Tracker: Notebook 2024
Contents
Poetry, May 2024
5/9/24
find your wings (poem)
One of those things:
look around
maybe breathe
Don't forget to find your wings:
spread them hard
fly, believe
Talent (poem)
The things that work
Can often be so easily forgot
The things that work
So easily are things that can't be taught
Talents granted
From the King
By heaven, they were bought
Then graciously
Were given to me
Without my having sought
Road (poem)
Been a while
I know
Been a terrible road
The things that you don't know
Before you're called to go
hard (poem)
Is it that hard
to speak in a rhythm
in a rhyme
with a boom
with a bang
Is it that hard
to feel in a prism
with a sigh
with a laugh
with a pang
Is it that hard
to fall in a chasm
in the air
do not care
'til I'm there
Is it that hard
to turn like a schism
hand on stone
from the bone
don't let go
planting (poem)
wisdom is the color of my heart
as I want it to be
so I'll plant my sight on wisdom
until I am a tree
The Presence (poem)
Joy is in the presence of the Lord
Where is it I'm living, by that word?
Where am I, adrift on endless clouds
When this painful living gets too loud?
Ah, find me, Spirit! Find me, Prince of Peace
Make this inner chaos finally cease
I praise You: may I enter at the gates
And finally find the joy in Your embrace?
Eye Be Single (poem)
Find a song in my heart
And a light on my steps
My eyes towards the heavens
To see what is next
5/13/24
Brightness Arrayed (poem)
Ah, another grand day!
My eyes see the light, I pray
That my heart is also swayed
By the brightness now arrayed
Before my waking face
When I look toward Your grace
me (poem)
awkward, sometimes
it would be nice to be
another person
yet still me
may happiness (poem)
may happiness precede and follow you
and always walk with you
may the rains shower on you
and bring new life to you
may the sun shine brightly
and the moon glow nightly
lighting your way
for you I will pray
5/30/24
abloom (poem)
happiness
I close my eyes
brace my soul
I feel the light
I open hands
my heart abloom
cleanse my spirit
and make room
ever calling (poem)
sometimes we forget the important things
perhaps drift from our roots or lose our wings
and yet a Voice e'er calling before us sings
look to me! it cries, from darkness brings
Poetry, June 2024
6/9/24
before my eyes (poem)
endless ages pass
the flicker of eternal streams
that which waking lies
before my eyes and in dreams
all the visions cast
upon my canvas mind
held until they last
shining in my sight
Your Path (poem)
God of my fathers, my mothers, my friends
Who held me and kept me, beginning to end
Be with me now as I go 'round this bend
Your path before me, I trust You will mend
Poetry, July 2024
7/18/24
Where Sunlight (poem)
Good morning where the sunlight grows
From solemn dark to bright shining day
And over the hours, my awareness flows
Of glorious Love: I start to pray
To Him who made my every step
And all this earthly loveliness!
7/19/24
Wouldn't It Be (poem)
Wouldn't it be nice?
Don't want to think twice
Want to be all right
Can we turn on the light?
Prose, May 2024
5/9/24
Focus on God Who Bears our Burdens
From the Old Testament to the New, God promises to bear our burdens, if we will just come to Him.
"Blessed be the Lord God, who daily bears our burdens, God who is our salvation." – Psalm 68:19 NJV (verify)
"Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." – Matthew 11:28 NKJV
"Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you." – I Peter 5:6-7 NKJV
Every day, when the sorrows of this world press down upon me, when I'm missing the loved ones I have lost, when my failures and mistakes weigh on me, I have such a tendency to berate myself or struggle under the weary heaviness of it all, forgetting that these are burdens! All I need do is come to Him. I can cast away my burdens and give them into His hands, and He will care for me and give me rest.
It is so often my heart that is my greatest burden, every time my humanity or this world in all its imperfections seems to much to bear. But God promises His strength in our weakness and His peace in our hearts.
"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." – Philippians 4:2 NKJV
5/13/24
Notes on Worldbuilding: World-Growing
Worldbuilding appears to be much like conlanging. Before one goes making up a wild new detail, perhaps one ought to revisit the material already present and "grow" a new detail. In the case of developing modern banking, for example, one should look at the original methods of long-distance trade and commerce one has already developed and determine how this people would solve that problem, rather than turning solely to how Earth peoples have.
Prose, June 2024
6/2/24
They crossed Wa Shioke on the Lihuela-tsau Road, then turned seaward at the Iiyetretha Passage. Irya was a little surprised that they chose to walk the entire way, a twelve-day journey on foot, but said nothing about it, taking his turns to gather wood for evening fires and putting on food at the regular encampments. Truthfully, he hadn't taken this way before, and he wondered a little at taking it now.
Leshet lived up to her name, quiet and explaining little. Her husband Kosye told barracks stories, interesting tidbits of deployments aimed at enlivening dinner rather than revealing information. Irya too told stories and picked out images from the stars and didn't talk about the coastline ahead, altogether too verdant for winter.
Leshet caught him looking at it once. "When he does act," she said quietly, "he never does it by halves."
Irya considered that point for a long moment. "He who holds power over life and death?"
"Yes."
