Falling Asleep

I don't know what is is with me and sleep.  It's just so important; my characters are always drifting gently to sleep.  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that most of my writing happens after eleven, but I don't think so.

“Now let me see your leg,” the boy said. “Nasty hounds! But I’ll take care of you.” Daniel shivered with fright; though only a kit, he very well knew to trust not any creature, whether it be dog, or cat, or bird, or bear, or human, or even other fox. Every creature meant harm to every other, especially to defenseless ones! But he couldn’t escape, because his leg hurt too much, and head spun as if in a whirlpool. The boy’s face turned sad when he noticed Daniel shaking, and pet him, over his pointy ears and down his furry back. This felt so nice that Daniel forgot to be afraid, and quickly fell asleep. 

I think the only story I've written which doesn't involve one character easing another to sleep is Danger Davie. That was my first story: a Halloween present for my cousins. As an aside, when I named Davie the computer tried (and is, this very moment, trying) to correct him to "Davy." My mother commented on this apparently unusual spelling, but I thought that was how the name was spelled. I'd become attached, and left it. Some time later I picked up a book I've long loved, Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped. The main character is David Balfour. Guess what Alan Breck calls him? Davie. Davie. Now I know where I got the name!

Want a friendship novel? Read Kidnapped. Or any assorted Sherlock. But you knew that.


Lise lay to his shoulder. “I don’t even want to be brave. I just want to stay here. I’m safe. I get tired, everywhere else.” She lay still, Ean blinking to preserve his face from re-streaking.
“You seem tired now.”
“Yes, and I can sleep. I can’t explain--but, but maybe you already understand. It's a different tired now, than before. I’m tired from walking and swimming, and because I’m too comfortable to stay awake. It's not like the other tired, the tired of being afraid. I can't sleep, when tired that way. But now I can sleep. I want to sleep.”

That must be the thing. You have to feel some sense of safety to fall asleep. Even if that safety comes only from stillness. You're being hunted, but now you've fallen to the ground and you're still. You can sleep.
I have to mention Caleb here. Doesn't it seem that when something's wrong, the first thing we lose is sleep? And all you want to do is sleep. Yet you only lie awake wishing for sleep. The dark is cool and still and safe. The dark is close and empty and lurking. A soothing hand across your eyes or a blindfold of terror.

My friend was sleeping.  I had been.  I lifted my cheek from where it lay against his head, which lay against my shoulder.  Anna in the laps between us.  A tiny, dark room.  Hiding.  Not safe, but together so that we had to sleep.  I wished I still slept.

But I didn’t.  I wrapped my arm about the friend sleeping soundly on me.  He’d grown a little older.  A little thinner, since last I saw him.  Anna shivered a little.  Held one of Caleb’s hands.  Held one of mine.  Wrapped her little body around the set they made.  My friends had to sleep.  I could stay waking, but must keep them asleep.  One would not sleep again.  One would never wake.

The closet closer.  We were in the closet.  Where Anna once pushed me through.  But now the walls stifled.  I heard noises.  Voices.  Hard, hard voices.  And Caleb woke.  Held the small girl as near as he could.  Let me try to hold them both nearer.  She seemed still asleep, but started to cry.  Trapped in our nightmare.

Step.  Step.  Step.  Not careful and quiet.  Not timid and shoeless like those which saddened and comforted me if I woke in the middle of some cold night.  Anna shook violently, now.  Hush Baby.  Sing.  Too loud.  Sing please.

The door flung open and we were blind.  Not by light.  The closet seemed dark until the real darkness came in.  Saw only splotches.  Heard only screams.  Felt my friend fighting, fighting.  Just like before.  The fight he never won, that he fought more desperately because he knew he never could win.

A rip, a tear--my heart wrenched out by poisoned teeth.  Never.  Never.  Something was never.  Then the blackness again.  Anna gone.  Never, never, never Anna.  Never Caleb.  Never really Caleb.  They took him, too.

There he was on the ground.  I ran to him, knelt at his side--and he vanished.  Again I found him.  The scar.  Not yet a scar.  The skin of my friend’s neck flayed and bleeding and I couldn’t reach him.  He didn’t move.  Caleb!  Caleb!  I cried and cried again.  They trampled him.  A mob.  Thousands upon thousands crushing my friend.  Weren’t bothered to raise their shoes a little higher.  Toes bruising his face.  Heels catching strings of flesh.   No sound came from him.  His eyes rolled like dead things.  I ran but came no closer.  I ran but the mob thrust me back.  I dropped beside and the feet and legs and dark and death and blood devoured him.  My hand reached for his but fell numb.  Fell like lead.  Caleb!  Hardly Caleb anymore.  A shadow growing from the darkness and seizing him.  Crawling up and over him toward the gushing wound.  His child’s body convulsing and his eyes dead.  Caleb!  Squirming up and bearing its teeth.  Caleb!  Caleb!  Caleb!

