Oct. 24, 2009 - One Has to Wonder...
First sentences are always the worst. You sit and stare down at the happy little keyboard grinning up at you; you crack your knuckles and then instantly regret it; your head spins because there is so much seething around inside of you, trying to get out and prove something to all those people who innocently stumbled upon your bit of cyber-territory...and then horror swells up and conquers every other reeling emotion because you have come to a very dangerous conclusion: you have absolutely no idea how to start your post out. This is very often the case with me. I know what I want to say, I can't wait to say it, and then I traipse off disappointed because the first sentence simply refused me. Tragic, no? Heh. In my opinion, people should start their blogposts backwards and work their way to the beginning. Think Alice-In-Wonderland-Format; someone should copyright that and put it to good use.
It's sad how many people bypass God's fulfillment in the process of chasing after their ridiculous ideals. If we are so dead-set on reaching our own man-made goals, why do we strut around claiming to be a vessel for God's perfect plan? We can't see His urgings through the murk of our own standards! We make plans, we ignore open doors because we are still trying to tug some other door open by ourselves, we put all our effort into what we want to focus on rather than what God is whispering for us to do, to think, to become. We fail to reach our insane goals and then beat ourlseves up because arrogance snarls into our ears, "You just aren't good enough. What a terrible person you are! Stop trying, it's no use." Then we pay attention to the Spirit of God, the quiet presence that has been there all along, and we come to realize who we are and who we can become through God's mighty hand. Arrogance and despair literally run screaming. In their place surges joy, purpose, self-worth; life suddenly snaps into a fresh perspective. This is sort of what has been going on with me during this long, sad elusivity. The only way to become filled with God is to empty yourself of yourself. Sound easy? A divine smack-down is perhaps the hardest thing we can go through because as piddling little humans, we are forever straying from God's will to find a reality outside of His absolute truths. We want to rule our own existence, be the lord of our own lives. Big mistake, peoples. Base nature takes you down a shadowed path and danger lurks at every bend. Don't keep convincing yourself that you'll be alright, that a little sin is okay, that God's grace is sufficient for any rotten thing you might do in the meanwhile. "Oh, He'll forgive me because He's so good and anyway, I'm not that bad of a person. *nervous laughter* Right, guys?" [insert chirping crickets] In my personal experience, this is too often the little game we play with ourselves. Pretty sad, huh?
Now, dear Reader leans back in their chair and peer skeptically at the computer screen, wondering why this strange person always charges into her bit of cyberspace like this, ranting and railing about this that 'n the other. Wanna know why? I cannot contain it. If God has given you something to say, SAY IT. Don't hide your light just because you fear sounding like an idiot or making a fool of yourself. Yes, random person, I am talking to YOU.
*contented sigh* Now that I have that said, here's what's been happenin'.
Our internet upstairs has been turned off, and I must admit to feeling very...unshackled. I was throwing the wrong impressions of myself out to total strangers, putting too much of my energy into the wrong things. Now that I have stepped back to see what I'd been missing this past year, everything I'd let slip and all those convictions that had gotten weaker instead of stronger, I am thankful for the experience, hard a lesson as it was to learn. I feel more capable of facing other things, having that difficult time under my belt. Not continually being on the internet has allowed me to spend more time with my precious family, throw myself into my beloved writing with a new fervor, consider options for new dreams that I would never have thought about otherwise. I am sitting cross-legged in Momsie's big stuffed rocking chair, typing on her laptop and feeling a giggling autumn breeze tickle the back of my neck from the open window. 'Glad' is playing and we're having cold pizza for lunch. Life is good, no?
The week before last, we were blessed with the crazy opportunity of going on a weeklong vacation to Orlando, Florida. Dadsy had a business trip with the company he worked with, and financial resources were such that we were able to get five day tickets to all the Disney theme parks. Bewildered at the mere size and bravely facing the horrendous waiting lines and 90-degree weather, Momsie and the Girls and I bashed around every inch of every park [exlcuding Animal Kingdom, since we have a zoo somewhere nearby our own house] and had the time of our lives. Thankfully, we had a master plan copied from a guide to the parks we had purchased several weeks in advance, and were able to avoid most of the crushing crowds and general lost-ness. Being natural tourists and favoring wild laughter on the rollercoasters as opposed to terrified shrieking, we did almost everything there was to do. Dadsy got a half-day ticket on Friday, the last day we were there, and we ended our vacation with a kick, roaming around Magic Kingdom at night while the fireworks popped over our heads, feasting on crazy-big roasted turkey legs and slushies [!!!], unable to contain our smiles. I even had coffee MWAHAHAHA okay sorry. It was so much fun! Momsie took a ton of pictures, almost 300 if I'm not mistaken. On Saturday, however, we were spent and decided to brave the long road from Orlando to our tiny-town 11 hours away, on the same day. Stopping at a gas station in Georgia, we were startled to find the temps dropped down into the 40s! Talk about shock! It was freezing when we finally got home at 2:15 in the morning and we all developed sore throats and coughs. I don't care; it was worth it. This past week, we waded through school despite our maladies, and actually did very well all things considered. I was informed that I am now one-fourth of the way through my entire school year. The weather in our absence had tossed all our surrounding woods into a fair miasma of autumnal colors and the temps have remained around a comfy 70s.
Several noteworthy events have occured since my most recent, rather sad post. If you find any of this a repeat, rest assured that this coverage is much more positive than the information found in its predecessor.
For starters, I was admitted into a traveling theatre troup at the local college called the Jack Tale Players. We act out the folk tales of the Appalachians, most of the scripts written by our director who also happens to be a Ph.D. in theatre, and we perform them at schools, churches, libraries and folk festivals. Sofar we've had two performances that went very well. The work is rewarding because I love performing, and the Girls like hearing me rattle about the rehearsals. I recently got somewhat of a stunning piece of news; the director wants me to play the main character, Jack. *squeak* Jack has a lot of lines. *another squeak* I dearly hope my role won't be switched with someone else at the last moment, but nevertheless, Momsie said that the practice of memorization is never wasted. I have been plunking away at the lines all week and confidence has only now descended. Even if something happens and I can't play Jack, it was glorious fun grappling with the role at the time. I was basically given around three minutes during that rehearsal to learn the first part and though I fumbled quite a bit, the part is delicious to wrap one's mind around and I enjoyed myself greatly.
The library has an annual speech class and guess who's joining it. Yours truly, facing the 'firing squad of audience eyeballs'. The two classes I have sofar attended have gone well, much better than last year, and I was even asked to be the big cheese for the most recent one. They called me ''Madam Toastmaster.' Toastmaster's Speechcraft...I wonder how in the world they came up with that title. What does toast have to do with public speaking? Something to think about.
It's hard to explain this next bit because it envelops so much of my thought. You might recall me speaking about my novelinprogress, 'Wizard', from the recent posts. Well, dear Reader, I finished my beloved novel yesterday. 130K in under four months, bigger than any other novel I've attempted sofar. It was so strange, typing the epilogue to the end, because that book has literally been my consumption ever since I started it back in July. I woke up thinking about it, I went to bed worrying over it, I dreamt about it and filled page after page of my notebooks with things I had to convey, phrases that sounded purty, mental images that whole chapters centered around. The material was probably the hardest and most bittersweet I've had to bang out ever since I began writing around five years ago. But I think finishing my precious novel gave me a sensation of quiet triumph. I allowed God to guide it and it became a defiance against other books in its genre, other darker temptations that have recently tried to pull my writing into an evil rut. I literally could not stop writing as I neared the end; I hurried through everything else so that I could go and write, and I would lock myself up in my bedroom for hours, completing sometimes over 6K in one afternoon. The victory of finishing it has given me joy, but my heart was physically aching when I finally packed Pussy Willow [my laptop] away. So much of my soul has gone into 'Wizard', and now that it's finished, it's like '...what now? ' It felt so strange, not having another chapter to mess with this morning. I don't regret writing a word of it, though. Everything held conviction and a manifestation of my own struggles during the time of the writing. I see now however that the title of the book is actually contradictory to several remarks my kids [characters] made in it. The title isn't wrong but it's not straightforward and immediately gives people the wrong impression of its content. I believe that, should my novel ever be published [*smirks*], it would have to bear another title despite my incredulity regarding it being called anything else.