It was enough to realize that Leshet had encountered the high one before the events of the black rain. He considered asking her about it, but let the moment linger perhaps too long. She was nodding a goodnight and ducking into her tent.
They reached the Alhaies plain on the thirteenth day toward the end of the sun watch of the morning, approaching noon. The grassy fields were distinct from the farmland beyond them, a soil more crumbly and dry and less suited to growing crops. Instead, comfortably-sized homes were scattered across the plain, each perhaps twenty claws or so apart, and a winding dirt road darted and wove between them.
Leshet's was somewhere toward the middle of the plain. They passed under a copse of evergreen trees, their needles still hugging shivers of frost, though the dragon's breath winds had melted the rest off the ground. A garden sat in the front of the house, seeming properly winterized. He wondered if she paid a helper to maintain it when she was deployed. They passed between the northern and southern sections of the garden up the little cobbled walk to her front door, and she let them in to a surprisingly and pleasantly warm front entry.
"Shoes off," Kosye commented as he put his own boots against the wall.
Leshet glanced around and murmured, "It's good to be home."
Prose, July 2024
7/19/24
Can You Bridge the Sea?
Kharshtha Ahima-kiyoni had been coming to every annual clans gathering since before he could remember. After all, his parents weren't the kind of people to turn down an opportunity to meet new people, form new social connections, nor when he was still a small child, from suggesting he do the same.
"Put down the book, dear child," his mother tucked her fingers into Ahima's hair and kissed the top of his head. "Go find someone to play with."
He was still small and young, but his mother's touch wasn't such a casual thing, for all he could sense the affection in it. He knew she was looping some thread of sensation she could detect and he could not that would alert her should he be in any kind of trouble at all.
There was no point in arguing. He set the book aside and wrapped it safely under his blanket, then went out into the encampment of his mother's clan, Doscht.
It was a sea of people, full of currents and tides that left him feeling dizzy as he turned this way and that, seeking some quiet eddy to settle in. There were none readily at hand. Certainly, there were groups of children playing in the open spaces where fires and tables were located between tents and pavilions, but they seemed no less hectic. He wondered which of the trees in sight might be safe to climb.
That was when a little boy appeared directly in front of him, dirty-faced and grinning and shorter than Ahima was, dark eyes seeming bright with friendliness. "Want to play?"
Ahima went still, his heartbeat thudding a little too intensely in his chest.
The little boy tapped his chest. "I'm Irya."
"Oh." Ahima forced his body to relax. "Ahima. What do you want to play?"
The grin came back and Irya pointed a good ways away from the crowd. "There's a good spot up there on the bridge."
The bridge had traffic, but it wasn't crowded the way the encampment was. Barely had he thought it, then Irya took him by the hand and Ahima found himself tugged insistently in that direction. It was an odd feeling, not as unpleasant as when his father held his shoulder and told him to say hello to his uncles and aunts and cousins, nor was it quite as inconsiderate of his own desires as his mother's admonitions to play, to talk to his classmates, and to participate in the neighborhood performance events.
Irya took him to the top of the bridge down the pedestrian walkway, a broad strip of paved stone with a tall fence between it and the vehicular lanes and a strip of grass, shrubs, and the occasional tree between it and the railing that looked down over the Stone's Heart River.
"I fished up here once with my dad," Irya told him, promptly climbing a tree, but keeping his knees below the railing, giving it a good side-eye for a moment.
Ahima chuckled to himself, certain Irya's mother had made the rule. "Do you have a pole?"
"Nope." Irya picked a fistful of late nuts off the tree, then shimmied back down, and looked pointedly at Ahima's hands. "Next time," Irya said.
Ahima held up his hands. Irya counted out half the nuts.
They didn't do anything rambunctious that boys their age were expected to. They sat down at the foot of the tree, pounded open nuts with a rock, much to Irya's dismay whenever Ahima actually smashed one to dust, then tossed rocks in the river and took turns climbing up other trees and shooting shells at each other.
A bright horn sounded over the splashing river below as the light began to turn a dusky blue. Irya grimaced. "We should head back."
Ahima nodded but stayed up in the branches a moment longer, straining to see the small boat come into view from which the horn was sounding. "It sounds like my grandfather bellowing in the evening."
Irya giggled. "Don't worry. I won't tell him."
Ahima would have been lost getting back, but Irya grabbed his hand once they were both on the ground and dove through the crowds wending their way back to campsites, ducking and dragging Ahima with him below the arms of adults, and squeezing between people that probably really hadn't left enough room. It was fun, in a way. Like Ahima and Irya were in their own world. Then Irya deposited him right where he'd found him and waved cheerily before he darted away into the stream of people, like a bright little sunfish in the water.
"Who was that?" Ahima's mother asked before he'd even ducked under the tent flap.
"A friend," Ahima answered without thinking, before he suddenly thought better of it.
But his father patted his head and his mother smiled, and he packed away the unpleasant feeling it gave him before they sat down to eat.
Irya found him the next morning. Ahima certainly wouldn't have been able to return the favor.
But he couldn't help but laugh. "Are you ever clean?" Ahima asked.
Irya scoffed. "I'm playing. What's the point of coming to gathering early if you don't look around a bit?"