Sleep is wonderful or horrible. If someone slept "okay," then he really didn't sleep at all. Real sleep is another world. Perhaps a silent one, but one all the same. Does not a happy dream keep your heart light all day? Does not a nightmare cast shadows in the sun?

Think I'll end with Afton and Kiva here. I love them so. I think I have to fall in love with my characters. If I didn't they'd have no shape.


“Afton,” I called softly, after opening my window. “Afton?”
“Here,” he said, pulling himself from the sky to hover before me. “Are you well?”
“Of course. Won’t you come in?”
He looked surprised.
“Oh. Are you not coming in?”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Then why are you out here? You should’ve gone back to wherever you sleep.”
“I don’t need much sleep. You don’t mind my standing by the window, do you?”
“No, but I’d rather you came in.”
“I’ll keep the cold out; you won’t even know this is open.”
“I can’t leave you outside all night.”
He glanced downward. “Would you believe me, if I told you I’ve never been in a house?”
“You’ve been in a bus.”
He smiled. “Only once, and for but a minute.”
I reached out and took both his hands, guiding him inside. He followed, rather warily.
“Not so bad,” I said. “Is it?”
“Shouldn’t be.” I guided him around the room: showed him where I hid journals in the closet, the space between the bed and bookshelf where I’d sit to read.
“What’s the matter, Afton?” I asked. “You’re holding my hand so tightly.”
His grip loosened. “I’m sorry. There’s something wrong in this house.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “My heart is racing, and I can’t calm it.”
I pressed his heart; it beat like boiling water. “Would you be easier outside?”
“I don’t like you in here; I must stay here with you.”
I sat on the bed and bid him sit beside me, then eased his head into my lap. Just that relaxed him some, though as my fingers moved across his neck the skin there squirmed a little.
“May I ask what you’re doing?” he said.
“Caring for you a bit.”
“Caring for--”
He stopped, because I began to rub his back as well as I knew how. It must have been well enough; in the moonlight his diamond eyes glinted. He shifted uneasily, looked shyly about the room as his human muscles tensed and complained and softened. After some minutes I found a spot that held him still and breathless as I rubbed deeper and deeper into it; then he melted. Melted into my hands with a single acute sigh.
“Kiva?” he said.
I giggled. “Yes?”
He smiled. “You’re laughing at me.”
“You whisper so soft; I nearly can’t hear you.”
“Forgive me, I...” He swallowed, bit his lip as my thumb sculpted a circle on his spine.
“What, Afton?”
  A shiver ran through him, and he shook his head.
  “What’s the matter?”
   “The matter? Nothing at all is the matter.”
     “You quivered.”
   “You said my name. I love it when you say my name.”
    I lay myself down at his back, still rubbing. “Afton? What were you going to ask me, Afton?"
    He only sighed.
   “Answer me, Afton.”
    “It is nothing.”
    “You meant to ask something.”
    “No.”
     “Afton.” Truly, each time I spoke his name he pressed closer into my palm. “Afton, please, please ask me.”  He hesitated, and I set my ear against his mouth. “Tell me.”
     He shivered again, then answered so that I felt and not heard him. “Kiva? Would you kiss me once more?”
     I slid my hands up to his neck, kept them moving and kissed him on the mouth. When I let go he was asleep.

Real Things

    Today I'm writing about real things.  Or unreal things.  Or why it is that unreal things are, so often, the closet we can get to real things.

    Do you ever read fiction that is more real than anything you've ever seen or heard or touched?  You don't know why it's real, and yet the world brightens because you finally know something that you've known all along.  The feeling of separateness leaves for a moment, because someone understands what it's all about.  Someone understands that everything is either meaningless or essential.  There is no in between.