The answer to my borderline remorseness over the lack of something to write will, hopefully, be amended by NaNoWriMo. Yup, I'm still going to seal my doom *coughs* uh, I mean attempt it. Considering I have been known to bang out 9K in a single day, NaNo should be small potatoes. As far as I know, the book for November is about a very dear character I have had almost ever since I began writing, Saffron [stop laughing at his name, I refuse to change it] and his history, from sometime around his preteen years up to present day. He was abused as a child, ran off into the inner city and joined a bloodthirsty gang that preyed upon the fading light of sidewalk ministries and street preachers, got fed up with his existence to the point of suicide and then experienced God in a very powerful way. The events preceeding his conversion draw a very thin parellel between the conversion of Paul; I think Saffron was a bystander to the violence of his gang towards some preacher or something. The basis of the novel is mainly about his gentle yearning for a delicate young woman and her protective father, the willingless Saffron has to improve his life in hopes of proving the depth of his love to the young woman, their tender courtship and eventual marriage after the woman's father gives his consent, and then the struggles the new couple face after their decision to start an outreach center for the 'scum of the asphalt' while being oppressed by the consequences of Saffron's life-changing decision to become the victim of those he used to encourage, the persecuted rather than the one doing the persecuting. The novel reaches through a ton of material and I am insanely excited to write it; Saffron, who appeared in several previous works of mine which have also undergone some changes, is a multi-layered character with a quiet strength about his faith. Since the novel covers so much time, I may find myself having to do that annoying thing we authors so often resort to: 'So'nSo Years Later'. Gah! Just when I have gotten used to describing almost every moment of every day! *grins* But the novel will be powerful, I hope, and I am eager to see where God leads me with it.
Good grief, this post is entirely too long. It should last you until I bombard you again. Go and have a laughing fit.
Aug. 30, 2009 - The General Bumble
I find myself yearning for my Hideaway at the oddest hours of the night. *muses* Sleep has been coming in erratic bursts peppered with vivid dreams, dead-set on making no sense whatsoever, but at least on the weekends I have an excuse to while away the unholy hours by reassuring all you devoted readers [I’m talking to maybe, what? Two, three people here?] that nothing tragically fatal has happened since my last outdated post. *wild grin* If anything, life has improved. I found myself startled into a delicious summer of non-stop writing and tampering with college goals. If all goes well, I am going to take the PSAT in October. I no longer feel called to pursue a degree in English, however. My writing style has morphed into a genre of its own far beyond the fiddling tweaks of a stuffy professor. I won’t sit here and claim that I disregard tidy writing but that to have my precious trashes torn apart when in reality they are the expression of my soul and the tapering of my convictions would physically hurt me! I don’t want it! If I can write a good essay, I don’t feel the need to go further than that as far as ‘formal‘ writings. The genre I have finally thrown my goodies into is called psychoquantum, and to give it a description would sound something like this: A name given to writing dealing in the crossing of parallel realities, the invasion of supernatural influences, the motives behind sin-nature occurrences and the psychological existence of the individual. Sounds pretty perky, huh? Naturally I made it up, but it feels so much more sophisticated to be writing for a genre rather than random spurting. Wouldn’t you agree? *flails*
This summer brought many new experiences, and a solo trip out of state to visit my good friend and dear sister Laura for her birthday was one of such instances. I was able to fly down to their house for a visit extending five whole days! We had a glorious time making brownies and sword-fighting, and being able to hug each other in reality as opposed to meager virtual condolences. I had a beautifully memorable time and simply being with her for any number of days made up for my pre-conceived nervousness about making a connecting flight from another state. *winks*
School has taken many twists and turns in recent weeks. Momsie, as always, has thrown herself into a feverish thoughtfulness about our education; I believe most of it has been worked out thus far. The trick is trying to mesh together what I am learning with what the Girls are learning, and matching the different subjects into a streamlined continuity. Fun, fun. I respect my mother as a true genius for all the care she puts into every single year. I can’t help but wonder if she will have an easier time once I hopefully get admitted into a college? My educational options have somewhat changed; I found several resources in the field of drama and have become wildly infatuated with psychology, spiritual counseling, the study of the human mind and etc. If God so wills it, I may pursue something of that sort.
The Girls continue to amaze me in all their colorful talents. I found myself gaping when Katsy displayed a homemade puffy-sleeved Colonial shirt she had created out of a spare bed sheet. She sees something that looks like it has homemade potential, and she creates it. G.B. has been toning her singing out on the swings and in the shower, but mainly her surprising tendencies lies within her perceptivity. Her mind works in a different way from her impatient friends and one has to look deeply beyond her wild sugar-highs to find a soul mature as someone twice her age.
My dearest Onna and I have decided to co-author a book. Unlike several of my failed attempts at co-authoring, this novel is flowing with an almost alarming speed and promises to be a rich, rewarding venture. It’s been interesting, twisting minds with such a thoughtful person. Rumor has been spreading of us perhaps meeting in reality sometime in the near future. I pray God will work that out into His will for the months ahead, because it would be absolutely thrilling!
The days are moving steadily towards a productive autumn; one can smell chill in the wind. And thank goodness, too! The chiggers and sweltering nights were becoming old hat.
Writing has been, as I stated above, interesting. Several of my smaller works were shot to pieces in my face. Realm, for instance, hit over 54K and died. As of now, and besides the nameless co-authoring with Onna, I am rewriting my novel M’aine and it has been so much more fulfilling to bang out in. My other novel caused a bit of hesitance with me simply because Christian fantasy is so controversial. Momsie possessed the natural grace to listen as I explained my views about ‘magic’ and such. The conversation the two of us had over this, probably my most preciously beloved work, stretched for 2 1/2 hours and she pointed out some things which should be addressed over the course of this book. I am calling it Wizard not because wizardry is looked kindly upon in the writing but it conveys the depth of what the usage of magic could become if channeled in incorrect ways. Meaning, technically, when I think of a wizard I think of someone who uses their magic for their own selfish gain. I have always been a fan of writing in the sense that God created magic, He gives it to His children like He gives gifts of peace or joy. Momsie pointed out that magic is not one of the spiritual fruits mentioned in the Bible, but IF God HAD created magic, it could be regarded as such. I am still smoothing out the obvious kinks which will unavoidably arise in such a project; I probably will be until I finish the novel. But I would not be writing it had I not been called to, had I not been convicted that the events in the novel should take place on the page. I am fair-enough decided in most of the views manifesting themselves in these concepts, but if you have some burning desire to know why I would take up a project like this because it is ‘wrong’ or ‘worldly’, then I will do my best to reply to your concern as I am able to. Please pray for me, that I will be a humble vessel so that God may fill me up with the words He wants me to write.
Writing in general has become more of a glorification of God’s power over Evil by the conflicting forces in my scribbles; I no longer seek out publication as a dire necessity. I find fulfillment by simply writing, and Onna has been somewhat my tech support, reading everything I give to her and providing very encouraging and helpful feedback. In return, I read her amazingly well-written pieces and we continue in a very even two-waying. Laura also found herself reading Wizard upon her own request, which I am grateful to her for.
