Nika Harper's Blog, page 2

Relevant Residuals

They didn’t notice it was my picture on the wall.

I had put on sixty pounds since, my hair is unkempt. Really the only thing that remains of my legacy is a wall-sized modeling photo and the name of the restaurant, a place nobody would go to if they weren’t stuck in an airport.

They even sell tee shirts here. Like, what really is the point.

It was a good business move, at a time when my minimal fortune needed to be cultivated and prosper after I stopped getting those sweet checks for an album nobody really remembers anymore. Sure, I’ve had my time in vogue, if you’d call it that, for about a year before I was forgotten. Now it’s just layovers and residuals for me. I’ve been encouraged to take up painting, star in a show or two on daytime TV, anything to keep me relevant. I had publicists, and they worked their asses off. They’re gone now, whether they were shitty or I was unwanted, either way it ended the same. A few investments here and there. Nothing I have to really pay attention to.

I should have gone for the car dealership.

The bar is sticky under my arms, and this margarita is atrocious. Surely it’s $11, served by a dour bartender who had seen better days, and a bored teenager who checks his phone obsessively in his waiter’s kilt thing. Probably sick of my face, of the tee shirts, of the overly-sugared drinks that create snail-streaks on the countertop, wiped away half-heartedly by the patrons just enough to leave a smudge of paper napkin behind.

Who the fuck comes here.

Sometimes one of my songs plays over the tinny speakers, which stutter as they short out like the clacking of an old film reel. It doesn’t make my song sound that much worse. Above all indignities on the warped, crusty menu is the cocktail specials with names like Jonny’s Punch, Jonny-Rita and the most egregious, Mo-Jonny-to. A self-insertion pun that doesn’t work when spelled, and is impossible to pronounce. I wonder if they sell any, or if people just roll their eyes and order a mojito without debasing language or their thirst. It seems like a thing that you have to be drunk already to order properly. Cleveland airport deserves better.

Why Cleveland? Something about affordability. A good opportunity.

My fries are soggy. It’s six p.m. and the place is only half full. I’m flying coach to visit my mother in the hospital. Maybe I should bring her a tee shirt.

I could change this place if I wanted, but then I would have to care. Or, I’d have to prove that me and this little restaurant didn’t age the same way. Sometimes it’s easier to sip your syrupy margarita and wait for your next flight out of here.

I’ve been saving my words for you.

I don’t know how to say goodbye, and I thought I’d be better at it for having so much advanced warning. We knew, we’re smarter than that, and there’s only so much fighting before it starts to kill all of us, not just you. But I can’t talk about you without crying, and I get very tired of it. Three months should make the tears go away, I think. It should make the words come back.
I’m going to throw them at you instead. Maybe some will come out this time.
And I miss you. That will never change.

In the hardest part of my life, I couldn’t handle it. I released it all on you, the details, the feverish ramblings and self-snapshots of a trying time. I unleashed all my horror, because I couldn’t at the time, it all built up as I sorted through a destroyed house that used to be a promise of a better life for my family, broken hope painted into the walls and unfinished windowsills, the way we all let ourselves fall apart and I faced it, alone, with no phones and no internet and barely working lighting fixtures. I told you things I think I’ve forgotten by now… but I remember the feeling of it.
I remember you telling me to stop. It was too much for you.
Well it was too much for everyone, I couldn’t tell a soul, they all hushed me in fear of their own hearts breaking, but mine stayed broken.

She tells me you saved it, the whole conversation, and named it simply “sad.”
I don’t know what to think about that, and I can’t ask you.

The day we sat at our desks and you took a phone call, but it was quiet and short and serious. You didn’t look at me, already breaking down. “He killed himself!” All I could do was hold you as you fell apart, hoping my disintegration next to yours would keep us both salvageable.

You found me in the closet once, hiding in the dark, trembling with anxiety. You shut the door, because I asked you to. You trusted me to figure out what I needed. You supported me when I dropped classes, quit jobs, tried to find a path I was happy to take. You helped me move out, you let me move on when I needed to go. We buried our romance beneath the branches of a lifelong friendship, nourished the roots with our understanding that being soul mates is a lot more than fighting about dinner or sex.