     And then you want to share it.  Try to tell people.  Try to write a blog post about it.  But there is no answer.  Most try to get it.  They'll nod, furrow their eyebrows.  "Yeah, I see what you mean."  Try and  try again to explain, but then it leaves you.  You think you still have it, but it's gone.  Or someone goes off on it quite academically, and you're so excited until finding the spark in your eye missing in your companion's.  "Yes, yes a bit like that, but not exactly.  More this way."  But the spark never comes.  Maybe it wasn't that great after all.  So simple; everyone knows that.  You pick up the book, sad and enlightened, but as the words climb up through your fingers your heart begins once more to race, and that invisible hand comes around your shoulder.  You weren't wrong.  It's right here.

     I meant this to be a rather lengthy post, but my subject limits me.  I can't explain what I say.  I keep trying, but find myself exhausted.  Falling asleep on the keys; it's not even noon.

    I find real things and I must write about them.  I must give Afton his voice and let him speak for me.  I must remember Meadow and the tight embrace she gave me--I must remember so that I can write her a story about real things.  About why she is real.  That real things are never understood.

     Then I can't write about unreal things.  Suddenly essays are incredibly hard.  My sentences are choppy.  I've no flow between ideas.  I sound half-asleep.  Wandering.  As if I can't write directly.  All must be inference.  I try to be conversational, but none care for my conversation.  The assignment is to be self-revealing, but I'm not vulnerable in the right way.  My self isn't worth revealing.  I used to be a "good writer," and so without really trying I could do well on assignments.  Now, if I don't try, I'm hardly coherent.  There are little pockets of care: groups of two or three sentences which sound like me.  But so quickly they drop away.  Not fade, not step: drop.  A bubble of over-zealous passion, forcing it's way up through my tired and whitewashed blabbering.

     I guess I must find something to care about.  Something real when it all seems unreal.  Curdie or Psyche or Sam in the false brilliance.  It's still there.  Not hurt, just a bit harder to find.

     This reminds me of a truly wonderful experience I recently experienced.  That was me making fun of myself: I can't stand it when I repeat words, yet do it all the time.  Anyway, I recently visited an art house.  The owners of the house, both artists, turned their entire home into a gallery.  Many of their works had religious influences, from quite a number of religions.  In one corner of the house was what I think is most clearly described as an altar.  It held candles, incense, and small statues of Jesus, Buddha, and a few others.

     Just typing that freaked me out a little.  It feels weird to capitalize "Jesus" and then capitalize "Buddha."  It feels weird putting "Jesus" in quotation marks.  Not that I hold disrespect for religions other than my own, but    I cannot separate myself from what I believe.  The Buddha shouldn't be anywhere near Jesus.  But that's just me; a personal struggle.  As you guessed, I'm sure, an altar dedicated to both Jesus and numerous other gods would completely unnerve me.  But I heard something.  That doesn't usually happen to me; I'm not one who often receives revelations.  But this was the most wonderful experience.  I heard, very clearly, I'm still here.  It didn't matter that the statue of God was displayed as equal with all these others.  He was still there.  I didn't need to protect Him.  He will always be right there.

     My goodness.  Thank you, this has been stream-of-consciousness blogging.  Wow.  But a post about real things has to end with God, doesn't it?  That's what this is really all about.  It's what this is all about even when we don't know or don't acknowledge it as so.        

   

     

   
   

   

"Fog Spill" Introduction

My children's story (I guess, rather older children's story), Fog Spill, contains one of my favorite plots of the stories I've written.  At least part of the plot.  Somewhere around the middle the whole thing died.  I don't know how.  It reads as if I tired of the story and just wanted to finish it.  But this is so untrue!  Anyway, I decided to break it into chapters, so instead of a long short story it is now a fairly short chapter book.  I'm considering new scenes, a new antagonist of sorts, altering my own assumptions at the story's beginning, etc.  Also: the title.  Love the title.  But I almost want to coin my coined phrase into a word. Fogspill.  The problem is that this could break up as either fog-spill or fogs-pill.  I will probably leave it as a phrase, but please post any input!  (You all know I crave input, right?  "love it" and "burn it" are equally useful to me!)  

Having rambled, here's the first chapter.  I tend to write short chapters (especially introduction chapters), so don't be too alarmed.  Once again, there have been only minuscule revisions.  I can guarantee that, come next week, I will re-read this chapter and think, "Did I really post that?!  Ugh!  It's horrible!  EWWW!!!"

         

Have you ever wondered about the fog?  A sea in the valley.  An avalanche over the hills.  You’ve squinted through it on early mornings; tried to push it from your eyes.  Makes the traffic lights blurry.  Thick and billowing when far away; light and lingering when all around you.  Shy thing.  Almost lets you touch it, but only almost.  