Since it appears I have no time and often no desire to fervently keep this place updated with everything required of it, I hope to post a couple times every month or so with my poor musings. I have always considered blogging as another form of self-expression as well as an outlet for social ministry. Not implying, of course, than I am some perfect preacher who will redeem your fabricated stupidities, but rather, you may find some sort of enrichment in reading what I think about certain things or at the very least that you will take things into a new sort of consideration, a different angle by which to sit back and grin at the world.
May. 30, 2009 - It is a well known fact that pride is how one views one's self, and vanity is how one is viewed by others. ~ Variation on something Austen said.
Fridays are usually very happy go lucky and pleasant at our house; the Girls and I typically get the bulk of our schoolwork for the week over with so there's not a whole lot to do, and we alternate between Dadsy getting pizza and Momsie making it from scratch [they're both about the same awsumness in the way they taste]. As the Girls and I waited around for Dadsy to come home this evening, we tried all stuffing onto my bed, Katsy and I with books [The Preacher has recently been taken with the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy series, and sofar "Left Behind" has fascinated me] and the CD player cranked up. G.B. came along and decided she wanted to watch a movie. I have a tiny television set and the only VCR player we really use, so I often get booted out of my own room. :-D She started a movie with music which clashed terribly with the Jim Brickman thing I was playing, and we started some sort av weird game as we tried to read, listen to the CD, make sarcastic comments about the movie and focusing on everything at the same time. Not an easy task, dear Reader, I assure you. After that we jumped around downstairs and when we'd eaten supper and after the darkness had fallen into our woods, the Girls and I made our way to the shed we have on the top of the North hill. Inside, it was eerie with the sound of leaves scuttling across the wooden floor and the light of the fading blue sunset light streaming in between the slats in the side of the shed. The Girls and I sat around the table we'd drug up in there, with a little plastic lantern between us, and commented on how weird each other's faces looked in the ghostly light and how deliciously spooky it was, sitting in the darkness in a drafty old shed. It was very inspiring!
Speaking av inspiration, I got sucked into a bad mindset of feeling I had a certain sequence to follow here at the Hideaway, and couldn't post unless I reached that level. Yes, I have a standard here, but my motives had gotten mixed up. I simply don't have the time nor the energy to post a theological sermon every time I come here. This is not in answer to any of your expectations, Reader, but rather a mistake on my part. It's to be simply whatever I feel called to blah blah about that day. People so often either get infatuated with blogging so that it grabs away their time, or they think every single post must fire a thousand thoughtful reflections on the part of the blog's reader. Yes, you want people to come away with something, but you should be coming away with something as well from the experience of writing your posts. Stuff to consider.
Schoolwork has been plugging right along; I finished Latin and science, and have a bit less than three weeks to go with math. In a couple days I'll be starting that reading challenge, which'll be nice because I've been saving a lot of books until the summertime to read. I'd rather be busy during the summertime than have too much time on my hands and be dead bored. Boredom gets turned into foolish or even harmful time-wasting hobbies, and goodness knows we don't want that upon any of us! We made a trip to the library the other day, and I think I have a summer position for volunteer work once every week or so. There's a meeting for new volunteers on the fifth, so hopefully I'll get a more structured view of what's up with that. It'll be a new experience as opposed to the stage productions which I've done for the past two years.
For some reason, I've found myself to be extremely busy. Mainly with writing, which might explain my lack of rambling on my poor widdle blog. *dumps a slushie over IH* I'd mentioned in the most recent post here that I was planning my own NaNoWriMo for the rewrite of FaM, called Realm, and I am indeed doing it. It's been, I guess, more than two weeks now and I have almost 21.5K! So that's going very well. A few days ago was hard pressed regarding inspiration; my musings seem to get shot and then take me by storm. Hopefully this craze of ideas won't leave me hanging somewhere around the middle. I realized the day before starting my NaNo for Realm that Anna and I, and maybe a couple other of the Peoples, are doing this thing from June 20 to July 20 where we write 40K. Unless I can't stand to look at Realm by then, I'm going to continue on with it to reach around 90K. Whoot! There's just so much to convey, so much that needs to be in there, I'm pretty sure that'll all go okay. In other writing news, Anna and I have two more TMCs done, Syd and I posted chapter one of "Last Man Standing" [go read it!] and are doing a Iwriteonechapteroneweek and shewritesthenextthenextweek deal. Not to mention I had a failed attempt at some weird random thing, and a magazine article with a deadline that I'm going to edit and hopefully send in tomorrow. I tend to wait until the last minute if it's something with a deadline. Meh.
Oh, and the Rodents struck my HSB messings-around once again, and messed up Inkstains so bad that it'd freeze up every time I forced the RC there, so I used up the third space on this account for a writing blog, Noir. I'm keeping Inkstains only because I've saved and backed-up so much writing there just in case the RC decides to pull a total crash like it did during last December.
Dear widdle Loomis Tunut continually charms us with how plain adorybuhl she is. *grinz* Today she climbed into an empty Ramen Noodle box and decided that it was an ideal place to play in. We carried the box around and she pawed at us through the plastic. She's also fallen in luve with Momsie's desk chair and sleeps in it for hours. I've never seen a kitten more cute when sleeping, or one so downright Clovisish-crazy when hooting. She keeps us on our toes, that's for sure. >:-D
There was a tag which Syd dumped on top av me; I don't usually do tags anymore but basically my middle and last names are Joy and Armour, I'll be 16 on August fawth, I live in a random state in the Appalachians, I don't know what my favourite state ish but Washington State is high on the list, I have an animal [Loomis, and G.B. has Tootsie Zee Terror Mutt] and one av mah favourite colours is aquamarine. Laura also awarded me with a LotR fan doodad, many thanks to my dear sister!
The weather here was gloriously inspiring; high winds through the leafy green trees, billowing clouds threatening us with rain, lots of shadows once the sunset had melted away. *blissful sigh* That and black cawfee has rectified me for a raw dry cough which has taken too much av a liking to me.
May God bless you, and may His light pierce your darkness!
~PIP~
May. 26, 2009 - Sooo.
As you might have already guessed from the new look of Inkstains, it is no longer my writing blog but rather a place to save old drafts in case the RC decides to hate me and delete them all. I won't be updating here anymore but I won't delete it, because I have a ton of backup drafts and that sort of junketh there. So if Inkstains isn't my writing blog, what is? Noir is under construction, but will soon be up for viewing. You can read an introductory post here, and later I will begin posting my writing: http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/blackasink/
Thank you, and may God bless you!
May. 22, 2009 - Jai Ho
Fascinating it is how the creative juices flow.
I was under the impression a couple days ago that my new novel, "Fire and Moonlight", was simply something wherein I could care less if the wording sounded weird and where I could jolly well have a loose, skeletal, shaky, disjointed plot if I wanted to. *shakes finger at herself* So much for that idea! I was basing that old idea off mere poetry and pretty pictures from my imagination. Writing, for me, is like eating chocolate; the process is not for money or publication, or even for the sake of writing itself, though the last is indeed a very large part of it. It's the beauty of working with the talents God has given us, however rough [in my case] these talents may be. Writing is, for me, also like a battle. I show Evil for what it is instead of ignoring it [you show something for what it is; don't overdo it but make one aware of its depth], or delving in deep with it so that it makes me angry and dark myself. I don't write something "because it needs to be written" or because I am rebellious against pleasant plots [I'm having a blast with the crack novel, my playful "Sundapple" about the Peoples of one of the writing blogs I'm a member of]; I learned my lesson with "M'aine" about dark writing like that. I hate it. I don't let darkness guide my pen, I am God's child and He guides my writing. If I write something, it is because He inspired me for it and because, even if it's very trivial, it's for Him Who gave me the words to write it with. *falls off soapbox*
That said, one now realizes that this section of the post is to be a writing update. Run!