I didn’t worry about you as much as I should, but I’ve always been selfish.

You said I threw chicken at you.
For the record, I don’t think I did that.

I miss your hugs. You were good at expressing that you cared with a hug, even if there wasn’t a good way to do it in words.

I looked at the city lights and felt your ash grit under my fingernails.
And I miss you. That will never change.

Timelost

I feel like I have thirty minutes to sum up everything I know. It’s not that the plane is going to crash or the world will meet its end, or even that everything or anything at all will change. It won’t. Things will go on just as they always do, this deadline is arbitrary and frustrating, because it’s self-created and imposed. It’s me trying to make up for lost time, which as we know, is a commodity which only goes one way. You cannot have extra of it. You can only not have enough.

I do not recount these lost times as a failure, but I worry that I must document them, write them in a ledger to show how far into the red I am. What has come out of this narrow, driving line. I could start with all the way at the beginning of the year, but with all the empty minutes and hours in the way, I doubt I can remember that far. I shall start wherever I find closest and journey onward.
The first product of my empty hours was a letter.
I could have written and delivered it, wishing a happy holiday (whichever one was nearest at the time) or scrounging up aspects of my life to dress up, emblazon and be proud of, but the curtain of fallen seconds prevented me from seeing those noteworthy accomplishments and I swore only to write when I had something worth saying. The letter was never written, and the recipient is now too late to receive it. That time is gone.

I could also note the times lost to ennui and drink, for they were many and stretched on, creating only double their length with how little I enjoyed them. Misery passes slowly, as does the time when you have an itch that begs to be nursed, the agony of every moment until satisfaction. THe itch went away without being scratched, my malaise faded without being cured, the spirits evaporated from my pores without my respite. As is the way, the itch returns.

Financing was always a bother, but never so much as current when accounts were overdrawn or underpaid, and I’d no recollection of it. THe sheer day escaped me, and the debts knocked down my (often uninhabited) hall, but it was forgetfulness that caused the pain so. I could often find the funds, but my distraction was what forced the collectors’ ire. I was irreliable. It has become my foremost trait.

In a final thought, I dare the second most tempestuous in its loss was when I failed to smile. Long we held eyes, on an unseasonably beautiful afternoon when I was unseasonably present outdoors. I had grown apprehensive of my grim pallor, it belied a truth I was not yet to face, that I was wasting away. My shoulders shook with a cloak of ghosted seconds and my ankles dragged, shackled by the weight of dead days. Still I looked up, through the paths of beetles and bees in a garden so sweet that the air could become nectar, and there I saw you.
If I looked poorly, you looked conversely wonderful. My paleness was that of cobwebs and bleached shadow, yours was the fullness of milk. There was such life in you, and still is I have little doubt.
Perhaps you saw the gravestones in my lashes, the wind-whipped tremor in my voice. You stared on, as did I, as did we, locked in our few paltry instants together.
And I did not smile.

It is merely the end of a year, another time to raise a glass to all that is gone and shall come anew, but I raise a pen in my ledger of failures that nothing will change, no stroke of midnight can twist my direction, no spirit may veer my soul. I am shouldering vast forces and lost smiles. THe new day ahead is built on the ruined structures of those from before.
And I stumble with them.

The Lord and Lady Everly

Everything gleamed. The floor, the punch bowls, the gowns, the smiles of guests. The invitation must have read to wear gilded clothing because the ballroom was full of whites and silvers and golds and shiny wheat colors that spread like sunlight, like candle flames heating the room with laughter and tinkling wine glasses. It was a banquet and ball for the evermost of celebrations: Lord Everly’s entrance into society. He was of age, of status, and of perfect regard amongst the partygoers and other Lordships. The list of society entrants was long, and Everly was of age to officially be one of them; To host his own gatherings, speak to the elders, and finally begin his first family, the latter of which was much desired by the revelers. It was well known that Lord Everly’s devotion was a treat of which none had yet indulged.

