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.

Caleb Mithun: March 12th

Usually my head holds pictures of my characters which are perfectly clear until I try to focus in on them, upon which time they deform into entirely different people.  I have to neglect them a while before they’ll turn back into my characters.  But, walking through the Cuesta library, I saw an exact picture of Caleb on a book cover.  I stared at the book a good while, then proceeded to check it out in order to stare at it some more.  Sadly I didn’t have time to read it as it deserves to be read; it’s about the situation faced by foster children as they age out of the foster system.  As an aside, the situation is disgusting and should never be allowed to happen.  You’re entirely alone in the world?  We can no longer collect funds on you?  Poor Dear!  Allow me to point you toward the nearest bridge; looks likely to rain.  Disgusting.  Anyway, Caleb entered the foster care system at age eight, which makes his picture appearing on the cover of a book about foster children especially trippy.  



So, that really is exactly what he looks like. The facial expression is even more exact than the rest of the picture.

Caleb is six foot three, all legs, and terribly thin, with hair somewhere between blonde and brown, and a practically translucent complexion.  His eyes are a bright, startling green: easily his most distinctive feature if the scar on his neck; a jagged, raised, red line; is disregarded.  He received the scar in an extremely traumatic way, which left him phobic of crowds and closed-in places.

“Caleb?  Are you all right?”

He hunched his stiff shoulders forward, creasing further and further into himself.  It took him a long time to speak; I saw the clatter of voices and heat of forms crushing him to powder.  “I can’t sit here anymore,” he whispered.
“Then let’s leave.”
“I don’t know if I can.”  His eyes finally yielded the the pressure bearing on them, shutting out the world with little hope of reopening.  “I don’t think I can.”
I stood and threw on both our packs.  “We’re leaving.”
“I can’t move.”  His fingers were white around the table.  “They’re trampling me already.  I can’t move at all.”
“Yes you can,” I whispered back, taking and squeezing his arms from behind.  “You just need to stand up.”
“This won’t stop.  Not until they’re gone.”  He clenched his teeth, desperate to hide his suffering.  “That’s why I never come in here.  They’re never gone.”     

Further circumstances of his young childhood make eating difficult and sleeping nearly impossible.  Evan’s friendship tremendously lessens his anxieties, but still he is haunted by wickedly, truly tangible memories, mostly that of his scar's origin.

He edged the smooth black oval under his chin.  At that time he couldn’t even wear a collar, but a violin’s delicate, red-gold arc pressed into his neck like the quieting fingers of a friend.  Although this particular instrument knew nothing and couldn’t be as careful--but when he flinched it understood, and molded itself to soothe him.  The bow and string met with a shiver.
“Don’t make me play.”
The girl hushed him, running her hand along his bowing arm.  Then she began to hum.  By the second note he was safe at home, with closed eyes and comfortable smile.  The lullaby came so easily that I didn’t begin hearing it until halfway through; then I turned to see the little clerk on his toes with the music, and Sabella swaying lightly back and forth.  I cannot write of music.  To learn the notes and write them down would be meaningless.  Caleb’s music isn’t made of notes.  It’s made of himself and his loves and his fears and a young woman’s touch and a great foggy city and a seagull’s cry and a pair of weeping eyes hidden behind his own.

When Caleb was eleven he had a rather well-to-do foster family.  Their daughter took violin lessons, and when she practiced Caleb did anything he could to hear her.  However, the daughter did not care for her own playing, and decided to quit lessons.  Caleb was utterly heartbroken, and had visible tears in his eyes for two straight days.  The family was kind and generous, and secure enough to charitably part with the violin.  They gave it to him for his twelfth birthday.

While living in dorms at SF State he never played.  That is, of course, he never played until Evan began kidnapping him and his instrument and driving out to various hidden corners of the city. He only had a couple months of instruction before changing families, and never learned to read music. For this reason he believes that he is not a real musician.

“My playing isn’t good,” Caleb half-whispered.
“He plays brilliantly,” Sabella said.
The clerk shuffled into a closet, wrenched out a case and began to unhinge it.  My friend looked to my eyes. “Thank you,” I said to the man.  “He’s supposed to perform whenever he criticizes himself.  This is the perfect venue.”  That was probably the closest Caleb ever came to hating me.

Caleb somehow manages to be both highly coordinated and terribly awkward. He has a tendency to constrict his shoulders into an uncomfortable knot, clench his jaw, walk as if encased in plaster, and stare at the ground. When walking through crowds he'll often watch Evan's feet. When still in a crowd he may look quite hard into Evan's face, if not always into his eyes.