So I'm rewriting FaM, and it's NOTHING like it was. It's much fuller, richer; the geography and history, not to mention the allegory which startled me by popping up in there clear as crystal at times and annoyingly elusive at others, is better grounded now. But, dear Reader, I did not only decide to rewrite FaM new and improved-like, I decided to do a NaNo for it! *weakly tosses confetti* As far as I can recall, I started the rewrite on the 19th., so June 19th. and I should have a full 50K. Unless it decides to stop there, I might take it further.
For various reasons, I am NOT rewriting Heveria. I am going to incorporate characters/elements/junketh into my other works, and I may even go so far as to write a book like it. But it's been so precious to me, and it took so long and is so sentimental, that rewriting it would be, to quote Momsie, like killing it. I just don't feel led to. So I'm not. [The Kids had an interesting episode directly following my breaking the news to a couple of them, they posted a bit of that at RAP]
In other writing news, "Sundapple" is going very well! It's so much fun to ramble about the Peoples with a quirky plot. My main character, however, suddenly turned Renegade. Not against me, against Bethy The Real Person who she was based after! Bethy said that Beth The Character wasn't like herself. *confused grin* But that's okay; for now, she's doing alright.
Anna has been plugging away at TP and we've been holding various WWs earlier to up various wordcounts. Our "Midnight Chronicles" are on hold till I make myself write the next one and she finishes TP so she'll have more time. LMS with Syd is going, but slowly, my fault. The co-A with Laura is even slower but who could weld inspiration as a sword? We can't just go snap and there it is. It has to be sent. Hmph. And no, that is not an excuse, it's not my turn to write in it.
Now that that's over with...
I must be becoming one of those more infrequent blogposters, mainly because when I update here, I'd like to have something of worth to say. This past week Dadsy went and came back safely to/from Chicago on a business trip and we've had sickness in the house, including one day where I hardly got out of bed at all, so schoolwork was interesting this morning. I'm nearly done with science, one-fourth of the way to go through math, and finished with Latin as of today! Whoot whoot! I got a pair of thick-rimmed [Riley Poole!] reading glasses, which I wanted as opposed to needed; I look like such a geek wearing them but hey! They feel nice when I'm writing but I wouldn't use them for reading because I do a lot of it.
Something I was thinking about earlier is perhaps creating an informal writing workshop for any of the younger Inklings or aspiring writers interested. Any suggestions for that? By the way, if Momsie ever got a blog, what sorts of things could she write about on there? We'd been talking about that earlier...advice from veteran bloggers? I have cookies for helpful comments. *grinz*
Why is it that people on commercials, usually the ones selling something, find it necessary to YELL OUT THEIR LINES?! I mean, we have volumes on our remotes, people...
Here are a couple peekchurz to whoever may so desire to look upon them...
You can see a bit of Appalachia there against the sky...
[that's a peachy shurt, not a nasty light pink] 
May God bless you, and may His light pierce your darkness!
~PIP~
May. 12, 2009 - Authoress, seventh installment
That night I awoke with a snort in the middle of the night; thunder was crashing around my shaky little farmhouse, drenching the flat fields of grass and crops surrounding me, hurling warm rain onto my porch. I sighed and rolled over; I closed my eyes but sleep refused to bless me. I laid awake, listening to the thunder, wondering if that squeaking was actually the rocker out on the porch or if I was about to get stabbed in the back by some bloodthirsty maniac who'd broken my front door lock. That notion startled me, so I rolled out of bed and stumbled around in the dark towards the kitchen. The rain was streaming down the glass of my window, and as I sipped some chocolate milk and listened to the crashing and pelting storm around me, I reminded myself to get that lock fixed on the front door. It wasn't exactly broken so much that a little twirp could break in and steal all my English papers or something, but a burly guy with money on his mind could probably crack it open with his bare hands and sneak around my house, chuckling wickedly to himself because I was sound asleep in my nice warm bed, totally oblivious to everything... I should have put being randomly sidetracked on my list of faults to the Authoress. I laughed at myself and finished my cup of chocolate milk, then curled up on the couch, tugging fingers through my matted curls, and stared at the blank blue TV screen. Woohoo, no coverage. Oh well, I hadn't really wanted to waste my brain cells on late-night talk shows and football, or perhaps one of those gory police flicks. I'd practically felt my synapses growing farther and farther apart during some television shows I'd watched in the past. It's ridiculous what people will come up with in their spare time. Another commercial for insurance, because, of course, you're going to get almost killed in a car accident next time you drive; another weight-loss program which doesn't work because, of course, you're a big fat slob; another bad movie, chock full of casual sex and curse words just thrown in for the fun of saying something which sounds threatening. I flicked the TV off with the press of the remote in disgust. Who needs it? Life is depressing enough. Who cares about the President making new taxes or the dozens of people getting shot by some madman? So much for the economy! Perhaps going to England wasn't such a bad idea. I could scope out cheap real estate and set up somewhere in the peaceful green country, where I wouldn't be continually bombarded by stupidity. Heck, am I a snob or what? The rain began to let off several hours after I'd already fallen asleep on the couch. I had the weirdest dream. I dreamed that I was sitting in my regular booth in the little diner, and in walked this ravishing young woman with fiery red hair. She came up to my table, ordered a Coke from the astonished waitress, and then turned to me. Her eyes were greener than grapes. "Hi Cameron," she said. Okay, I thought, so now I'm officially freaked out. I'm having dreams about crazy redheads who know me by name. I didn't even have a redhead in my class. I brushed it off as something random and strange that popped into my head during a restless sleep, and climbed back into my bed. I lay awake for a couple of minutes, watching the moon coming out from behind some dark clouds, throwing its pale silvery light across the rain-spangled yard. The crickets began chirping again, I recalled that it was almost summer break, and I worried right before I drifted off that the Authoress did indeed think me fault-filled. 