Saiah entered the event dressed in red velvet and gold.
She didn’t intend to stand out, but if that was the result, she was gracious.
She had a plan. It was hard to capture the attention of the most popular person in the room, much less lead them away, but she was never one for subtlety nor failure. The elaborate dress worked in her favor just as his popularity did; On this night, they would all see Lord Everly leave the room with her.
Rumour would obscure the true purpose of the talk, and their absence.

They were not strangers, the ballroom was vast yet familiar. It would be rare to see a face unknown in the crowd that had grown up along the same high walls, in the same protective yards, in the same dinner parties since their youth. Saiah curtsied and swept through the dancers with learned grace, smiled at some and winked at others. Lord Everly was ever on the elbow of another admirer, his hair so light and golden it fit the decor; He’d have blended right in if he didn’t shine the brightest of the room. He always did shine so brightly. A lovely, soft-spoken, warm and caring character who supported and nurtured and loved all through his youth. It was easy to love such purity, and the ballroom was full of that love for him.
Saiah was drawn to it.
“May I ask you to a dance?” she murmured, her gold-gloved hand sliding down his arm, extricating it from a debutante’s gentle grip.
Everly’s look of surprise was replaced with a smile, “Yes of course, my dear, I admit your splendor—”
“I suppose I don’t conform with the fashion of the group,” she said, guiding him around in a waltz as harp music chimed at their elbows. He held her gaze, hers sharp and his buttery. The evening was not yet half over, so she did not push too hard. “I have a glorious gift for you,” she said, “to celebrate your ascension. I will find you later.”
Saiah left his arm, struck still in the dance floor only a moment before someone else was at his side. She smiled, and waited, she was very good at both.

Through much wine and many words, the night kept on, not quite at its decline. Saiah waited for the apex, the time of greatest revelry before she caught Everly again, swaying him to face her out of the circle of admirers hanging on his words.
“Your present,” she asked, “you haven’t forgotten?”
“Not in the least, my lady.”
“I’ll show you now. Won’t take but a moment.” If Everly protested, none heard, for her arm entwined with his and whisked him away in a regal parade. He nodded and smiled to those he passed, who all looked on at the striking woman in the deep red gown, and he who shined brightest.

It was easy to retrace her steps, the manor was so large that when Saiah had arrived earlier, barely anyone had noticed in the rush of preparation. There was no reason to exclude her from anywhere but the working areas, for she was surely not of that caliber and would be promptly led to places of entertainment for guests. She was a guest, a celebrated child friend of the new Lord Everly and his bounteous friendship. There were few places she could not walk, even as a mere visitor to the home.
And her elbow led Everly directly to one of those places.

“Lady Saiah, you surely spoil me with such an effort,” he prattled at her elbow, sweet and genuine like the bleating of a lamb. She smiled but did not engage in his discussion, nor as he mentioned what a wondrous time this night had been and how happy he was to be on his next steps of youthful life, she nodded and acted along as their measured steps echoed in increasingly deserted pathways in his manor. Everly’s curiosity was not abated, he spoke of them as children, running every which way and pestering the maids by trespassing into forbidden areas that ended up being full of boring nonsense. But it felt fun just to be there. Her smile grew at this, their memories were beautiful ones, little Lords and Ladies all daring each other to enter wine cellars and push over items in the armour rooms. They learned to go where they weren’t allowed. Perhaps they never grew out of that trait, because they were headed right toward somewhere that would be considered off-limits, mostly.

Trophy rooms were silly things. Cleaned once a month, visited far less unless you had something to hide. Saiah had nothing to hide and everything to show, as she led Everly into the gleaming room full of artifacts, awards, objects of priceless worth. His fingers tensed in her golden gloved hand, as though worried of revealing a secret, which she did and had.
The room and its corridors were empty.
“What is this present you have?” he said, his breath tinged honey-like with wine and affection, his movements sluggish as he looked around. They were alone.
“It’s here,” Saiah motioned to an intricate bowl, carved with leaves and deep recesses. She motioned and nothing more, waiting for him to walk closer. He did not.
“…I know that bowl,” Everly said, and his inebriated state was apparent. Saiah did what she could, moving to his back and guiding him closer.
“Look inside.”
“Must I?”
“It’s part of the present,” she whispered in his ear, her arms at his back and waist. He tipped his gaze toward the bowl, its grandiose state only evident from the outside. Within its thick-lipped depths, there lay a single finger.
It was a thumb, pristine, no blood, no torn skin. Sliced clean.