At SF State Caleb studies accounting, because "it's quiet and has jobs."

I was currently in my second year of grad school and just months away from earning my Master’s, while Caleb had left school after the basic four years.  Although accounting jobs were always available, finding one that only required a Bachelor’s Degree had proved quite challenging.  Once he found one he didn’t lose it, performing every task flawlessly, but the firm paid him in bottle caps and treated him like a packhorse.  I’d visited him once when my composition teacher unexpectedly cancelled class, and though glad to see me he could hardly acknowledge my presence.  He was a young man at Telson’s: locked away from the sunlight so he would age faster.  He looked pale and sick in there, just as he looked pale and sick in all cold, heartless places.  He looked alone, a look I rarely saw now.  He brought take-out home with him that night, trying to assure me that he was happy and unhurt.

However, Evan maintains that his friend should have gone to medical school. One day Caleb and Evan come across a poll just begging to be jumped over. Caleb easily clears it, but Evan does not. He barely squeaks over and manages to get a nasty metal sliver in his thumb. This annoys him into a sour mood. They wind up in a coffeehouse (Ugh!!! I forgot to mention in Evan's post that he is a coffee addict. He drinks at least three cups of the motor oil variety each day, and has done so since the tenth grade. Caffeine now has little effect on him. Going to an actual coffeehouse is a treat.). Caleb starts messing with Evan's hand and further annoys him, but manages to eventually get him talking. After a bit of time Evan glances down to see the shard on the table and his thumb neatly wrapped in a napkin.

 

“Maybe I will be a doctor; I’m not old.”

“You’re studying to be an accountant.”

“I’m not smart enough for med. school.”

I didn’t favor that comment with an answer.

He nodded to my compliment, then leant back in his chair and stretched out his legs.  “I can barely handle a classroom.”

“But you wouldn’t be in school forever.”

“It’s not the school, it’s that a doctor’s job is to be around people.”

“You’re excellent with hurt people.”

“Not really.  She just needed anyone to care for her a little.”

“You’re always doctoring me.”

“You always manage to hurt yourself.  And you don’t count, anyway.”  He sighed.  “I wouldn’t worry about patients too much, at least I don’t think.  It’s the other people: other doctors, nurses, secretaries, families.”  He shook his head.  “And doctors rarely see their patients, they have so many.  I probably would’ve been a good doctor 150 years ago.”

“Caleb the country doctor?”

“Exactly.”

Caleb can be closely observant. He isn't of everything, but if he tries to observe or truly cares about what he's observing he can interpret it. This has made the academic portion of school incredibly easy for him. It makes him a perfect violinist. It also makes his analysis of Evan even better than Evan's analysis of him.

I'll end with a scene which, though wanting revision, shows some of my favorites of Caleb's and Evan's qualities. They're visiting Evan's parents for Thanksgiving, and these said parents annoy and anger their son so that he consciously decides to intoxicate himself so as to stop caring. But he has a high alcohol tolerance (which he knows, by the way), and winds up just giving himself a killer headache.


When at last my parents tiptoed off to bed he collapsed onto the couch.  “Are you all right?” I asked.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I think I’ll walk outside a bit.”  

I nodded, then left to take a shower.  When I came back the front door was locked and my door was just slightly ajar.  I had one of those bunk bed sets which had a full bed on the bottom and twin on the top.  Tiffany had her own room, but the bunks had always been useful when friends stayed the night.  Caleb’s shoes were tucked beneath the sloped ladder; he’d slunk up before I claimed the less comfortable bed.  I stumbled beneath the covers, groaned my head onto the pillow.

“Caleb?” I mumbled after some moments.

“Hmm?”

“You are allowed to move.”

“I’m fine.”

“That bunk creaks with breathing.  You’re not moving at all.”

He turned over stiffly.

“We don’t have to stay,” I said.  “We can leave now.”

“Nothing’s wrong here.  It’s only me.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

He leant over the railing so I saw strands of light hair in silhouette against the window.  “Say something else.”

“Hello, Caleb Mithun.”

“I am stupid.”  He hastened down the ladder in two strides.  “You have a terrible headache and I didn’t even notice.”

“It’s my fault.”

“Before tonight I’d never drunk anything.  How am I not sick?”

“You had enough water, and do remember that I made your sunrise.”

“I didn’t think tequila was that sweet.  You drank my dose.”

“I drank it three times over.”