May. 12, 2009 - FaM, chapter three, raw draft
Rafe watched as her younger sister pushed open the heavy wooden door to her tower, her high beautifully black tower, and disappeared inside. Rafe heard Asha's footsteps, soft as paws, coming up the spiraling stairway to the high chambers of the black tower, crumbled with age, eaten with vines flowering in the birth of the new year. Rafe turned from her small window, cut directly into the stone of the tower, and flashed a sharp smile at her sister as she quietly came into the circular room. "You were out late," Rafe said. Her voice was surprisingly soft and smooth, like satin. Asha had only felt that shimmery, slippery material once in her life; a fine women, escorted by her three handsome sons, had visited the tiny coastal villages to buy some of the goods for sale in the brightly-colored marketplaces. Yards and yards of fine homespun draped all across bulky wooden stalls, carts filled with freshly-grown and picked vegetables from the seaside farmlands, crates of squawking chickens, everything strewn along the dusty cobblestone streets, piled in the doorways of tall wood and brick houses and small thatch cottages. So often, there would be a beggar, his feet bandaged against the cold cobblestone streets, his hair straggly; perhaps the beggar would be a woman, dragging her young children behind her, faces haggard, a baby squealing in her arms. The smell of freshly-cut grass from the rolling hillside green and the tantalizing scent of meat pies and choking dust hung thick in the air. And always, there was the sharp salt hanging in the atmosphere, coating the market-shoppers' lips, clinging in their hair. Rafe's smooth voice conjured all these memories up in Asha's mind. She kept them there, tucked away, a thousand emotions and sensations, to take out every once and a while and admire. Much of the time spent dwelling within the coastal villages had been pleasant. The years of joy, the calm before the storm, the smile before it faded upon lips parted in a sudden cry. "Time slipped from my mind, sister," Asha murmured, coming in and touching Rafe upon the arm. Rafe's blazing eyes narrowed slightly but she did not shy away from the warm hand. That was good. Asha felt a prickle of affection for her sister nod in her soul. She could not help loving Rafe; Asha had realized many times before that if she herself did not love the dark girl, there would be no one else to. The absence of love was as hopeless as the absence of hope itself. "What are we dwelling here for, my sister?" Asha asked quietly. She strode to the center of the circular stone room, feeling the cold flagstone floor underneath her leathern boots, and sat down at a small wooden table, hacked out from the branches of nearby trees. Asha had made her stool with her own two work-worn hands, and Rafe had created the table on a day slow as the sunset. There had been nothing else to do. There were often days like that in the tower. Time simply passed on. "What do you mean by yours words?" Rafe was staring out the small window once more; the tops of the budding trees, displaying their forthcoming with a raiment of fresh colors, new and alive, climbed up into the darkened sky. Faint streaks of purple still hung above the western horizon, clear silver floated in upon the cool breeze, and far away in the distance, beyond the woods, arose the white-capped mountains like stern apparitions. "This is our home." "Is it?" Asha questioned. "Nothing ever changes. We are wasting away our lives. I have only my cave to bring me joy. Are we not dry of tears, sister? Why can we not emerge from our grief and--" Rafe turned around, a glitter of reproach in her eyes. Asha found herself staring into those eyes; they were such a dark yellow that they seemed black in the shadow Rafe was standing in. Rafe's long black hair showered around her waist; strands of it hung across her sharp pale face. There was a determined set to her jaw which made Asha wondered what her sister thought in the deep places of her mind, what she felt in the secluded areas of her heart. What did she wish for? What did she hope to gain out of her life? Was she unhappy? "Whoever said we were grieving?" The question hung in the air between them. Asha sat upon her small stool, her elbows propped on the crudely-cut table, returning her sister's gaze. "I am not in grief. Neither should you be." "It was so many years ago!" Asha could not help declaring. Rafe stiffened under her black robes. She pushed some hair from her glinting eyes and sighed. "I know that it has been hard, not knowing what there is more to glean from this life," Rafe said quietly. Asha was startled by the emotion in her sister's words. What was this? "We live here at the tower; you have your cave; it is like stealing. I know not who built this tower, for it was not wrought by my own hands. I know not who first cleaned the dead leaves and pushed aside the large rocks in your cave, Asha, for it was not done by your hands. We fled from destruction and pride, and now we are here, doing nothing, living and breathing and never dying. Living and breathing and hoping." Rafe strode to the side of the room where several torches were bracketed to the wall and lit them with the flint she kept hidden away in her dark robes. Asha watched as the pale orange light flooded across Rafe's face. She was surprised to see sorrow in Rafe's expression; she had thought her sister incapable of feeling anything. Anything but darkness. It was like "a balm to her soul", as Rafe had spoken of her darkness with her own mouth. It was an antidote that could not cure her illness. Rafe was ill. In her heart there was something dying and finally she had come to recognize it. "Hoping?" Asha whispered. "What is wrong, Rafe? What have you been hiding from me?" Rafe looked her directly in the eye. "I am not like the others in the village, Asha. I am not like you." Asha felt a smile curve her mouth. "I have always known that. Please, speak words to me that ring with sense in my heart. I do not know all these cryptic things you mutter of day in and night out. If something is troubling you, do not stay your words but speak them to me. I understand more than you acknowledge that I do. I am no longer the foolish child which simply wanted happiness, lusted after peace so that I did not heed your warning. I knew when I saw the fire that you were not like the others, for you knew the village was going to be destroyed that day. I was frightened. I had no idea how you could have foreseen something that would occur in the future, yet you did. I am wiser now, and I long to aid you if you are stumbling." "Stumbling is not the way to put it," Rafe said. She came to sit upon the stool opposite her sister and put her elbows upon the table as well. They now faced each other, looking honestly into each other's eyes. "I am walking. Walking into darkness. I have been every moment since the village burnt to the ground. I did not understand how I knew that the flames were going to suddenly spring up around our precious home, in the marketplace, go sweeping through the alleys..." Rafe stopped and rubbed her forehead. Asha reached out and stroked the long spidery fingers laced with anxiety. "It frightened me as well because I had never harbored such a fascination for the shadows of the night which I kept the night of the fire. You wandered about the woods, watching the outcasts, wishing after their joy. I wandered about the darkness, seeing no joy, trying to give joy to myself through my own means. I found the tower here in the woods one evening when the tears had spilt from my eyes with the force of a waterfall." Asha felt her heart beating slowly faster and faster. She could feel the shuddery anticipation in the air. Something was going to happen and it was something good. "I pushed open the wooden door by my own strength. I went into the darkness and I could feel it penetrating my soul. I breathed in the dust and brushed away the cobwebs. I fashioned torches from the woods and found the means to light them. I...I cannot find the words to explain the way my soul yearned after all that I found here; I fingered the crumbling stairway into these higher levels like a fine lady might finger her grand clothes, newly-pressed; the stone of the tower was cold and black, just as my soul was becoming. Oh yes, sister, everything has a color, everything has life or death hidden inside of itself. If one chases after what one thinks they want instead of conforming to a higher standard, they will soon find themselves becoming whatever it is they admire. This is a dangerous thing. I became dangerous, even to you. There were some days when I was tempted to kill you and I knew I would not feel remorse for the deed. That was how black my soul had become." Asha felt sweat prickle her palms as she stared at Rafe. How open her heart had suddenly become. For this, Asha could accept the way her sister had thought about her in her heart; that had been days past. "I am now changed. You have made me look into myself, and I did not like what I saw. So I am changing. Yet something must happen on the outer as well as within." "What is going to happen, sister?" Asha did not try to smother the eagerness in her voice. Rafe looked at her and smiled. "You are going to depart from this place. I am going to stay behind so that I may fight out the darkness by myself. Perhaps one day we shall meet again and you will hardly recognize me for the woman I have become." Asha felt disappointment and alarm grip her throat until she could hardly croak out her words. "Yet, my sister! was it not I who brought you to realize what must be done in order for you to find joy? What will happen if you are here alone in the tower, in the darkness, and I am not with you? No! I must not leave. I am going to stay here with you and help you fight it..." Asha allowed her burning desires to die upon her lips; Rafe was sadly shaking her head. "This is my own battle. Too long have I granted you should suffer the darkness here with me." Asha was surprised as her sister reached out a thin hand and fondled the side of her face. "Such things are not for one as you. I, too, see in you something different than the others, those in the village who would not heed." "I did not heed your prophecy, either," Asha murmured. A prophecy it must have been. What powers had Rafe found that she should sell them to darkness, and then wage a battle for her soul? "You did not heed because you wanted peace and joy. The hearts of the villagers were ser against me and so they did not heed. They closed their ears against my warnings because they did not wish to hear the truth spoken by someone so different than they." Rafe stopped and bit her lip. Her hand fell away from Asha's face. "Not even our own flesh and blood, the parents once dear to us, acknowledged the simple truth of the flames. Did they?" Asha hated the tears that had begun to spill down her cheeks, but she did not attempt to brush them away. They had to come. "That is what aches the most." "Such things happen. We cannot let it hinder us from living our lives with everything we can; joy and peace, and hope as well. They are within our grasp if we decide to reach for them. I must reach for them myself, I cannot let you do if for me. You have your own discoveries to make. What is power? Is there something greater out there in the shadows and the light that gives us our blessings? Or will it forever be ourselves that must reach within our souls and draw the hidden things from behind our fears? These are but few of the things I must ponder for myself. I know not whether I shall even find the answers. But such is one of the many meanings of life. We are to ask questions and we are to seek out the answers if they are not given to us with clarity. I am giving you the chance to do these things as well, dear sister; I beg of you, do not throw this chance away." Asha relished the words "dear sister" upon her dark sister's lips. It was hard, yet it was something she had to do. She would not stop herself from walking along the upright path. "I have heard your words and I understand that I must go out and make for myself wisdom. Yet as I have listened to you, you must now heed me." Rafe nodded for her sister to continue. Asha drew in a deep breath. "You must not let darkness come again to the tower where you live. If it does, you must either fight it away or flee to a safe haven. And if ever you are in need of me, care not for whether I have sought out the things I wish most yet or not, call me back. Call me back, dear sister, for I will come." Rafe's eyes poured tears, but they were not tears of sorrow. "I will always remember your words. I thank you; I will now be free to love you more than you can ever realize because of the things said tonight. Let us embrace, Asha, and with the closeness of each other, let us pledge our faithfulness to all that is right and good. Let us never forget what has been done and said here tonight, in the darkness, in the tower." Later, as Asha lay upon the rough cot pushed to one side of the circular room and felt the flagstone beneath her body, she gazed out the window and saw moonlight streaming from the dark sky, falling in silver spears from between the thick black clouds. It glowed in the deep of the woods and seemed as white fire in the darkness of the night.