“You know this, I’m sure,” she whispered all the more, purring her thoughts into his ear, “LORD Everly, so eligible, so kind and wondrous. You’d make a fine husband for a fine spouse, and I believe you’d find a fine wife in me.”
“What is this?”
“Your lover’s hand, you know. You’ve held it in this gallery so many times.” Saiah had known of this, the secret dealings of this desired creature and his forbidden love.

Saiah stepped away, dragging on Everly’s shoulder to face her. The light in his hair and his eyes had gone out. He was none brighter than the gallery’s fixtures.
“I will be a fine wife to you,” Saiah said evenly, resplendent. All the light in the room seemed to gravitate to her, “We’ll attend the galas, greet guests and admirers. I am a most charming hostess, a perfect pair we will make. And of course… I say, we WILL make.”
She gestured to the bowl.
“He is safe, your lover, but the choice is yours. Our worlds will connect, our fates sealed. I’ve lived in this mansion for my young life, with you and with our friends and associates. Now I want it to be mine. We will marry within the year, I will inhabit the Queen’s wing of the manor. You are free to do as you like, even to save the young Page you have taken to so kindly.”
Everly’s eyes flicked to the bowl and back.
“It IS your choice. He is safe, and we will marry. I don’t expect you to propose right away, I have time. He has nine fingers left. I have just as many days.”

Saiah swept out of the gallery as the raspy question met her ears.
“Where is he?”

Everly won’t find him, she knew.
A magnificent ring would be on her finger before he would accept another severed digit delivered to him.

Saiah would keep her promises, so long as Everly kept his. Marriage. Children. So many parties she could barely count.
But she COULD count.
After all, the young lover’s toy had oh so many fingers.

Ethically-Sourced

It wasn’t the perfect gambit, but it didn’t have to be. It just had to work, a few times at least, forever at best. It was temporary, so she hoped, so she believed.
And business was going alright so who could complain?

It began to take over a lot of her life, so she cut back her hours at work and spent endless weekends at posh farmers markets and hocking her wares at local-ish artist collectives and places where people will buy ethical soy candles for nineteen bucks each.

She was perpetually scented of patchouli, which was better than other things at least.
Her tiny apartment smelled like all sorts of things, but mostly the patchouli, which was as designed.

So that was five more at the market, three at the couture clothing joint, and a new vegetarian vietnamese place across the bridge that was just comfortably outside of her purview that selling them a pack of ten candles (all lemongrass!) felt safe enough. They were good candles after all! She put a lot of time into them. Maybe she’d keep with it when this whole issue blew over, but she couldn’t imagine keeping up with it for longer than a few months. The mess in the kitchen was reason enough to get fed up.
But the sales were going well, and spaced out, and the police had stopped calling months ago. Besides she was good for another six months at least. No point worrying about the future.

Ten lemongrass soy candles, she had three lying around so just seven more. Not too bad if she was careful.
She’d have to throw out those pans.
Probably move out.
The oven was nearly busted anyway. What a stupid idea. No matter how long she cleaned it, there was that burnt residue of mistakes and frustration. She did much better when she used a hippie crafter’s kiln. They were understanding of her need to self-cremate her “German Shepherd.”
They brought her flowers.
Well, he was German. As for the Shepherd, nobody could say.

The trick was mixing the ashes with the wax, but she’d gotten good at it. The labels (artfully crafted, hand-stamped and proudly Organic) did not mention being vegetarian. It was merely implied.
She would NEVER eat at that vegetarian vietnamese restaurant, for one thing.