It was true that the swearing ceremonies weren't until tomorrow, but Ahima hadn't ever thought about it. What was there to look at? He glanced around at the rousing families, so many of them with tasks and errands and plans, like a rising tide of the sea. Ahima didn't hate the sea, but he didn't understand it. It overwhelmed him.
"I suppose so," he said.
Irya cocked his head, looking puzzled, but sat down and helped himself to a bite of fruit off Ahima's plate.
"Rude," Ahima commented without heat.
"I fed you first." Irya grinned and handed Ahima a roll, still warm and soft.
"Ah, so is this your friend?" Ahima's mother's voice had always been lovely, soft and warm and friendly. Ahima stiffened at the sound of it.
Irya waved, cheery tilt to his mouth. "I'm Tsadirya-kolos," he announced and dipped his head respectfully.
"It's very nice to meet you," she replied, still warmly. "Are you neighbors with us?" A slight gesture toward the campsites nearby.
He shook his head. "I'm from Ginieng. May I please have some of that?" he asked, giving an appraising look at the non-empty fruit platter they were serving breakfast from.
"Of course." Ahima's mother smiled, but he knew she was a little startled by Irya's statement. Taannongar wasn't exactly adjacent to Doscht's clan land allotment. "Your parents let you wander a great deal, do they?"
Irya swallowed down far too big a bite to clear his mouth to answer. "Yes, ma'am. May I please take Ahima to go play?"
Ahima was surprised at how sparse the answer was, but true to form, she gave her permission, and Irya dragged Ahima off, this time past the bounds of their encampment area and into a small park where Ahima knew they'd broadcast the ceremonies tomorrow but didn't allow camping. It was relatively quiet today, the roaring sea of humanity across a rather broad thoroughfare.
Ahima wasn't entirely certain why Irya had brought him, but he appreciated the quiet as they played tag and chase and how far can you throw it without anybody else bothering them. Visitors would wander through but in small quantities and easily avoidable. Irya finagled a band name out of Ahima, "So I can send you a letter?" "A public letter?" Ahima asked, horrified, and gave him his exact address. "Those are more expensive," Irya complained but Ahima just dug around in his pockets for extra solgu to give him. His mother always made sure he had at least some money on him.
Irya laughed and waved him off. "No, I can't take your money. But you better write back. Especially if I'm paying for private."
"Sure," Ahima promised without knowing why entirely. Irya was fun, but they hardly knew each other. "Why did you come over to Doschtongar?" he asked after a long moment.
Irya blinked, screwing up his mouth thoughtfully, then, "I'd like to see the territories someday. All of them. I figure until I can, I want to meet people from them."
It wasn't what Ahima had expected, he realized suddenly. He'd had some sort of expectation. He sat down next to Irya. "They're all people, just like each other." He'd seen a lot of the territories so far.
But Irya shrugged. "But all people are different."
And Ahima really wasn't sure what to make of that.
He found his book safely under the blanket and read until his father snuffed out the light on them. It was a story about a little boy who always seemed to know just what to say, just what to do–with the grumpy turtle who could help him cross the stream, and the conniving fox who could guide him through the dark forest, and the powerful tiger who could lead him home over the mountain. And in the end, he went home.
"I'm glad you found a friend," his mother said before Ahima fell asleep.
Ahima was ten the first time his parents were going to visit one of his friends. He tucked himself against the window of the rotorcraft and looked out at the green and golden fields below, the patches of dark where water flowed. He liked the roar of the blades drowning out their conversation. He liked the feeling of all that expanse to get lost in, where nothing else seemed to matter until it was time to set down on the earth again.
Irya's family lived far up the mountains in Ginieng. Ahima had looked it up when he'd gotten home in the great big encyclopedia his parents kept on the lower bookshelves, and traced fingers over the map. He'd been surprised they had their own platforms, but they could fly right there without having to stop in the northern valley and drive up.
Irya's father met them to walk them back to the house. He was tall and imposing, with not even the hint of a smile about his soldier-like demeanor, not at all what Ahima would've expected Irya's dad to be like, but he bowed politely and clearly gave his greetings before following close between his parents to do the same for Irya's mother. She had more expression to her face, laughter and frown lines both, but she smiled for them and hoped their trip had been pleasant and invited them into the calendar room for tea.
Irya popped up as if by magic behind his father. "Can I take Ahima now?"
His father picked him up by his waist and swung him over one shoulder. "Excuse our uncivilized offspring."
"Not at all." But Ahima's mother was clearly taken aback by the rough handling.
"Sorry, sorry," Irya said, voice muffled by his father's shirt.
He got set down and turned around, then bowed low to Ahima's parents. "Apologies. Greetings and I hope you had safe travels. May I please take Ahima now?"
Ahima's father laughed outright. "Yes, of course. Ah..." to Irya's parents: "I see you have a handful."
Ahima didn't mind being whisked away to Irya's small bedroom off the family room. It was crammed full of odds and ends on built-in shelves, and most of the room had been paneled in a medium-dark wood, with some decorative tapestries hanging in a few corners next to taped up posters. Irya flopped back on his bed and sighed, then popped up on one arm. "My parents think you're really polite."