May. 11, 2009 - If you're wearing a funny hat today, give yourself a pat on the back.
Have you ever noticed that getting up on time, doing everything you need to in time to stare out at the rain falling down in the green yard with a cup of tea in your hand, feeling the cool breeze blowing the lacy curtains, generally makes one feel better? =^D Somehow hot tea, lacy curtains and Mozart mix beautifully, as I found out this morning. I decided to go ahead and keep doing two weeks' worth of math in one week and I'm finishing science this month or I'll...I don't know what I'll do! Go on a coffee lent for a day or two. o_0 Can't have that! Seriously though, black coffee is beneficial. These days there is a contented kind of joy I've been feeling; a lot of things have happened recently to make me realize just how important grasping onto God's joy is. Not that black coffee is the root cure-all for joylessness. But I'm positive it helps. :-) Life is more interesting if you take pains to make it so. One of the most dangerous things to our culture nowadays is boredom; when you're bored, you get into all kinds of trouble. Which is why I'm only playing around when I grimace at Momsie's announcement to the Yavanenskis that I was doing summer school. I don't want to be bored! I'd rather do something productive with my summer than have hours and hours with nothing to amuse myself with. Besides the glorious Read A Thon [ http://www.incredibooks.com/ibdicsuss/, see the forum for details about this unique summer challenge] to participate in, I'm doing some SAT Prep work and an Italian course Momsie got at some cheapy store, plus a ton of other stuff. The only thing which would bother me is having to do science during the summertime. Blegh. Hence, my mental overload of epidermis and photosynthesis information. *grins*
Another thing I plan to do over the summer issa challenge my friend Anna came up with; basically you try and write 40K of something, even if it's random doodads and various novel-progressions like I'm planning to do, from June 20-July 20. I don't by any means wish to drop my writings over the summer, especially since I've been on an inspiration high. FaM isn't really included in this; I finished chapter two last week but I'm not happy with the whole thing in general. Not the plot, which is okay, but the way it sounds to me, reading it. It's like the styles shifted from chapter to chapter. RAWR! I'm not going back to it until I jolly well feel like it. *saunters* Anna and I have been doing this wacky thing called "The Midnight Chronicles"; it started when I was talking to her on the phone and we mused over how interesting it would be for us both to walk in a graveyard at nighttime and get names from the graves for our characters. We did a Word War [WW] that night and I wrote a doodad about us doing just that. She decided to write one where we and our characters had a parTAY inna graveyard at night, and it's growing from there. I call it comic morbidity because even though it's graveyards and nighttime rambles, it's hysterically insane. Something only an Authoress would enjoy, I suppose. It's a nice break.
Also in the writing news is the co-Authorings I've recently taken up. Some of you might have seen my little announcement on the Inklings about how Syd and I were coAing. o_0 Yeah, it's still on, and we're loik nearly halfway through chapter one. *sheepish grin* It's fun, though! We have a blog for it and we're calling it "Last Man Standing", or LMS. Syd wrote a ridiculous tragedy about it where we both die because we had to write together. We got a surprising amount of comments from just that. I suppose the poem is mainly to warn people that PipNSyd are co-Aing, so RUN. "Strange House" [SH] is still on, like I keep saying, and we're considering redoing the way the chapters fit together. More on that when I know something. Also, and here is something exciting...LAURA AND I ARE CO-AUTHORING. Andwehavethefirstchapterdone!!!!!!!!! *shrieks* It's been amazing sofar, I got wildly inspired while stirring noodles for supper. Emails between the both of us have been flying like mad and, despite the fact that we called our two villains [two sofar, hahaha] Creepy Dude and Ultimate Creepy Dude, the kinks are slowly starting to get themselves worked out. I think we may begin outlining for each chapter to make it run smoother.
Guess what? The Girls got blogs!!! They're on the same account we post "Popchanka" on. Katsy's was actually a surprise from me; she has this thing going about Perry Mason and his private detective Paul Drake, called "The Paul and Perry Files", so we made a blog for it. =^D The address is http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/PaulandPerry/ and she would be thrilled for someone to read the first file. G.B.'s blog is typical cute little girl's. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/puppies/ I was forced at swordpoint to edit the first chapter of a book she's practically written out in her head called "Fairy Tale", and she comes to me every twenty minutes asking whether anyone has commented. So forget commenting here, go see those two blogs! The first entry on G.B.'s blog ish foony and gloriously random. My sistahs rocketh!
I was reading a Philip Yancy [WAHOOEY!] book this morning and suddenly began scribbling a bunch of thoughts down on a notecard; these are questions people might ask about sin and Goodness. ... Did God "punish" Eve because she was curious about the heightened view of Good and Evil she could gain by eating the apple? Didn't she have free will to do it if she wanted to? Did God want us to be blind to the stark reality of Evil? To rephrase, if you want to protect your child from something bad, is it right to lie to them about whatever it is? On the other hand, if Evil is out there, why try to hide it? Should we cover it up and walk away from it, ignoring it completely, or should we show it for what it is? How much content learned about the nature of Evil is too much? If Eve had not eaten of the tree, would we fight Evil [with God's strength] like we find ourselves doing now? "They chose to deny their creatureliness by reaching for more than God had granted them. Distrusting God, they brought the burdens of [God] upon themselves." ~Yancy. If we have eternity set in our hearts, doesn't that erase the socalled evidence for predestination? These things are fascinating to me and I hope to get on my soapbox about them in future entries. In the meantime, it's certainly something to think about...
I am continually amazed with Dadsy's servant's heart. He isn't feeling well [sore throat, sick stomach, headache, that sort of thing] and he's still able to work nights all this week. Please pray for his quick healing. [See, Dadsy?! That's what comes from putting creamer and sugar in your coffee!!!]
Go and create an inside joke, and let someone inside the box. It's awesum.
Oh, and random: I deleted The Attic blog because I have too many different cyber places and it was confusing me! Not like I can't put book reviews on here. ;-) And I have started using Photobucket instead of Webshots for peekchurz and things on zee sidebar; it's much cleaner-looking now. Dudn't have those wretchedly-annoying blue outlines.
This Mother's Day we went to Syd's granny's house. Syd and I drove around in Nanny's golf cart! Those things are my new obsession. Golf carts and jaw harps. This golf cart was automatic and all one had to do was press down on a pedal to move and press on another one to stop. And you have to steer, av course. =^D We drove along, grinning at the surprised people in their yards, enjoying the cool wind blowing on our faces and the wooden Indian-style tassles hanging on the sides of the awningthingy. The lake was sparkling to one side and the woods were standing there being all inspiring on the other. Ah, bliss! I want a golf cart now.
May God bless you, and may His light pierce your darkness!
~PIP~
May. 10, 2009 - Mother's Day
Note: the "coherent" post is the one below this.