Admittedly, it was hard work, and good fun, and the candles smelled great and burned evenly. She nearly had a knack for this stuff. It made offloading the remains a lot easier.
Maybe she would stick with it for a while, her baggie was less than half full and she hummed little songs over the wax pot.
Songs about burning.

The lemongrass candles were a hit with vegan diners. She got an order for twenty more.
Didn’t have to be the perfect gambit, just had to smell nice in the right upstart cafes.

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Substitution

A story written on Twitch.

When she complained about her leg, I assured her it was all going to work.
“It hurts,” she whispered, her breath hitting my ear in gossamer gasps.
“You’ll be whole soon, your leg will be back.” I applied the bandages, a salve to soothe the ache and the burn, and gave her another drink of the tea. It calmed her heart and her breath, she lay quiet for another few hours, enough for the leg to grow accustomed and likewise.

The next time she spoke, it was a cry. I was there with a rag at her forehead, brushing the saline from her eyes, “Shhhh your leg is doing well.” It was. It was lively on her knee, wriggling and enjoying the air she breathed, basking in our exhaled whispers.
She fainted, but I waited for her next wishes.

“What is this?” Her words zig-zagged through the steam of the kettle, escaped on the vent in the ceiling like the cruel wind that whipped outside. I wiped her tears again, kissing her jaw and wondering what else ailed her. Her joints creaked in their bandages, and she flexed her elbow, “It’s… it’s…!”
“It’s all happening soon,” I crooned, wetting her scalp and kissing her nose. When the noise was too much I shut the door and used a pillow. And continued to sew her her into shape. It took readily, the stitches melded and rejoiced, finally bound to a form; they sang and danced and I danced with them, in the flickering candlelight as the night wore on. We awaited her next word, her command, we tingled with the anticipation of her needs.

“Water,” was the next cry and water she had, slurped sideways through thick ceramic mugs and hot like her heart, like her limbs, like the air around us. It was a sauna, the inside was the outside, pumping life into the very air and I captured it all for her, for the being she could become.
She stopped speaking after that, the water either having lulled her or letting her rest in her satisfaction, and my work continued, seeing what called out for recovery.

A pinky finger.
A patch on the shoulder.
A long strip of abdomen that felt better when relocated.
The long sigh of skin as it rests and hugs its neighbors. I sighed along with it.

She awoke.
New. But antique. The shudders of pleasure wracked her form but more tea calmed it all, it was so much to take in, yet so much more to do.

The waxen lipstick displaced her mouth for but a moment, and kept them strong for the unveiling.
Her lungs were her own, her throat was a brocade of those I’d loved before, whose lacy forms became a mantle to display. A quilt of love, a hungering canvas.

When she awoke, she was Everything.
“It hurts,” she whined, and my tea made everything quiet. The twitching, the excitement, it soothed the moments before the project was complete. That’s the hard part, you know. Finding a suitable carrier. I’d seen them all, their nervous endings electric, their spasms of anticipation. I knew I had done right. Everything said so.
Now, she was Everything.

I waited for the next breath…..

“Stop….”

But I have so much to show you.
Have you ever been more beautiful than with her calves? Her miracle, musical hands?
Have you ever known such benevolence as what these shoulders have wrought?

Have you ever been truly kissed, with lips such as these?

And I lean down to match my mouth against hers, and what is not hers anymore. The pucker of a princess, the pout of a priest. They whisper prayers, quiet things to me, thanking me for freeing them into the world where they can say whatever they want after so long of just yearning. And she?
She is the heart.
She is the soul.
But she might not be the body. That’s up to her.

As I cradle her perfected being, rubbing salve on the gashes and stitches, she utters:
“Please, release me….”

But I know the lips that form her request.
And they love me, as they love themselves.
They love her too.

Don’t worry.
You’re okay here, you’re healthy.
Everyone here will tell you so.