Ahima raised his eyebrows. He was really polite, having been trained that way for as long as he could remember. "I brought you something." He held out the can his uncle had helped him with.
Irya held it up to eye it speculatively. "Noodle soup?"
"It's a Doscht dish." Slightly modified.
Irya worked over the lid for a moment, then tried a sip, nearly spitting it right back out. "Carbonated?!" He gave can and Ahima a double take, then laughed. "Why? Just why?"
Ahima leaned back against Irya's wall. "My uncle gave me some. It's not that bad."
"Does your uncle like you?" Irya asked mystified, then tried another sip before setting the can aside. "You are dangerous."
Ahima smiled back at him.
Ahima stayed in Irya's room. Irya's sister was much quieter than Irya, curled up in a corner with a book herself most of the time, but after introducing them the first day, Irya didn't really give him an opportunity to go ask what she was reading. They spent most of the days outside, climbing trees, and playing by the river, and teaching Ahima to river fish, which was sufficiently different than sea-fishing to be interesting. Irya talked his dad into teaching Ahima how to whittle then whiled away several afternoons carving up likely looking wood branches and sticks.
Sometimes at night, when Irya had tumbled off into dreams beside him, Ahima would slip out of bed to go listen quietly to their parents' conversations. It wasn't entirely surprising Ahima's mother had approved of their friendship so easily; not only had Ahima been much slower to make friends than they wished, but Irya's parents were depressingly important in their band. His mother was head of the Giyande Guard. Ahima's mother would never turn down a valuable social connection like that.
"He's such a good and pleasant child. I hope he'll swear after me."
"Children never quite turn out the way we expect," Irya's mother replied. "I thought for sure my oldest son would take after me, but it's my second daughter who did. Ahima is a sweet kid though."
"So Irya won't be swearing after you?" Ahima's father asked.
"It doesn't seem likely," Irya's father answered. "He has... other talents."
Ahima got up then and went back to bed, tossing an arm over Irya's waist and burying his face in his back. Irya's breathing didn't change, and Ahima didn't think he even realized how nice his parents were, even when they weren't polite.
Ahima had known for as long as he could remember the kinds of hopes his parents cherished for him. Stop reading, Ahima. Go make friends. Say hello to your aunts and uncles and cousins. If you must read, read this book of etiquette. You'll find it useful where we're going. Try to make some friends.
His mother was the bridge-maker of their band, and Ahima was her only son.
He was whittling away at a piece of wood, turning it into a frowning face with little wrinkles at the corners of its eyes, when his own eyes fell to the mark on his right arm that marked the potential contract with one of his mother's high ones. He had several marks, everyone did, but he was fairly certain this one was the one that let her talk effortlessly with anyone, say the right thing, do the right thing, make everyone happy. Inherited contracts had to be confirmed, everyone knew that, and everyone knew that contracts were usually confirmed when someone was in great danger.
Ahima didn't really think it through; he wasn't sure he'd been thinking at all. He'd been whittling, then he put the knife to his mark, as if he could cut it right off his arm, and he wanted it gone–or he wanted it real and active, and he didn't really know what he wanted; he only knew it hurt, terribly, and he dropped the knife and caught great gasping breaths against the bleeding pain, and suddenly, the entire forest changed.
The air went thick and heavy, a pressure too great to stand up under and Ahima felt the low growl of a creature too enormous and powerful to be an ordinary creature, threaded through with biting pinprick of a sharp blade cutting through him, and a heavy white mist wreathing the ground.
Irya was there, suddenly, yelling at him, wrapping his arms around him, and shoving his body right through him, so Ahima's arm was entirely overlapped by Irya's torso. It should have felt strange but Ahima just felt immobile and numb, the faintest flutter, then Irya pulled back and Ahima's arm was no longer afire with pain. He was covered in blood but the skin, and the mark on it, were both completely restored.
He stared at it for the longest time, even as the intense pressure of the high ones' presence faded and Irya's yelling began to penetrate his brain again. Ahima looked up at Irya. "Why did you do that?"
Irya shut up so abruptly, it might have made Ahima laugh under any other circumstance. Irya blinked furiously, as if in disbelieving confusion. "Why?"
There was a long moment when they both stared at each other, shocked into silence, then Irya shook himself forcefully, grabbed Ahima's shoulder, and propelled him back in the direction of the house. "We're going inside, and you're drinking tea."
Ahima let himself be yanked along, let himself be bundled into blanket and comfy chair and tea. Irya clearly needed to do something with him, so Ahima let him do it with a sense of wonder he didn't bother to self-assess. Someone's high ones had come. They just hadn't been Ahima's.
A woodcarving accident. Ahima was banned from doing any more whittling unsupervised, and he didn't question it, didn't explain, didn't correct. He still didn't really know what in the world he'd been thinking when he'd done it, and he didn't want his parents to realize that it hadn't been an accident at all.
Irya fussed over him, tucking him in at night, and then letting Ahima lean his head on his shoulder as they went to sleep. Irya didn't ask any more questions, though Ahima was sure he had them. He didn't ask Irya why he refrained either.
So many things said, unsaid. Perhaps it was easier for everyone to just let it go.
"How many siblings do you actually have?"