 
Have you ever wondered if maybe, were you to sit very still and very quiet, you could touch the fog?  Maybe it gets tired, sometimes.  Seeking its way through all the bustling and the noise and the severity.  Maybe, once in a while, it wants to rest.  If you sat still and quiet and small, maybe it would nestle down beside you and lay against your shoulder.  Or pass slowly by, taking and kissing your fingertips.  Or maybe it would surround you with all its great quietness--wrap tightly about you because you’re not alone and it’s not alone and you’re together.  Perhaps you would even laugh for the fog.  Laughter soothes all cold things.  The fog must get cold: scorned by serious mouths, pushed away by turned-up collars and turned-down hat brims.  If you are happy it will know.  If you laugh it will laugh with you.

I fear these are silly ifs and maybes.  As you grow people say, ‘The fog is not a person.  It is not shy.  It does not get tired.  It does not kiss.  It does not laugh.  It cannot have joy or happiness or love.  It does not know; it does not feel.’  For these people never meet fog.  It never taps upon their shoulders.  Never whispers into their ears.  

But you are real.  If someone didn’t believe in your realness, would you try to tell him?  If shy,

would you turn up your head to callous faces?  If tired, would you ask safety of one certain to shove you away?  Would not you recoil from those who’d rip out your heart to prove you cannot feel?

I can offer no proof.  All anyone cares for now is proof.  Rather a funny sounding word, isn’t it?  Proof.  Such a funny word for something so serious.  Maybe it’s not all that serious.  Who are we to ask for proof?  To say that we can prove or disprove?  It is when we look for proof that we forget what is real.  What is good.  What is true.  It is then that we begin to fade into that great solid shadow, where life is worth only its measure.

I have no proof.  I have no measure.  I have nothing solid.  I only have stories.  Just stories.  A whisper, a song, a heart pounding with love and trust and fear and sorrow and hope and joy.  A voice that cries.  A hand that reaches.  But I leave this to you.  This choice.  This test.  Place a man against a meter stick, and tell me which is real.

Afton on That Which is Strange

I just read a poem on Wayward Fancies, a blog I follow.  Its theme was so exactly like a theme of Fogspill that I had to post the comparison.  Here's the link to the poem: http://waywardfancies.blogspot.com/2013/01/if-life-is-enjoyed.html

And here's my scene:


       “You’re so strange,” she said, stepping forward until I cut into her path.  She’d not touch him.  The greetings had ended, and now no one would touch him.

        "Is that a bad thing?” he asked.

“I should say so.”

“Oh.  I shouldn’t, at least not all the time.”

“When is strange good?”

“Anything inexplicable is strange, and it would be a sad world without the inexplicable.”

“There aren’t any inexplicable good things.”

“Night and day are good.”

“But I can explain that.”  

He furrowed his brow.

“The earth spins.  When it spins toward the sun there is day; when it spins away from the sun there is night.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well, that’s why there’s night and day.”

“No it’s not.”

“It is!”

“It’s not.  That’s how, not why.”

“Fine!  Why do you think we have night and day?”

“I don’t think anything of why.  I know that day and night and the change between are wonderful.  Wonderful and strange.”

My sister twirled her hair around a spiteful finger, then turned and left.

I looked at my friend.  He’d closed his eyes, as if trying to renew some of the strength my sister stole.  I took his hand.  His fingers encircled mine tightly.

“Maybe that’s it,” he said.  “You’re strange, Kiva.  Maybe it was your strangeness that brought you to me.”

Little, in need of revision, and without context; but there you go.

So Many Stories!

Usually I go at least a week between stories.  I get an idea, think about it a while, write a little, leave it, write a little more, leave it, and then get going and pull an all-nighter to finish it.  Then it sits.  Then I revise it.  Then my mum reads it.  Then it's "done."