Life in the Face of Life

He got distracted in rooms with TVs, or bars that were always watching sports. Somehow it always cut in.
People bringing their “family” to the big game, news reports cutting into commercials that were ALWAYS top billing, new ways to humanize and dehumanize something that could be classified as neither. He was a songwriter, he needed material to write on napkins after his third beer, but it seemed the craze was taking all the airwaves.
My Bloodied Valentine
Old Zomb, New Tricks
‘Til Undeath Do Us Part

It was not only on the news, but there were commercials, daytime TV, songs that spoke about it. None of it was flattering. When the dead stopped dying, it became a pop sensation. A trend, a meme, a movement. There were the anti-zombie protesters, the Pro-Undead Rights Union, and mostly the entertainment industry that had grasped the first new thing and ground it into the back of all our minds, until the subject was laughter instead of understanding.

'Un-Dad,’ the weeknight sitcom that had a real walker blindly stumbling around his family home, swapped out with a guy in a zombie suit when they needed the laugh-track-cued look of frustration and annoyance. The ultimate mindless comedy for the mindless viewers who would rather giggle at something than grasp its weight. Hey, bring Late Uncle Marvin in here! He’d get a kick out of this!

Treating the dead as pets was inhuman.

Treating the dead as human was ignorant.

Treating the issue as entertainment was abhorrent.

Much as he tried to bring his mind back to a world of living and dead being binary and clean, he couldn’t. THe guitar strings under his fingers, the keys on the piano, they all whined about something he found repugnant and confusing: THe whole world thought this situation was amusing.
Not miraculous.
Not terrifying.
Not indicative of a global paradigm shift.
They thought it was novelty.

When the health department had to study whether having undead in the workforce passed hygiene code, when labor unions were split on whether zombies had rights, when local governments determined whether walkers counted as a passenger in the carpool lane or as a dependent on tax forms, the American populace didn’t give a whit for as large as it could be exploited, or laughed at, or if their clothes were cheaper if made by zombie hands.

Wars were brewing over sacrilegious ideals, rights movements were creating uprisings and violence around the world, but Facebook had post after post of
Ha
Ha
Ha
As though death was a new classification of circus animal retardation to be mocked or shamed or used for their own ends.

Picking up a guitar again, his head whirred with lyrics about feelings, and experiences, and the time his mind sickly perceived as “The Old Days.” But those all felt like folk music for a deaf audience, who wanted to hear about whether zombies could fuck or whether their car wash would be cheaper if dead people held the rags.
He wanted to sing about love without mentioning a heartbeat.
He wanted to cry about loss without a line about muzzles.
He wanted people to see art without the new, nylon manufactured veil applying mortality to their every experience.
But the songs stopped coming out, because he was just as stuck as they all were.

Baby Fox and Old Crow

http://www.dafont.com/baby-fox.font

The Old Crow looked at the Baby Fox from the safety of the tree. Its ears were too big for its head, and its eyes saw everything.
“Hello little thing,” the Old Crow cawwed down.
“I’m not little,” it replied, “I’m a fox. You just think I’m little because I made you think so.” It was precocious, shaking its tail and bouncing with every word.
“You are little for a fox. Little can also mean young.”
“I’m not young, I’m much older than my brothers and sisters who aren’t born yet.” Another little bounce, another ruffle. The ears perked and turned around at every sound, listening to everything it could.

Foxes were tricksters, with mischief always on their minds. The Old Crow had never seen a baby one, never allowed close enough to the nest to see the kits. This one was ruddy like clay and bright as a sunbeam. It spoke in circles already, but without the wisdom or motive of the older foxes.
Baby Fox fidgeted, “Are you a crow?”
“I am an Old Crow.”
“I am older than you,” the fox said, yipping with joy.
“Why is that?” the Old Crow asked patiently.
“I have been a fox longer than you have ever been a fox. I am many moons older than you in fox-time.” Foxes always find a way to be right. The bird said nothing, raising its head to look in the distance.
“Don’t you think I’m older than you?”
“You are a fox, whatever you say must be true.”
“Yes!” and the Baby Fox ran in circles after its tail, “We are hunters of the truth! I caught five truths in a row this morning!”
“What did you do with them, Baby Fox?”
“I let them go, except one, where I kept it and gave it back to you just now.” Its little eyes blinked fast in the dust it had whipped up.