You awaken on Mother's Day and see sunlight streaming through your flowing curtains. You hear crashing around your closet and, blinking, you see Pip stuffing a bunch of clothes into a suitcase. "Come on," she says, "it's Mother's Day and you're going to Switzerland!" 
You fly on an airplane [you left Dadsy to babysit the Girls and Pip to burn the spaghetti], and after hours of gorgeous scenery and smothered giggles about the other odd people on the plane, you arrive at your destination. 
After shedding your suitcases in your room at the L'abri fellowship center, you look out the window and catch your breath at the stunning beauty. Is this Heaven?! 
That night you sit at a table and have coffee...
...and cheesecake...
[and of course the cheesecake is chocolate!], and you ponder over whether to write an email to Dadsy saying to come on up to Switzerland because there ain't no way you're ever coming home. The evening passes on very happily; you sip your coffee, which is loaded with sugar just this once, and listen to the quiet thrum of voices debating presuppositions ["IT'S ALL RELATIVE!"] and the like. All of a sudden you happen to look around and there stands this weird guy whom you recognize as Michael Buble! 
He just *happens* to be singing "Home".
That night, you sleep at the L'abri. They have very comfortable beds with a multitude of beautiful quilts to choose from. 
You fall asleep to the sounds of coffee being brewed for the late-night debaters. 
The next morning, after taking a deliciously long shower without having to worry about the well running dry, you go downstairs to find a wrapped package with your name scrawled on it, tantalizingly mysterious, resting on your table. The return address is your own home address; Hubbie Dear must have sent you some extra clothes. You grin and open the package, but instead of boring old clothes, you find...
Whoot whoot! And under the chocolate...
The Kindle DX is conveniently programmed to "Affliction" by Edith Schaeffer.
Later that day, you decide the Girls must be getting tired of burnt spaghetti and Dadsy's attempts at amusing them. [Thank goodness their school was finished before you left!] You catch a plane home. As you drive into your own little yard, you are startled to find that the wildflower medley sprang up in your absence! 
[POPPIES!!!!!!!]
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, MOMSIE! *hugs*
May God bless you, and may His light pierce your darkness!
~PIP~
May. 9, 2009 - FaM, chapter one, raw draft
7 years later The rain, steady and thin, had been falling all day. Springtime was upon the land like sweet dew upon the roses, and the dead earth was regaining its beauty. The natural haunt of the gentle rain, the fringes of juicy green grass giggling in the cool breeze, the budding cherry trees which cast their pinkish white blossoms to the ground all sang of spring. Fresh, beautiful spring, the season which brought planting along the coasts and laughter to the voices so long hushed by the beating rains of winter. Spring brought color to pale faces, new birth into the families of goats and sheep who grazed upon the rich budding grasses shooting up along the moors; spring brought happiness and energy, and spring brought the outcasts. The outcasts had always been there, always in the deep heart of the woods filled with shadows and moonshine; spring roved them from their homes and pushed them towards the sea, across the moors, into the tiny villages bustling with activity early in the fresh of the morn. The outcasts did not live in the coastal towns because they did not wish to. They did not appreciate the prejudice. For prejudice there was, if only the dark glances from the pious peoples. Sadness and grief, loss and the void hope of the fires and the lives lost made prejudice. It was sorrowful, yet somehow the outcasts understood. They did not force their ways upon the townspeople; they knew what it was to grieve. Sometimes hope was the very thing best to be avoided when one had encountered a great loss. So they dwelt within the shadows of the firelight in the recesses of the woods. The heart of the woods, filled with fire and moonlight, the lostness of sorrow and the pangs of hopelessness. All was sorrow to some people; not so for the outcasts. Hope itself often shone from their darkly fierce faces, surged from their wild, mysterious music, flashed in the rich rainbow of dyes they soaked their homely clothes in. Hope was beauty and love and goodness, and hope had shone from the black eyes of the boy Asha had seen playing his drum in the woods seven long years ago, while she wandered away from the hopeful moonlight in the dark of the woods. Asha was not her true, given name, but ashes were all that had remained of her family and her village by the cliffs of the sea, down in the lowlands of the moors green with grass and dotted white with herds of sheep. So Asha she was called. Rafe was her sister, the sister who knew darkness like she knew her own soul. After the loss of so much hope in a single afternoon wrought by fire and ignorance, Rafe had hid herself in the dark heart of the woods, in a high crumbling tower built by the ancients who had dwelt within the green hills so many ages ago. Rafe was darkness and so was her tower, jabbing high and straight and black into the purple sky. It stood above the tall black trees, solitary and haunting, a beacon of darkness to whoever would look upon it. No one ever came, no one had ever dared. Only Asha could visit her sister. Asha was the one who kept Rafe from killing herself, from want of hope, from the weight of despair. Things could still grow better, life could repatch itself. Yet in the time between, is was hard and seemingly hopeless. The music from the outcasts, the sky gray and purple, the fire and the moonlight. Hope and hopelessness. The rain dripped from Asha's face like tears and fell into the black earth beneath her leathern boots. The girl had grown tall and slender, her face well-shapen and her nose long and sharp. Her hands were rough from hard farmwork amongst the farmers along the coastline. Work helped to assuage the pain, work was always to be done when one needed something to take their minds from the hopelessness. Today a ewe had given birth to two healthy lambs, and Asha had helped to bring them out into the world. It was almost a cruel thing, helping the ewe give birth, because the world was so cold and so harsh, who wanted to be blamed for letting life survive? But the helpless lambs had struggled so hard to free themselves from safety and warmth. They had fought to earn the right for survival, and Asha could not deprive them of that right. It was theirs, just as her life was hers because she had not chosen to take it. No one was there to govern her life for her, so she had to do the work herself. Living life itself was work and work was good for soothing. So Asha lived; she forgot despair, she forgot hopelessness and hope itself, she forgot everything but the stench of death and the fires, and the moonlight pearly and cool in the dark of the shadowy wood. She forgot everything but these things...and the handsome boy who had stared at her from his place by the camp fire with his people, playing his drum. She recalled for the thousandth time how the glowing embers had burnt across his dark face, the face in the woods, looking at her with something like encouragement. Encouraging her to never forget hope. Yet Asha had forgotten...or else she did not want to remember. Hope was what she had thought to be the thing she'd clung to that afternoon, before the fires and the sickening death smell. Had it been real hope? Or a false hope for something which could never have happened? Asha searched her mind, walking through the damp leaves of the yester-years, her leathern boots making no sound. She searched her mind for what she had thought to be hope that fateful day, the day filled with fire and ashes and screaming from the coastal town. She remembered not wanting to believe anything sorrowful coming, the tragedy Rafe had warned the town about. No one have listened to her. Rafe was a strange girl, too full of knowledge in the dark arts, which she practiced in the shadows of the woods and the lone, windswept lowlands. The village had not trusted Rafe. Neither did they trust Asha, but at least they could afford to be friendly towards her. Now they were all gone. Asha had not particularly liked the village people in the small coastal town she and her tiny family, and her black-sheep sister, had all lived in together...but surely, no one could have wished such a terrible fate upon any soul. To be burnt to death, void of hope, in the flames, amid the screaming and the horrible stench...Asha shuddered and forced her suddenly cold limbs to move. She had not noticed that she had been standing still in the woods, still with her thoughts and her memories. The trees above were budding out. Tiny green shoots were pushing from the frosty gray branches, reaching for the sunshine. The pale, sickly sunshine, but sunshine all the same. It was still blinking from its long winter slumber, it would soon strengthen and brown the faces of the hardworking farmers. The gray had pillowed with clouds, gray and lumpy, which boiled like a pot of stew in the cool sky. The woods were wet and quiet, fresh with rain and musty with the scents of sharp pine and old mushrooms. Birds