of for a long time now and never really understood what it meant, even though I’d heard people use it before.

“There are starving people in China who’d be happy to have that food.”

“Some girls aren’t allowed to go to school, you know that, right?”

“You should give more to charity, you have too much stuff!”

I hear these phrases all the time, but it sometimes takes that moment of inspiration to really understand the general moral behind it. You can’t really appreciate something until it’s gone. A handicapped person has more appreciation for running than an actual runner. A mermaid wants legs, while a human doesn’t think twice about walking. Starving children in faraway places beg for food when the leftovers from home are thrown in the trash without hesitation. We talk trash and spread rumors about teachers, mothers, friends, siblings , but once they’ve left our lives, all we do is miss them, forgetting all of the bad things that were said about them – or worse, feeling guilty of the gossip. We complain about school and family, but how could we challenge and reshape the world without the education we get from the new height that the human race has fought to get to for the past generations?

True, my legs aren’t in the best of shape right now, and they have felt less stiff in my lifetime, but at least I can use them. At least I can walk.

Avatar month!

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:52:21 GMT

From swan-swan on dA.

September 21st: Aang
September 22nd: Yue
September 23rd: Hakoda
September 24th: Book One One-Shot
September 25th: Foaming Mouth Guy
September 26th: Freedom Fighter
September 27th: Water

September 28th: Katara
September 29th: Azula
September 30th: Appa
October 1st: Book Two One-Shot
October 2nd: June
October 3rd: Animal
October 4th: Earth

October 5th: Zuko
October 6th: Suki
October 7th: Iroh
October 8th: Book Three One-Shot
October 9th: Jet
October 10th: White Lotus
October 11th: Fire

October 12th: Sokka
October 13th: Ozai
October 14th: Momo
October 15th: Avatar Day
October 16th: Ursa
October 17th: Mai
October 18th: Air

October 19th: Toph
October 20th: Cabbage Merchant
October 21st: Combustion Man
October 22nd: Ty Lee
October 23rd: One of the Family
October 24th: Zhao
October 25th: Ember Island Player

This I Believe, take 2

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 04:23:15 GMT

xD I re-wrote it.

The Fire in the Water

Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference. ~ Nolan Bushnell

When I was faced with finding what I believed, the first thing that popped into my head was the idea that all the best ideas come in the shower. However, when I sat down to write it, I found that I couldn’t think of the right words to say. To practice what I preach, I took the idea to the shower and thought about it out loud, recording as I talked.

A shower is a wonderful place. With its green-curtain-and-white-plastic walls that inhibit the view of the outside world, my shower is like a private time machine, where everything outside stands still while I’m stuck inside with nothing to do but listen to myself think. A forced time of contemplation sets in when I step inside, with no paper allowed, no technology allowed. I realize that the same shower head that I had been standing under for about nine years, ten years, maybe, had helped me imagine some of the better and more interesting ideas that still stick to me now, although if you asked me to tell you one, it would be impossible because their birth would be overshadowed by the life they have had since then.

Everyone has their time machine, even if it’s not a shower. Some people go on a walk, a hike, or a bike ride, while others prefer the solitude of their car or the anonymity of a bus or subway system and observing the people around them for new perspectives on life, or just an empty house. You do not need to be a writer to get ideas. The difference between a writer and a normal person is whether they take the idea and run with it, or just let it die out slowly from starvation.

As I listen to my the self-made track, I hear words and phrases that I don’t remember saying, blurred sections where I can’t tell what I mean, and a lot more empty space than necessary. Even with a microphone on my ranting, some of my shower musings are lost forever. Don’t you just hate it, when you think of something fantastic for a paper, a quote, a conversation, a lifestyle – but you forget it as soon as you’ve left your quiet spot? The idea grips you with a passion that you haven’t felt before or after that moment, but once you step outside your car, once you go back in your house, get to your job, or turn off the water, the fire is gone.

This I Believe

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 05:11:50 GMT

It's random and I love it.