Irya was busy cooking Ginieng-style noodle soup in a pot. "There's five of us. My eldest sister and brother are married, and second sister's training in the guard."
"That sounds nice." Ahima wondered what it would be like to have siblings, to never have to be the one that took after a parent. He glanced over at the fireplace where Irya's sister Uniemi was close to finishing another book.
"Hand me that stuff." Irya waved commandingly.
Ahima handed over the carbonated water and watched Irya dump it in the pot.
"Don't worry," Irya said, grinning broadly. "I'll be your brother."
They watched the soup bubble a bit. Brother. Ahima felt that word sink inside him and bubble a bit before he could relax into the idea of it.
"You're going to be in so much trouble," Ahima told him.
Irya giggled and poured the soup into bowls.
The Last Boy
Ten-year-old Cody had headphones on. There was nothing playing, not that his father noticed. He listened to his parents discuss quietly in the kitchen getting him out of the way for their vacation, then their business. Wouldn’t a proper boarding school be good? No bother at Christmas.
He listened to the background music of their indifference, hunched shoulders on the couch, undone homework in his lap, and pretended he didn’t know they didn’t love him.
Cody came out of the taxi looking worse for wear, scruffy black hair hanging in the way of wary eyes, backpack worn like armor, and an apathetic flat frown in place when he stood before the cottage his parents had just sent him to stay in.
He was a second cousin, nothing special and never particularly loved. Except… that wasn’t entirely true. His papa had loved him once, before he became “Father,” retreating ever more distant and cold into his work.
“You must be Cody. Come on in.”
He took in Cassie’s warm, bright smile as she stood on the front porch to welcome him, but he didn’t believe it.
Cassie was fifteen years old when Cody came to live with them. Cody was ten. He was the last boy, all the rest having come or even left before his arrival. When she went in to tell Mama Ruth that he had safely arrived and was settling into his room, she was not wearing a smile.
“Do all of our family members marry deadbeats?” she asked, sneering bitterness on her tongue. It came out with more heat and venom than she usually allowed herself to express.
Mama Ruth shut up dinner in the oven again, turned off the heat, and came to wrap Cassie in one of those enveloping hugs that made her feel like it shut out all the world. She held on, trying not to cry.
Mama Ruth patted her on the back. “It’s going to be okay. He’s here now, and we’re going to be here for him.”
“Yeah.” Cassie nodded as she pulled away.
It sounded so easy. She knew already from long experience with all the rest of their strays, it really wasn’t easy at all.
Skip slid in socked feet across the wooden entryway with a whoop and shoved a camera in the vague direction of the stairwell. Before it even got into position, a hand shoved it down rather forcefully. Skip blinked in surprise.
Cody scowled at him. “Don’t,” he said, narrowed eyes, cutting tone.
Skip cocked his head at him, read him for the briefest of glances with a serious expression, then smiled so brightly it could make one wonder if the moment had happened. He spread his arms wide. “Welcome!”
Cody didn’t say so, but he didn’t like it.
Light cut through the morning. Cassie had been waiting for that. She threw open her cousin’s door and got back a baleful glare under his crazy bedhead.
She grinned cheerfully. Up, up, up!
“Cody’s not feeling well.”
“I’m fine.” Cody scowled from where he was curled up on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, and watching a movie he couldn’t quite seem to focus on.
Song glanced over, eyebrows up in surprise. She gave Mama Ruth a tiny flash of a smile then came over to the couch and sat down next to Cody.
He stiffened in surprise of his own.
Arm around his shoulders, leaned on her while they watched the movie
food playing (violin) brought him tea dragged CJ in to clear room
Cody: Thanks CJ: So you’re the new stray Song: closes door on him CJ: See where I rank Song smiles, amused
In trouble for fighting because insulting Song
Song brought him back from school
Mama Ruth can’t do those things
Of course
Song: You can’t do those things.
Why?
I love you because God taught me how.
Reads Bible when she’s gone
The folder was labeled simply:
Violin.
He took Song’s music, put it in the queue, sat on the couch, and hit play.
7/21/24
3 Times It Was Way Too Quiet and 1 Time It Was Way Too Loud
"It's too quiet." Noah sat up in the bed and looked around at the still, dark bedroom, listening for any sounds of tiny feet beyond the door.
His wife Grace groaned and buried her face in the pillow. "It's 5 a.m. It's supposed to be quiet."
"I don't trust it."
Grace squinted up at him a moment. "Well, it's your turn." Then she rolled over and went back to sleep.
Noah sighed and got himself up to go check the kids' bedrooms. Empty rumpled covers. His instincts hadn't been wrong, but he still wasn't sure which way they'd gone. He headed for the living room where it looked like three little someones had set up a bookshelf—did they even have spare bookshelves?— on a stack of books as a makeshift seesaw. He barely had time to note the three cherubic faces of his kids and open his mouth to ask what they were up to before the shelf sawed and his face met a yowling, claws-out cat.
The collective gasp of the children did not make him feel any better.
It took a few minutes to order them to stay put, calm the cat, and wipe off the bloody scratches in the kitchen sink, before coming back around to stare meaningfully down at them. "Do you want to explain yourselves?"
"Uh..."