“What do you know of crows?” asked the elder bird, alone on the tree high out of the way.
“You can fly. And you are black and envious of our colors.”
“Why are we envious of your red and white hair?”
“Because you pick at our tails to take it away,” the Baby Fox laughed, “and if you were red like the ground, you could live down here with us. Because you are black, you must live in the trees away from our kind.”
“Foxes can also be in trees,” the Old Crow mused.
“Only when the ground grows dull, and the truths have run to high places.” It sniffed a cactus on one side, a stick of scrub on the other. “I know when the world was made.”
“Baby Fox, please tell me. When was the world made?”
“When I was born, because this is all my world, a place for me to explore and jump and yip at the sun.” It yipped quickly for good measure, and focused its attention on the bird in the tree again. “You should come down here,” the Baby Fox said, “to see how I see things, so you can be right too.”
But the Old Crow was old because it did not fall for tricks. “I like where I am sitting, so that I may see all at once.”
“That is silly,” the Baby Fox wrinkled its nose, “if the world was meant to be seen from far away, I would have been born with wings so I could see it. The only way to see the world is up close.”
“I do sometimes come down to the ground,” the bird admitted, “when I am hungry.”
“What do you eat?” the kit asked, sniffing the air for signs of delicious things.
“Sometimes berries or seeds, sometimes small insects or big ones if I am lucky.”
“That is silly,” the Baby Fox said again, “seeds are not for eating. They are for making new grasses and trees.”
“Sometimes they can also make Old Crows. You might want to try one some day, little Fox.”
“Foxes do not eat seeds,” it said from its haunches, proudly. “Do you know what foxes eat?”
“I do,” said the Old Crow carefully.
“What is it?” the Baby Fox said, ears twitching.
“Not crows,” the Old Crow said as it took flight, out of the reach of an adult fox that had been creeping too close to the tree.

“Farewell, Baby Fox,” it said from the sky, casting a twin of itself across the clay ground, “You are an older fox than I, but I am an older trickster than you.”

The Touch of You for All of Me

She was made for a different time. Where cups were silver and eyes were everything. Yes, she had those eyes, and a pout that could sway the angels and she practiced it just so.
Enough that her lips never bent into rude shapes when curving around her words, yes she practiced.
Her arms floated, her voice lilted, her grace flowed just right. She entered a room and it was like an older world, that was her, that was her always. All dramatic pauses, yearning hearts, trailing gowns.

All that and nothing else.
For she had no rooms to enter, no-one invited her. Her voice was whiny, her demeanor sniffled, she never seemed like a real person and it bothered people.
Oh, but she wasn’t real! She was larger than life! The sparkle in her eyes could quell exotic landscapes, the sound of her sigh could bring armies to their knees! And it had, in its own way, it had. The lyricism of her plight became writ into the story, the tale of what it was to be her, tortured and alone, a pariah of beauty and culture beyond the knowledge of the common folk who surrounded her tower.
She stayed locked up, right as they wanted her, well away from them so they could not be burnt by her brightness, and she coiffed her hair elegantly to the side and placed wide pink headphones over her ears.

She would not stir for the knock at the door, the calls for dinner. Eventually the traitors would leave her the scraps, would bring a plate of a chilled meal to her tableside as she drowned in this imprisonment. A warm meal would mean sacrificing all she knew to be like them, uncouth and callous. Better to suffer the indignities of poor hospitality than sink to the level of those who wish you away.

Lady Adrianna would never stand for it.

Here, in this land that welcomed her, she had troops to command! Full armies willing to fight for their heroine, the star in their sky. Her twinkling eye befitted on every crest and shield, to urge the champions with the promise of love. Wanton hearts in every chat window that trickled her way, whispers of adoration and romance in each diplomatic reverie. She drew in the suave LordAlbany, the reticent xNytrouSx and not least, the murderous archvillain of the lands, BL4nkSL8. They kissed her hand, bowed to her magnificence and she commended theirs, an environment of respect and long, wistful discussions through the night.