I believe that the best ideas come in the shower. When no one is there to see me, I have no remorse in talking to myself, singing a song that’s been in my head all day loudly and off-key, or quoting movies, TV shows, or books for absolutely no reason other than to hear the inflection of my voice again and again. It’s something about the water pressure beating down on me like only water could do, and the presence of no technology, for the obvious fear of shorting out the circuitry of the device, that brings out an inner truth that otherwise lays latent in my chest. In the shower, it is finally free of the weight of what is socially acceptable and what is expected of me every day. I turn on the water, and I suddenly have twenty, thirty minutes of “me time,” and nothing short of the roof falling on my head will get me out from behind the curtain before that time is up. Rather than the minutes counting down, though, it’s more like time stands still for those twenty blissful minutes, and an automatic mood of contemplation over the day behind and the days ahead sets in for that time.

It would make sense that most of the decisions and resolutions that I imagine are created in the shower. When I create an idea for a story line or a new philosophy on life – also known as a ‘plot bunny’- I take it to the shower and mull it over for a long time, letting my mind wander through the ins and outs of the new thoughts. On the other side, I sometimes have the birth of a completely new plot bunny while under the water. An impromptu hum can become the melody of the next greatest hit, or a breakthrough on the meaning of the universe can create a whole new life plan, a way of living from the day to day with a new outlook on people and my surroundings. The plot bunny grips me with a passion I don’t fell anywhere else in the world but in my on shower stall, but once the water is gone, so is the fire.

totally used the words 'plot bunny' in that xD

BIRTHDAY!!!

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:23:00 GMT

IT IS MY BIRTHDAY.

That is all.

:)

collab with *iamPURPLE

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:20:34 GMT

:D

yay! Individual pictures for each avatar episode FTW!

Anyway...

SEASON 1
Boy In The Iceberg = Crystal
Avatar Returns = Caroline
Southern Air Temple = Crystal
King of Omashu = both
Warriors of Kyoshi = Crystal
Imprisoned = Caroline
Spirit World 1 = Crystal
Spirit World 2 = Caroline
The Waterbending Scroll = Crystal
Jet = Caroline
The Great Divide = both
The Storm = Crystal
The Blue Spirit = both
The Fortuneteller = Caroline
Bato of the Water Tribe = both
The Deserter = Crystal
The Northern Air Temple = Caroline
The Waterbending Master = Caroline
Siege of the North 1 = Caroline
Siege of the North 2 = Crystal

xD

Explanation later.

OMG

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 01:29:37 GMT

The bestest thing just happened to me!!! You know what just happened to me? I TALKED TO BONNIE FREAKING WRIGHT ON MSN.

But rly wasn't too exciting, besides the star-factor. Extent of convo -

The Hot Babysitter says:
HIIIIIIIIIII BONNIEEEEEEE
The Hot Babysitter says:
:D :D :D
The Hot Babysitter says:
*scary grin*
- bonnie - says:
HIII
The Hot Babysitter says:
How's your life?
- bonnie - says:
its superb
- bonnie - says:
hows yours ?
The Hot Babysitter says:
pretty fun
The Hot Babysitter says:
I'm at the beach right now
- bonnie - says:
lol
- bonnie - says:
ok

random end. :( Hopefully I will get more chances to talk to her! I will keep posting significant moments of our conversations up here!

I will stop fangirling naow.

~ Caroline

Beach

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:53:35 GMT

Oh glorious day, I'm at the beach! I'm in the awesome house again - the one with four stories and the widow's walk at the top with the 360 degree windows where I stay. It's right on the beach - right on it - so about half of my windows are open right now and I'm sitting on the bed, staring at the Atlantic Ocean. I''m here with a bunch of my family - my aunt and her teenaged son, my great-aunt, her daughter, and her daughter's three kids. It has nine bedrooms - we all fit.

Lucky for me the place is also wireless. So :D I have internetz! I think I'm gonna find that description I wrote of my room last time and post it here. Hang on...

..

...

Well crap. It's not on this computer. Oh well, I'll find it eventually. TTYL!

~ Caroline