Luke, the six-year-old eldest, his sister Emmie, the four-year-old, and open-mouthed Matthew, their two-year-old brother, clearly did not want to explain themselves.
The cat had meanwhile thoroughly attached itself to Noah’s shoulders and hissed at them.
"Well, we heard cats always land on their feet," Luke began.
Noah’s eyebrows shot up. "So you decided to test the theory?"
Matthew nodded, Emmie tucked her head behind Luke, and Luke grimaced, clearly knowing that was the wrong answer.
“And if I dropped you from five feet in the air and you landed on your feet, wouldn’t it still hurt?”
“Uh…” Very thoughtful little furrowed brows followed.
“The Bible tells us that godly people take care of their animals.” Noah pulled the cat gently down into his arms. She continued to eye the kids balefully. “You need to be considerate of living beings,” Noah emphasized.
Luke frowned. “Even spiders?”
Noah was no fan of spiders. He conceded, “Living beings bigger than bugs.”
Emmie looked dubious, but Luke nodded readily at this much happier state of affairs. He was even less a fan of spiders than his dad.
Noah supervised their cleaning up and laid down some new rules as regards getting permission before running experiments.
"Can we get a refund?" he asked, much later, much exhausted.
"No! I love my babies!" Grace eyed him dubiously.
"I love our babies too,” he protested. “But…”
“You wouldn't trade them for anything,” she reminded him.
He sighed. “No, I wouldn't, but you didn't eat a cat's claws for breakfast."
Grace did an admirable job of trying not to laugh. “Well, still no.”
A few days later, Grace checked that the kids were all safely occupied with their books and blocks before whisking off the next batch of clean laundry from laundry room to bedroom. She could hear the lull of their conversation and it was only a moment.
Then it got quiet. Too quiet.
Grace groaned and hurried back to where she’d left them not two minutes prior. One and all had relocated from their corner of the living room.
She looked in the kitchen. They were not in the kitchen. She looked down the hallway, and they were not in the hallway. She poked her head back in the laundry room and immediately declared, “Luke! Emmie!”
She bent down and pulled Matthew back out of the dryer and realized abruptly he was soaking wet.
“Children. What did you do?”
“Uh…” Luke always seemed to know when the true answer was not going to fly as the right answer.
Emmie cheerfully announced, “Matthew got wet, so we were going to dry him.”
Grace kept a very straight face, cuddled her youngest child protectively, then carefully explained to them that it was not safe to “dry” a child the way one would laundry. “Next time, just come get me.”
“Yes, Mommy,” Emmie answered promptly.
Luke poked his head in the dryer. “It always looks so fun though.”
“No,” Grace said firmly. “You will never run yourself or any other living creature through the washer or dryer.”
Luke sighed. “Yes, Mom.”
“Where do children come up with these ideas?” she asked Noah much later, much exhausted. She’d had to extend the proscription to all household appliances after they’d tried to vacuum up some dirt off of Emmie’s shirt with rather undesirable results.
Noah did a much less admirable job of not laughing. “I think they get it from you. I’m sure I never did that growing up.”
She threw a pillow at his head. “Don’t make me call your mother and ask her.”
He conceded the battle promptly, holding up his hands for peace. “I’m sure you were the soul of discretion as a child. Clearly, they’re innovators.”
The next night, it was not too quiet. It was not quiet at all. A great series of thumps and bangs brought both parents out of their bed to the living room where the cherub-faced little innovators had managed to bring down the entire bookcase full of books and were industriously building a fort.
Grace looked at Noah. “Your turn.” She headed back for bed.
Noah braced himself and sat down next to the kids, who all paused and looked at him with curious expressions. Except Matthew. He was chewing on a book cover.
Noah rescued the book and put Matthew in his lap.
“You know,” he started, “your mom’s carrying your little sister, and she’s really tired and needs her sleep.”
“Were we too loud?” Emmie asked.
“Yes. It’s late at night. You’re supposed to be in bed, *asleep*, not bringing down the house, so your mom and I will worry, and then have to clean it up in the morning.”
Luke fidgeted uncomfortably. Emmie’s face fell. “I’m sorry, Daddy.” Luke nodded along with that.
“It’s okay. Let’s get the three of you to bed.” He decided to worry later about how much of that went into Matthew’s head and focused on tucking the three back in under their covers, ordering them gently to *stay there* until morning.
Mercifully and perhaps providentially, they did.
But when morning did come, he sat up in bed and said, “It’s too quiet.”
It was Grace’s “turn”, but he didn’t wake her up. He got out of bed and went to check on the kids—who were once again, not in their beds.
He checked in the bathroom. No kids. Down the hallway. No kids. In the kitchen. No kids and no stepladder. The living room.
Three cute little kids sneaking around the living room quietly, exaggeratedly hushing each other at intervals, as they put all the books back on the shelves. Matthew sat next to a stack and handed one over as the older kids grabbed them one at a time, climbed up the stepladder, set the book in place, then came down for another.
Noah watched for a moment, then went back in the kitchen and made a tray of milk and cookies. When the kids noticed him coming in with it, their eyes lit up and they quickly abandoned their work for a cookie break. Matthew climbed up into his lap.
“Thanks, Daddy!”