If they ever asked for a photograph, she would send a beautiful edit of her eye in the dark, sparkling and luminous as they would surely see it. Oh, to wear those glamorous gowns as armies crashed against the walls, oh to be hand in hand with a generous lord who came deftly to her aid!

To have warm meals and loving glances, and party invites and signed yearbooks. Where ambrosia is shared in a temperate fountain garden, where the boys look at you without laughing. A world that was meant for her, a diva of breathy sensuality, a world into which she meant anything.
Anything at all.

Another story inspired by The Twilight Zone episode, “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine.”

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The Trail to Greatness

As a pioneer woman, you expect to die.

There’s nothing you offer but support, a kind word, a bosom and a… well. Something else. A means of making others, perhaps.

When I hear of the women who were shocked in their beds, confused that they were disposed of, well. They didn’t sign the same agreement as I did. They thought they were above, something of God. I know much of God. I know he doesn’t love us unless he needs to.

I love God just the same, but I needn’t cry that he didn’t treat me or mine own with affection.

I took up this path with a pale face and a cross around my neck, and I believe. I believe in my deepest of hearts, reserved wholly for Him, that I can make child and become better, that I can move on and do something special. But if I have learned anything in my world, it is that I am naught but vessel for greatness. Not its hero, nor carrier.

The world grows tough around us and we all shiver for warmth, but do not question He who brings us. In time, He and he are melded, for we refer to their judgment as the same. Our captain, our chief on this road knows the way. Perhaps he speaks the Lord better than we ever could. I speak to God, my God, and I hear the same echoes of my pleas. My faith is not diminished: an echo means a door is closed that can be opened. If I did not hear that echo, I’d have nothing at all to help me. To help all of us.

Cold is a factor, but food is too. We hunt and exist, with little knowledge where we are going but I gestate just the same. The boy within me, I will call him Gabriel, and I know he is a boy just as I know My Lord. He will be strong and take our name further than we may ever grow it. But I do not say this to my husband, for he is ground down from decisions and choice. I take him unto me to make our journey better, clearer, but I fear that in his distant eyes even as we create new life, that he sees naught but the trail, and I see naught but the Lord.

I am well on, unable to care. The spring freshness hits our welcome faces and we rejoice, what of us who are left, and camp is full of careful revelry and the relief of being outside a wagon. How far do we have to go? Well the sky is the same over all of us. Perhaps if we look high enough, we are already there. I look up, my belly swollen with child, and I see all of us under God. And I see that he will lead us, and others, under the same sky and under the same caring gaze of our Savior.

The first sigh is just discomfort, but the second sigh is more.

We have not reached that land and yet I am ready to birth my first child, Gabriel of the Heavens, into this world. And the pace of the lingering caravan will not stop for me.

By the third, fourth, and innumerable constrictions, I am on my back with blankets around me, many ladies whose hands find mine and squeeze but whether they know, they do NOT know, they CANNOT know what I am feeling.

Gabriel is a precocious one, who makes himself from me in a manner I find deliberated because HE. SHOULD. BE. HERE. NOW.

Already.

The child of our Lord would not make us suffer so

And I often cry to him, in this bumpiest of carriages seeking hope that Gabriel, mine son, and I the mother, will find peace so soon, as the devil whispers in my ear if this is worth it and if I would rather give up.

I cannot give up but O Lord, tell me there is something worth fighting, worth giving–

They say it is over and I hear a cry, my little Gabriel whose connection to me is severed and I lay with him on my breast, panting and awaiting exhausted sleep.

He is here, and my task is done.

They tell me it is not done, there is so much more to do. These people tell me to hold him in my arms, but the Lord does not tell me so. I see a light, a warm beautiful lightness that overtakes us. I hear my child crying and I smile, my purpose fulfilled, my gift given. Gabriel will go on to see us to this land.

I have done all I can to protect us all and for the first time, in the cloak of God’s infinite kindness, I rest.

American pioneers didn’t have a good time heading out West, the devout among them.

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