But not lately.  Soon after Weary Angel I got the idea for Fog Spill.  I obsessed over that a few days, nearly finishing it.  But now it won't end.  I'm ready to end it, but every time I start an ending I hate and therefore abandon it.  I adore the first meeting between my main characters:


Here was my stop!  I jumped from my seat, grabbed my backpack, and scurried out to the base of the peak.  It was cold, but a beautiful cold, brimming with crisp life and a mist of joy.  I breathed deeply of it, tightened the straps on my shoulders, and started up.
This day was better than all in my memory.  Hiking was my favorite thing.  To travel up, further from anything corrupted by the darkness or stained by bad experience.  And today was the best type of day: the cold white-silver and black-silver chilling the sky and bringing out the color in color, so that the brilliance of the whole world climbed up from underground hopes and forgotten wishes.  And I traveled with it; climbing up and up, while the color climbed up and up, so that it swallowed me and made me a part of the vibrancy. 
I reached the bowl’s edge.  Laughing I scurried up to the top, then fell silent.  The blessing was too great.
As looked into the bowl I saw the fog swelling.  Closer, closer to the top.  The beginning of a fog spill.  And here I was, standing right where it would spill over.  It welled before my feet, the slightest bit pooling forward and wrapping about my ankles.  That small bit crept up my legs, then leapt to my arms, and slipped to my shoulder, and curled about my neck.  A playful little fog child!  I laughed, and the fog warmed.  I’d never felt warm fog before.  I smiled and relaxed into my wisp of fog and it wound around my face and neck and shoulders, then it was gone.  I turned about in search of it, but stopped when I saw the glory just in front of me.
A wall.  An enormous wall of deepest cloud.  Beauty such as I cannot describe.  It must have bloomed a mile above my head.  Then, then…then the fog spilled.
Over me.  Around me.  Around me so that I stood small and awestruck within the sky.  As a young child I had always wanted to climb up into the fog with a jar, so that I could catch a bit of it to keep forever with me.  But now I knew the jar could not hold the fog.  It was too great, too magnificent, too perfect for any mortal thing to hold.
Laughing.  The fog laughed!  I laughed with it, and it wound gentle and warm about me once again.  It had a beautiful voice, the fog.  Low and quiet, yet bursting with the joy of a thousand children.
But where were my feet?  In sudden panic I cried out, for I was no longer on the ground.
“What troubles you?” said the soft, low voice.
“I’m going to fall!”
“Fall?  I wouldn’t let you fall.”
At once there were solid arms around me, and I clung to the neck of my rescuer.  
“See?” he said.  “I had you all the time.  Silly girl, thinking I’d drop you!”   
“Where are we now?” I asked, still feverishly clinging to him.
“Halfway down the mountain.  Open your eyes; it’s beautiful.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you won’t be there.”
“I shall.”
“You’re a dream.  When I open my eyes you’ll vanish, and I’ll fall.”
A sudden chill came over him; I was wrapped in a freezing embrace.  In a moment I felt my feet on the earth.  The now icy hands loosed my hold, and the form stepped back.
“You’re on the ground,” he said.  “Open your eyes.”
I did, and saw a young man before me.  His skin was so light he seemed half invisible, and his hair also: white-grey.  I hardly noticed the clear blue of his eyes, because the tears in them pained me to faintness.
“Am I still here?” he asked.
“You’re shivering.”
He turned to hide his face, but I rushed forward and wrapped my arms around him.  A spark of warmth ignited in his heart, spreading rapidly throughout him until it flowed into the air because he was full.  Now it was his arms wrapped around me, and I lay comfortably against him.
“May I carry you again, Kiva?” he asked.  I laughed, and we thrust into the sky.  This time I kept my eyes open and saw the beauty.  The incredible, wonderful beauty; the little mountains poking into the sky, the tiny creek dripping along the city’s edge – even the busses and cars were lovely from my place with the fog.
“Kiva!” I exclaimed.  “You called me ‘Kiva!’”
“That is your name.”
“But I never told it to you!”
“I love you.  How could I not know your name?”
“Can you love me already?”
He smiled, then ran his fingers through my hair and kissed my cheek.  It was so strange, but I loved him too.  Not the imitation love girls feel when they think a boy is handsome or sweet, but the real kind.  The kind that goes beyond any explanation.  The kind that doesn’t understand explanation.  
“I love you too,” I said.  “But I don’t know your name.”
“You do.”
“I don’t.”  A horrible guilt threatened me.  “I love you, truly love you, but I don’t know your name!”
“Hush, Kiva,” he said, rubbing between my shoulders to soothe me.  “You know it, but are too worried to find it.  Relax and you’ll see it’s right there.”
  I had to relax, because his hand and voice made anxiety impossible.  I struggled to keep my eyes open, his strength and gentleness overwhelming me.  I felt so small, but in a good way.  The way a baby feels small when a parent cradles him, and he knows that neither darkness nor fear nor evil can touch him.
“Afton,” I said, sleepily.  “Of course your name is Afton.  You were right: I knew it all the time.”