He wiped the crumbs off Emmie’s face and rubbed Luke’s head. “You know I wouldn’t trade you kids for anything.”
7/29/24
Where Memory Walks
Memory walks beside her, though she doesn't court it. Leshet wakes to the electric tang familiar to her as breathing.
Tayas, she greets through her device.
She feels then his sleepy, just awakened attention. Leshet. A pause, then the sharp prickling of his interest. Has something happened? He's intelligence now. He no longer turns to electricity on the battlefield.
It is memory beside her, not her friend.
No, she sends back. Just good morning.
He's always been sharp, even before he became intelligence. She knows he does not believe her.
But he answers anyway, Well, good morning to you, too.
A light rain sprang up as they began to break camp; white mists curled off the ground. Leshet paused to stare up at the cloudy skies.
It tasted wrong. Nitrates that weren't Tayas, rain that wasn't Mokhein.
Vetta came to stand beside her. He said nothing to break the moment, just waited with her. He'd always been a good kid. Mokheyenn's descendent. He'd always been more like his grandfather than his grandmother, a storm without her thunder.
Leshet looked at him then, the white hair he'd inherited from both sides, the frost on his breath from Mokhein. "Curun," she called him by his band name.
But he wasn't here as her squad leader. "Sometimes I think about her too."
He'd always been a good kid. Leshet patted his shoulder and went to help break camp.
Leshet had been elite since before Ameri raised this stretch of mountains. She helped to lay this path they're patrolling through them, on their way to the next watchpoint. She'd been bred for it, raised to it, married in it. She sometimes wondered if she knew how to be anything else.
A walk through the rain and mists of another white spring. Her unit stayed watchful and alert, eyes open for enemies that would likely not appear.
There were still enemies sometimes on the northern border circuit, raiders from beyond Northland and the Hilakhot clans, but in the mountains of the southern border, there was only tension, not real skirmishes or war. There was enough space in the familiar winds for memory to settle into the spaces where her former companions and their former war used to fit. The air seemed to vibrate with the singing tension of Saiyar's power. Tayas, the storm. Mokhein, the rain. Saiyar, the rumbling in the earth and a symphony of winds. There were others, flickering like shadows through her heart.
She looked ahead to those who stood beside her now, bumped her shoulder lightly against her husband's arm. He didn't make a big thing out of it. He just lightly bumped her back.
They made camp at another waypoint, set a fire, divided their watches. Leshet and her husband, Vetta and his combat partner Anae went up first, finding the usual spots to face outward, guardians against whatever enemies might choose to come.
Are you tired?
Usually Tayas didn't call her at random moments, let alone opening with random questions. Especially, when he should know she was standing watch.
Did you need something? She managed not to infuse the send with too much amusement.
He likely heard it anyway, the analyst in him difficult to evade. I promise, it's relevant.
It gave her pause. What trouble was Tayas going to drop on her now?
But did it truly matter? She looked out from their mountains toward the distant plains, and she answered, No.
9/1/24
Find Me in the Snow
Under every story lies the sea.
Uniemi's brother Irya always ran around like a wild child, in her eyes. Grinning so brightly his eyes disappeared into half-moon shapes, he threw himself into every unnecessary task he ever set for himself.
She'd seen him scramble up the huge trunks of ancient trees to fetch down his mother's favorite flowers, nearly giving their mother conniptions, though it wasn't their mother's face that gave it away, but rather the pained lining to her grateful smiles and the later rules on what constituted safe climbing. She'd seen him skip across the river, raging with fresh snowmelt, from boulder to boulder before their father found out and banned river-crossing until it went back down in summer. She'd seen Irya run around every gathering, crossing miles in a day, weary and dirty but triumphant with another new friend from some distant clan before their father hosed him off in cold water before bed.
In short, Uniemi had figured out a long time ago that her little brother was the least likely of all five children of the family to ever reach adulthood.
Their parents' voices were very quiet as they shooed the children into their sister's house and over to the fireplace, but Uniemi and Irya were never particularly likely to sit out of hearing range when bad things seemed afoot. It was unusual enough to trek over to their sister's house in the middle of the night, let alone when snow had begun to fall on the mountain. Traveling could become treacherous rather quickly.
Irya snuck over to the bedroom and put his ear to the door. Uniemi honestly didn't wait very far behind him.
"She got so sick so fast," their older sister Yuni said, a faint thread of fear underlying her voice. "We're out of snowflowers and haven't found any yet this year."
Uniemi and Irya exchanged glances. The winter fever had always been treated with snowflower tea. If you caught it quickly enough, it wasn't fatal, but that window was terribly short.
"We can try to take her to the hospital," their father said.
"It's not safe to travel," their mother answered shortly.
The distance between the two houses was relatively short, a trek across the town of Ginieng. The hospital was a whole town over, dangerous in a snowstorm.
The two children went back over to the fire before their parents could come out and find them eavesdropping.
Uniemi shivered, the book she'd brought with her no longer comforting. Their niece was just a few months old. Taking her out in this weather would be as risky as trying to ride out the fever.
Irya grimaced. "I found snowflowers the other day."
Uniemi lifted her head, alarmed. "Where?" Snowflowers grew up tall trees he had no business climbing under their mother's new rules.