He left the room, then, soon returning with an aspirin and glass of water.  After I ingested both these offerings he bid me lay back with closed eyes, then began to massage my temples with the pads of his fingers.

“All right?” he asked.  I replied with a sort of hum because he helped immediately and immensely.  “Is anyone coming over tomorrow?”

“My dad’s mother and sister, and her three kids.”  My stomach churned audibly.  “Can’t wait for dinner.”

“Morning coffee should help.  And a walk.”

“Good luck dragging me on a walk.”

“Are there any coffee shops here?”

“A million downtown.”

“Are any a walkable distance away?”

“That depends.  But we should go even if we drive.”  His hands curled around my head so that their thumbs rubbed where my neck and skull met.  Apparently I tensed up a bit, because he softly told me to relax.  

“You’re good at that,” I said.

“One of us has to sleep.”

“Maybe we should switch off.”

He laughed a little.  “Sounds fine.  Tomorrow you get the orange juice.”

I was reluctantly falling asleep now, forsaking my friend’s soothing hands for the rough coddling which accompanies holidays.  “You’re welcome to play, if you like.”

“Too loud.  And my violin is in the car.”

“It’s under the bed.”

A thrill caught him to the fingertips.  “No it’s not.”

“I tossed my coat over it and carried it in.  Couldn’t stay outside all night.”

“Really Evan?”

“Of course.”

At the time I thought the tremble in his voice a shiver.  “That was good of you,” he said.  “I can’t play, but I’ll have it near me.”

That’s the last I remember him saying, though he insists more came after.  All I knew was lapping of dreams I pledged to keep, engulfing and beautiful swells and my friend healing me quietly.

    

Rather Funny

It wasn't that I'm a great writer.  It wasn't that I had become irrevocably wrapped in my characters' emotions and feelings.  It was merely the effect of a new semester which gets me out of bed at seven in the morning Monday through Friday.  But, in truth, I fell asleep on the keyboard while writing this.  

We had been quiet a while, enjoying the clean and clear weather, when through habit I glanced at my friend.  Upon seeing him I turned quickly away, then guided my head by inches back toward him.  He was falling asleep.  Throughout months of sitting beside him each night not once had I seen him sleep.  Whether he took twenty minute naps in the library or in his room while it was empty or however he got the minimal amount of rest survival requires I don’t know.  Now his head slackened to one side, his eyelids loosening and fingers unfurling over his legs.  By impulse I nearly stopped the car to lower his seat, cover him with my sweater.  But I bit my lip and drove.  Continued making our slow, winding way.  Living hills.  Diamond sky.  A beautiful world where my friend could sleep.  The car keeping us in constant low rumble, and I remembered how he would fold closer to his instrument whenever the notes came strong and rolling and made his chest quiver with their resonance.  For a great time he wandered, knowing nothing but that he was warm and comfortable and safe; then the eyes closed, and his breath came soft.

I Love First Meetings

In many of my stories, the first meeting between main characters is a favorite scene to write and to read.  Here's the first meeting between Evan and Caleb in Dreams We Remember.  Do keep in mind that this has been revised only once.

The quiet footstep slunk by my door each night.  