cackled here and there. It was peaceful. No fires, no moonlight. No hope, yet no hopelessness, either. Asha tried to forget. The woods, splashed with colors of green and brown and alive with the springtime refreshing, were cool and deep and quiet, very different from the moon and fire-lighted woods of seven long years ago. Asha walked on until she reached the fringe of the woods; here it gave way to mountains, tall snow-capped peaks which had claimed the lives of many a daring soul brave or stupid enough to attempt a climb. Delicious ghost stories echoed from the rigid black rock of the mountains and were passed around from parent to child in the coastal villages. The coastal villages, about twenty or twenty five tiny clusterings of thatched cottages by the sea, had no king, nor had they any ruler of any sort. The people governed themselves. They helped each other in times of need and they felt hope and hopelessness together. Yet many of the villagers were prejudiced. Time and wind had made them too old for their bodies; tragedy and despair had made them wary of strangers. Thus many became outcasts. To be an outcast amongst the villagers was not such a great loss, unless one was without hope. For hopelessness could not thrive if there was companionship. Rafe was an outcast of the villagers, yet it was partially her part. Rafe needed no one save herself and her sister. They were alone. Asha sighed. What was her obsession with hope? It was like fire and moonlight. Forever would these things replay themselves in her mind, the essence of it all swirling about in her heart. Close to the edge of the woods, cuddled up against the rise of black rock topped with bare trees jabbing into the purply sky like hair on an angry cat's back, was a tiny cave. It was warm, dry, and snug, and it was Asha's. She had found it; she had fought a wild black bear for the possession of the little cave, and she had won. She and Rafe had feasted upon bear flesh for many a day after that, to celebrate. The bear had been old, sick and weak; Asha recalled the taste of tough bear meat between her teeth and her spit involuntarily over her shoulder. A cardinal, startled by the sudden action, flew up into the high branches. Asha watched the bright little bird shoot up into the sky, like a spurt of blood from a wound. The bird settled upon a tree limb and watched Asha crawl inside her cave with beady black eyes. "I am safe here," Asha whispered to herself. Safe from what? Wild animals? The strength in her work-worn hands alone kept her safe from the threat of being torn apart by wildcats or bears. Safe from pillagers, rushing in on the blue tide with ships carved like dragon's heads? They were only interested in the villages by the sea, the villages with people who hoarded gold, and not in tiny caves near the mountains. Somehow, some way, being inside the little cave surrounded by birdcalls and the whisper of the four winds made Asha feel safer than she did when walking through the woods, or taking her meals with Rafe. Asha loved her sister because, if she did not, there was no one else to love her. Rafe was not meant to be loved. Darkness had no communion with light. Yet the villagers showed emotions and motives which were of a sick, distorted light; life was confusing. Here in the cave, life was easy. Life was safe. It was Asha's cave. The woods sprawled across the dipping landscape for about fifty square miles as the raven flies; the woods veered up the side of jagged black cliffs, fringing it like fur. The winter pallor was still over the whole of the land, gray, stark and colorless, the sky hanging gray and purple like a bruise; yet one looking could tell that springtime was surging through the blood of the earth. The lands itself was rich black, sprouting green grass; birds tittered to each other in the quiet woods; waterfalls ruffled down into green pools near the cliffsides on the outskirts of the woods. The only part touched not by the natural display of refreshed beauty. Beauty, to the eye of the beholder, never grew old if it was appreciated as it should be. Life was beautiful in the cave. Asha sat curled up, her arms around her knees, and looked out over the woods; at the mushrooms and through the tall, thin trunks at the black mountains rising high all around her. It was cozy and safe and Asha was happy. Slowly, ever so slowly, she allowed her eyes to close, and fell asleep. Asha had a strange dream. The girl dreamed that she was crouching in her cave, but the woods had changed. The sky was black and shot with a celestial purplish-silver light like moonlight, but the moonlight was dark and it was evil. The tree trunks were thicker than the lean, whippy ones of Asha's part of the wood. The shadows leered from between the ominous trees, glittering with the dark of the moonlight. From somewhere deep in the darkness of the black woods, there came a light like fire and a sound like music. And the music was evil. It frightened Asha, standing alone and vulnerable in the middle of it all, in the center of her nightmare. What did it mean? Asha's eyes opened with a snap. She sat upright and looked about her, staring in the semi-light with bleary vision. The light had faded from the afternoontime of the woods, and the dusk was falling in soft shambles around the cliffsides. The birds were not singing as brightly as they had been and the wind was rising stronger. Asha lifted her head and tasted of the cool winds, rushing through the mouldy leaves like a purging hand, separating the wet black earth from the carnage of last autumn. The wind tasted like darkness. Asha hastily scrambled to her feet, brushed the dead leaves from her long hooded coat of rough brown farm-spun, and strode out through the woods. The wind was darkness, the darkness was calling. She had stayed out in her cave, happy and safe and alone with the lands, for too long. It was time to return to the tower, jabbing from the middle of the woods into the silvery sky, and meet Rafe. The pines were glittering with a raiment of dusky purple and the falling spears of silver light piercing the wood as Asha walked carefully down a tiny dip in the earth and up a rise frought with dry slippery leaves, gauging each movement before she made it. The woods would accept her for whoever she was but in the woods, Asha felt beautiful. Beautiful was grace, beautiful was being able to travel through the woods and not fall down. Beautiful was what she could be, gliding gently towards the darkness through the tall thin trees. Beautiful was walking and not stumbling. If only life was as easy as walking through the woods. The winds got stronger and whipped Asha's short brown hair into her mouth. The sunset on the horizon, behind the high black cliffs, was mingled with soft peach and rosy flush as well as watery purple and shining silver. The air grew cool upon her cheeks, upon the flesh warm from the slumber she had taken in her cave, and the birds began settling down in their nests for the evening. It was peaceful and calm in the woods as Asha walked on, gracefully, beautifully, towards the dark winds. The winds were calling her, speaking to her, wanting her to come. Rafe was calling and Asha heard. Asha knew it was wrong. The way Rafe vented her grief, being alone with the dark in the pinnacle of the crumbling black tower, was dangerous. Asha knew this, deep down within her soul, but for the love of her sister she did not admit it. Something was going on, one could feel it in the shiver the cool winds brought and the way the trees clacked their branches together. The earth was alive, not with spirits of their own, but an essence pulled from a greater source. Asha lifted her head to the chilly air, tasting of the refreshing springtime in it. Rafe could not be wrong. Was she not always right? She had been right about the fate of the village, wrought by fire. The smoke, the burning acidic smoke, the ashes, the fallen bodies of loved ones...how could Rafe have known all that? Who was guiding her senses? Asha shuddered and drew her mind away from such gloomily precarious thoughts. It had been a good day, one of hard work and one of peace; one of stillness and one of light. Fire and moonlight; how beautifully these two meshed together. These things repeated themselves in Asha's heart, lifted her spirits so many times, that she nearly skipped for joy. She had seen much and not all had been of a good and upright nature. Yet that had been seven years ago. For a single, sweet moment in time, Asha felt as weightless as the blood-red feathers of the cardinal must be. There was darkness but there was also light. There was fire but there was also moonlight. There was hopelessness but there was also hope. Asha looked up, beyond the trees and beyond the gathering mists about the wooded grounds, and saw the black tower. Stone of black and high of build, higher than the tallest trees in the woods. It was thin and jagged, shooting into the sky like an accusing finger at the heavens. Rafe was atop the tower, in the highest room, peering from the tiny window. Asha caught the black eyes of her sister as Rafe turned and disappeared. Asha turned about and peered through the woods once more, tasting freedom and tasting hope; then she turned, pushed open the heavy wooden door at the base of the tower, and was plunged into its darkness.
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