     So, yeah...I do really, really want to hike Bishop's now.  Anyway, I love this part, and some parts which come after.  But at the moment any ending I try sounds like I got sick of the story and just ended it.  Somewhere it died, and I don't know where.

Then there's Dreams We Remember.  I felt silly calling it "Dream Story," even as a working title, but my actual title isn't too different!  My mum once told me that I should try envisioning my stories as movies to help with description.  I used that tactic to come up with a title.  You've seen movie commercials; they're all the same.  Scene...scene...scene--scene--scene--SCENE!!!...Title.  Walking home from the bus I threw a bunch of scenes together and tried out different titles until finding my favorite!  This story is longer, of course, so I don't expect to rush through it.  But it is certainly present in my brain.  Certainly.

I walked up the street.  It would have been dark but for the street lights, which left the sky wallowing in that ugly grey.  Not dark, not light.  Not even a place in between.  Something that should have been night lit by candle but wasn’t.
And the houses pushed up in the unnatural light.  I always liked them: narrow and tall, in all sorts of funny colors like sea-foam green and Easter bunny purple.  They wouldn’t be the same in modern colors: any shade of taupe or ivory or chocolate if its residents were daring.  I liked their silly balconies extending eight inches out from the house front, filigree works of painted iron acting as rails.  I liked the cement steps at each doorway, the goldish chain bolt locks, the stains of scrubbed graffiti amid twists and dots of new graffiti.  I adored those skinny little houses.
My heart leapt when I turned into one, one with musty mini-blind covered windows and rust around the doorknob.  I set my hand to the salmon pink stucco wall, wondering why I was here and why I reached to undo the lock.  But why didn’t seem to matter.  I opened the door and stepped inside.
Warehouse.  Not the look, but the feel.  An echoing, cold warehouse.  I noticed no object but a staircase.  I stared at it, waiting.  Waiting until hearing a tiny, timid foot on the step.  It lingered where I could see it but not its owner, small and fragile and covered in a soft black shoe.  So quietly it sat there, I wondered if I did hear it step or only saw and made the sound in my mind.  
“It is me,” I said.
I saw no more of the foot; I saw too much else.  Long woolen skirt and delicately knit cotton sweater rushing forward.  A face happy, and deeply beautiful.  Bright green eyes.
A smile and two fine arms caught me, but I broke away.  I didn’t know her, this beautiful girl so glad to see me.  She understood, somehow.  Calmed her fire and stood still.  Let me look at her some minutes, at her slight form covered in loose clothes.  Her face only a bit younger than mine, but full of such innocence that it cleansed me to look at it.  She bit her lip to keep still; she wanted desperately to come around me.  So lovely, and so absolute in her waiflike way.  I longed to grasp her in my arms and feared that I should do so.
She couldn’t wait any longer and stepped forward.  I scrambled back until hitting a corner.  The wisp of sadness I expected her to show didn’t come, in fact her happiness grew.  I couldn't flee further.  Though she hadn’t trapped me.  Joy filled her in advance, for she knew that in a moment I wouldn’t run.  Her tiny hand extended near my face.
“Can’t you leave me alone?” I asked, trembling all over.  She terrified me, this beautiful girl with love in her eyes.
Her smile deepened.  Her fingers lit against my cheek.
“No,’ I whispered, slamming my head as far into the corner as I could.  But the little hand brushed through my hair.  I caught my breath and looked up toward the ceiling.  Again, again the touch which set my spine to squirming and my mouth to begging.  Stop.  Stop.  Please stop.  But no.  And I didn’t want her to.  I’d never felt a thing so perfect as her hand.  Brushing, stroking, tenderly over my head as if all of me was a wound she meant to heal.  At last my eyes could meet hers, truly meet the faultless green.  For a moment we both kept still.
A sob burst from me and I took her wrists, shaking, weeping, laying her palms to my face and pressing into them.  She leapt into my arms so that her baby feet left the floor, and kissed me so that every memory of other than joy dissolved.  Her laugh and her touch calmed my anxious need; soon I stood relaxed.
“What are you?” I asked.
She giggled and cupped her chin in my hand.
I thought.  “My sister!”
She nodded, turning her eyes in a playful circle.
“Sort of my sister?”
She shook her head.
“All my sister, but not at all my sister.”
She jumped and clapped like a child, then took my sleeve and pulled me further into the house.
In the kitchen she sat me on a stool.  After setting a mug on the counter she held up a half-full coffee pot.
“I’d love some,” I said.
She pursed her mouth.
“Would I not love some?”
She looked at the pot, then turned and poured its contents down the drain.  She motioned me forward to help her up onto the counter.  Her just above five foot frame did little to aid her in reaching to the back of a cabinet, but she managed and let me lower her to the ground.  In minutes she had ground fresh beans and boiled water.  With a laugh she stirred one and a half spoonfuls of sugar into my mug.
“You know just how I like it.”  She shrugged her shoulders with a coy smile.  Of course she knew how I took my coffee.
I took only two sips of that coffee.  It smelled better than the finest café, and tasted exactly as its scent.
“What’s the matter?”
Her face had lost every semblance of the one I knew.  Beautiful still, but still.  Petrified as a museum statue.
She grasped my hand and ran.  Pulled me out of the kitchen and up the stairs.  She tripped and I caught her in my arm.  For a blissful second she relaxed in my protection, but at once clambered to her feet and pulled me up.  Up, up, up -- up more stairs than I could see and into a hall.
She opened a door and shoved me through it.  A closet.  She tried to close me in, but I stopped the door.  Tears in her eyes.  Tears pleading with me to let her close the door.  But had I not shed tears to dissuade her from nearing me?  And look what happiness came of that!  She shook her head, looking back to the staircase.  I heard the front door and she panicked, shoving me with all her little strength.
“What are you afraid of?  Let me protect you.”
No.  No.  She shook her head.
“I’ll keep you safe.  I swear!”
Her hand over my mouth.  Then off: her lips instead.  My knees went like water.  I sat upon the floor.  The door closed.