I left high school at sixteen, forsaking my senior year of in favor of community college.  I then managed to whittle away three entire years, each semester signing up for five classes and proceeding to drop at least two of them after a month or so, throwing in a couple summer sessions because I hated hanging around the house.  Worked at a bike shop, Albertson’s, Starbucks.  Bought myself a beater Taurus to spin girls around in and stuff with old books.  The latter purpose was my guilty hobby that not a soul but mine knew of.
Reading facilitated my education more than any of my classes, which I spat at and passed with honor student ranking.  If I threw up on a piece of paper my teachers adored me; if my heart tried to leak out the scores plummeted.  So I swallowed my instruction with ipecac syrup and tucked Hemingway and Stevenson beneath my pillow.
I grew up in a modest city on California’s Central Coast, so my family visited San Francisco at least once a year.  Often we merely drove through on the way to see relatives in Nevado, but once in a while we’d bustle through Chinatown or attend a Giants’ game.  I loved the city for its architecture and its fog, and my attendance at any state university would please my family.    
At nearly twenty I was fairly old to be a newbie in the Mary Park Residence Hall.  I showed up with a duffle teeming with books and underwear, thrilled to be on my own in a place of learning.  My roommate had been at SFSU since freshman year, and why he didn’t room with a buddy was beyond me.  He certainly knew enough people.
I adjusted well to dorm living.  Pre-made meals suited me perfectly.  I’d never had any trouble making friends, feeling like I had fifty after the first week.
One night in late September I woke to the sound of footsteps.  They crept as inconspicuously as possible, shoelessly, careful step upon careful step.  I thought little of them and went back to sleep.  But the next night they came again: same time, same rhythm.  They came every night for a week, and finally I waited until they had been long past, then slipped on my robe and snuck out.
The hall was empty and I breezed through it carelessly.  I had no idea where the footsteps headed, and peeking into other dorm rooms seemed blatantly unacceptable.  I wondered why I had decided to follow the footsteps; they likely led into the bathroom.  But the same time every night?  And gone so long?  I never heard them return.  When I reached the bathroom I stealthily opened the door and entered.
I knew I had found the owner of the footsteps in the fellow student before me.  He sat on the floor with his back leant against a stall, his eyes closed but clearly not sleeping.
He twitched, hearing something, and opened his eyes.  Upon seeing me he started terribly.
“Good evening,” I said.
He couldn’t look at me, smashing his teeth together.  I think he tried to respond, but it was all he could do to plaster his face with some semblance of composure.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He painfully closed and opened his eyes.  “Couldn’t sleep.”
“You come every night.”
“I can never sleep.”  He stared straight ahead, his jaw bulging in his narrow face.  
“I’m up tonight also.  May I sit with you?”
He took a shaking breath.  “Of course.”  We sat silent.  I thought his eyes would close again, but they only shimmered at the chipped porcelain sinks.  For his weight he was unbelievably tall, his legs extending nearly across the room, and for a young man who had presumably seen the sun within his lifetime, extremely pale.  A jagged, raised scar twisted along the side of his neck, a Lucifer vein writhing through the skin.  He was like one terminally ill, spending his final hours alone in the dark, starved and abandoned, waiting to die.  The scar flourishing as he failed.  A horrible thing: swollen and red.  It could only be an incision, but then the surgeon who put it there should have been stoned. 
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Caleb.”
“Mine’s Evan.”  I took his hand up from his knee.  “You’re frozen!”
He snatched his hand away.  “Then you had best not touch me.”
“I had best share.”  I pulled off my robe and tossed it in his lap.  
He looked even more uncomfortable than before.
“Come on, Caleb!  You went to kindergarten, didn’t you?  I have fleece pajamas and a robe.  You’re multiple inches too long for your pajamas and robeless.  Sharing.”
He thought me insane.  “What do you want?”
“For you to put that on.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re cold and I’m sweating like an idiot.”
His tight shoulders softened a little; he stood and put on the robe.  We sat still and awkward again, but at least in my mind he was a bit more comfortable.
“Did I really say that?”  
He turned to me.
“Did I really say ‘I’m sweating like an idiot?’”
The green eyes actually met mine, and we began to laugh.  His voice had been thin, but laughing lent it new fullness.
“I certainly am making an idiot of myself,” I said.  “In every way I can muster.”
“You’re the idiot?  I’m the one sitting on the bathroom floor at one a.m.”
“But I followed you.  I could get nabbed for something like that.”
He laughed again, then subdued.  “Sorry for waking you.  I try to be quiet.”
“I waited for you to go by.”
“How often do you hear me?”
“Have every night for a week, but only because I listen.”
“You’re the first, thankfully.”
“Do you do this every night?”
He nodded.
“Since when?”
“A month after I started.”
“When was that?”
“Three years ago.”
“You’ve spent every night in the bathroom for three years?”
“Almost.  Not those between semesters, of course.”
“Do you go home for breaks?”
He couldn’t answer a moment, gathering strength for the next round of questions.
“Never mind.  Believe it or not, I don’t actually mean to interrogate you.”
A hollow chuckle accompanied his glance.  “This is not interrogation.  I spend summers in various cheap hotels.  FAFSA likes me so even my dorm fees are covered; I save up to pay for summer accommodations.”
“That sounds better than going home.  Maybe you can show me the best places.”
He smiled.  “Gladly.  Thanks for the robe.”
“Don’t mention it.  I feel smarter without it.”
Another laugh enlivened his frame.  “We can go back to the rooms now.  You’re falling asleep.”
“Am I?”
“Your eyes are heavy.”
“But you’ll stay all night.”
“You know all my habits!  Then just fall asleep here; I’ll wake you in the morning.”
“When do you break for lunch tomorrow?”
“Eleven thirty.”

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.