Quite a time ago I came up with a story entitled Traveler's Joy.  I planned to give it to my dad for Christmas, but haven't finished it yet.  I know how I'd like to write pretty much all of it, and much is already written.  But it still needs plenty of work.


Think of the ocean.  Green-blue stretching endlessly, and plunging unfathomably, overwhelming the eyes and nose and throat with salty passion for adventure.  Where by sealing the eyes one can feel the Lochanside wind, or smell the fish-flooded ports of Japan, or hear the suntanned Sardinian pipe for countrymen and wayfarers alike.  Where body is sand and soul is sky and spirit is an uncontainable rush of water.
So small a body, yet so great a soul, and so intense a spirit sat and yearned for a tiny taste of this splendor.  She sat with her back to the forest, which she loved because it had cared for her since her first moments, but her face to the sea, which she loved for reasons she did not know but could not ignore.  How vibrantly it startled her vision!  How forcefully it enthralled her lungs!  
“Dear Neptune!” she cried aloud, holding out her arms as a child asking to be picked up.  “Darling Neptune!  Can you not carry me away, that I may float on you forever?  Even in tempest will I cling to you, so great is my love!”
She sat here long, somehow content to merely look upon her heart’s desire and at the same time long for more of it.  When the sun vanished into that long, straight horizon she still didn’t turn for home, for even without light the glorious deep lapped and tossed within her mind, and the briny air sang that her love lingered close, though invisible.  Eventually, though, she felt that gnawing discomfort beckon her home.  She didn’t have to go: no family waited up for her, no friends anxiously peered from their windows in search of her approaching form, yet she must go home.  Perhaps the trees could not rest until she lay cradled in their branches, and the squirrels paced until her feet tottered past their doors.
She liked to think so.  Most fairies had a companion by the time they reached her age.  Some had to journey far to discover this companion, but they always knew where to go, because their hearts tugged them their.  She had never known that tug, that irresistible pulling, like the voice of an embrace.  She felt called home, but only by the natural fear of “staying out too late.”  Perhaps that’s all she would ever feel.  Perhaps she would be made wise and solitary; an esteemed fairy lady, looked to with reverence. 
But that seemed so wrong!  Turmoil she could take, but turmoil with a friend.  Not just a friend, a companion, whom she could love and trust and dote upon.  She wished for him more than she wished for the ocean.  The ocean only seemed so much like a companion: it could be calm, or fierce, or sad, or elated.  If she could have no companion, she wanted the ocean.
Up she flew, then nestled down under a leafy cover.  Soon she dropped asleep, dreaming what she always dreamed; dreams of her companion.
And the ocean.


I wrote an introduction based on a doll of mine.  She was a Christmas present who was back-ordered until March.  Thus it happened that she and I kept up a letter correspondence.  Yes, she was a fairy doll.  I was twelve and my parents had to get me this lovely collectible fairy doll before I was too old.  Little did they realize that I made a Peter Pan Promise long, long ago.    


I do not know how many stories have been written about fairies, but am entirely positive that the number is too large for counting.  The moment a person (and he would indeed have to be a very, very smart person) named them all his conclusion would prove incorrect.  For at that moment, in some part of this wide and ever-changing world, someone’s fey tale would be flowing from whimsical thought into enchanting, thrilling, inky word.  
But, though the number of stories written about fairies cannot be imagined, the number of stories written by fairies is far more comprehensible.  It is to this number that I wish to add my little story; for fairy I am, and it is my own narrative that I tell.  I daresay it will not rank among the great chronicles left by the winged-folk which have preceded me, but I certainly felt like the character of some fable while I lived it.  Besides which my dear friend insists that I share it, and I have never yet been capable of refusing her anything.
I should describe myself and my kind before advancing, as it is quite probable that the majority of my readers have never met a fairy.  We have always been secretive, but once we were not so rare a sight.  Anyone who ventured near our dwellings (which were as innumerable as the stories written about us) in a manner not obtrusively brutal was almost sure to see at least one of us.  I say “obtrusively brutal” because I do not wish to inspire the notion that only quiet, softly moving children could extract a fairy from hiding.  My friend, for example, is anything but quiet and soft.  She can be, but it takes a great deal of effort; at school she is the epitome of good behavior and attention every teacher longs for, but once safely on her way home she bursts into tears from the sheer exhaustion of being so perfect all day.  But, though her ramble through a fairy woodland would be a noisy and excited one, I can proclaim with confidence that every sprite would come out to meet her.  There is nothing at all fearful in childhood’s unbridled joy, even if that joy causes them to love too strongly for gentleness.
Of course, sadly, not every child’s exuberance can be attributed to a passionate nature.  If a boy or girl came crushing through the forest with a truly malignant air, stomping on bugs and pounding trees, I’m afraid no elf would emerge.  Every one would weep and pray for the child, but none would greet it.
It was when children like these did not grow out of their bad tendencies that the trouble for fairies began.  An obviously malicious person is dangerous only when a fairy accidentally falls out of hiding and into his path.  The wholly wicked person is the one who disguises his wickedness.  He walks subtly, and sings happy songs to himself, all while his evil heart devises schemes of greatest cruelty.  These are the most dangerous people for anyone, fairy or otherwise, to encounter.  People like this continually venture near our homes and coax us with their lies (a less-than-difficult task, for every fairy wishes for friendship), and as time goes on our population decreases, and we who are left become more timid.  Thus it is that many humans never see us.  Things are to the point now where many do not even believe in our existence!
In the time that I have known my friend I have become well acquainted with human images of fairies.  Though I must say that the works of Miss Barker are supreme in their portrayal, most other images are pure fiction, and with a fictional image comes a fictional history.  My friend once read someone’s account of what exactly a fairy is, and it surprised both of us most utterly.  I can easily connect certain drawn images of fairies (which I would describe as somewhere between embarrassing and insulting) with this singular history.  In reality, though we are a diverse lot, we are nothing more than small beings who spend our existence in search of delight.  An ambiguous definition, but if a human were to attempt a definition of humanity, he would find his undertaking at least as difficult as my own!  
We fairies all have a bit of magic in us, but it seldom becomes apparent (if it becomes apparent) except when it is desperately needed.  I for one have never spotted any bit of magic in my doings, but my friend claims to see some, and perhaps my story will reveal to you what is invisible to me.
And now I come, at last, to my story.                     

We spent a portion of this evening decorating our Christmas tree.  I have an ornament of a little fairy, and as I hung her up I thought of a new idea.  Fairies live in trees, right?  What if one lived in a tree, and that tree was cut down for a Christmas tree?  Then she'd wind up hiding in the branches while bright lights and colorful ornaments were hung all about her, and she'd be so grateful for the popcorn strands because she'd get terribly hungry keeping still and quiet.  And of course someone would eventually discover her.  Quite an adventure for a little fairy, I'd say.

Lots of fairy stories, huh?  I always wished for them when I was little!

And there are a couple others!  I have so many going in my head right now that I would write constantly if I could.  But what am I doing tomorrow?  Studying statistics.  It's disgusting.