"I didn't climb up and grab them," Irya told her. "I just saw them."
"Oh. You have to tell father then. He can go look for them."
Irya was too young to be dragged into this, his father's face said when he told him. Too young to brave the growing blizzard outside. He frowned at the window. "Dress warm," he said.
Irya put on all the layers his mother fished out of the closet for him. His marriage brother's coat was bigger than Irya's but "better awkward than frozen," his mother said.
His father took him by the hand, big glove swallowing Irya's smaller one, and startling him. His father hadn't held his hand since he was only four gatherings old, half the age he was now.
"Don't let go," his father told him.
He nodded. "Yes, father."
The wind nearly blew him over when they first walked out the door. He clung to his father's hand as they began the slow, difficult trek into the woods, Irya trying his hardest to serve as a faithful guide.
He couldn't see, he could barely feel his fingers. Being named for the snow certainly seemed to give him no advantage in it. But he thought of his sister and her tiny child, gripped his father's hand, and kept pushing onward.
His father pulled him to one side to avoid a rock he couldn't see, carefully kept him close, and Irya was glad he wasn't out here alone. He'd never felt his mountain so cold and alien and unfriendly to him before this night. But that feeling also seemed to make it harder to remember the way. He had to pause frequently and try to figure out the way he went. He'd mutter into his device his father had put in his ear a year ago and his father would answer back, but they couldn't hear each other's voices over the gale, only through the device, and the effect was equally disorienting.
Slowly, they reached the deeper woods, trees taller, branches thick with drifts of snow upon them. Irya got buried under one sliding off and his father had to drag him sputtering out from under it.
They walked more carefully, even boots providing only so much grip where ice had slicked on rocky surfaces and Irya felt tendrils of fear at not knowing how close the river was.
His teeth were starting to chatter. He held onto his father's hand like a lifeline, tried to crane his head to see, but all he could see was darkness and swirls of white in the freezing winds. "I don't know," he said suddenly into his device. "I don't know where we are."
His father picked him up suddenly, holding him close for a long moment. Irya felt like a tiny lost child and it was embarrassing, but he pressed his cold face against his father's warm neck and held on for as long as the moment lasted.
"Talk to me," his father said.
He meant more than that, Irya was sure, so Irya told him again about where he'd gone when he'd found the flowers, about how they'd been up in the nook of two great branches hanging over the river, so he hadn't climbed up to fetch them down. It was against the rules.
The whisper of a grimace through the device, a sensation that was always odd when it wasn't words, but right now, it was comforting to know his father was listening.
He set Irya down and carefully pointed him a little further to the leftward path. "Let's keep going."
Uniemi tried not to fret. She read her book to drown out the world while her mother and Yuni carefully didn't talk about the baby fussing, just talked about Yuni's husband's deployment and when he'd be back, about their plans for the spring, about anything except father and Irya out in the snow.
The world was still inside Uniemi's heart. She couldn't drown it out.
Irya looking back could never figure out how he got separated from his father. One moment, he had his hand tightly engulfed in his father's. The next, he'd stumbled and come loose. He scrambled right back up but couldn't find his father, couldn't hear him over the yelling winter winds, couldn't see him in the dark. He called over his device and heard, "Where are you?" but even answering, couldn't find him.
For too many frozen moments, he stood still so his father could find him. "I'm here, I'm here." But then he looked up at the great tree trunk beside him and went quiet. He recognized its shape, the twist of the great branch stretching out toward the river, the even larger one stretched out beside it.
He got up. He reached for the branch. "I found it."
"Irya, I'm coming."
And he should have waited perhaps to climb the branches, but the flowers were right there, and he climbed up before he could think to not, gingerly inched his way along their length, and felt for the lowest part of the stems. Snowflowers only bloomed in winter. They were the strangest of flowers, but their cold, lovely blues and whites would also heal.
He gathered them up, then shimmied carefully down the tree, dizzy with grateful relief, right before he slammed into something sharp and hard and painful and fell.
Irya lay on the cold, snow-packed ground, shadows of dark trees overhead, breathing the knife-sharp cold of the air, pinpricks of snow hitting his face before they went numb. Night on the mountain, a blizzard swirling over his eyes, what should have been a roaring pain in his middle where he'd rammed himself sticky and bloody into a tree branch he couldn't see just moments ago.
Time slowed down, the treasure clutched in his fist somehow meaning both more and less than it once had, right when he'd chosen to go out into the storm. He needed the snowflowers for his tiny niece. He didn't know how he could possibly get up and trek back to his sister's house to give them to her.
His heart felt unbearably loud in his body. Each breath was a struggle. He closed his eyes, trying to find more strength somewhere in his body, and that's when he noticed the thread.
You're hurt, something like a voice echoed through him, more sensation than word, greater than the wind and fiercer, a low humming growl burning in his bones.
He opened his eyes then, but he didn't see anything different from the swirls of white and shadows above.
Do you want our power? another voice-like sensation drifted through him, expanded like mists, cool through his limbs.
He's so young to ask that, a third spoke, softer and more delicate than either of the other two, barely a distant chiming note. But I cannot heal him without it.
Sorrow in the low humming growl of who he suddenly realized was the tiger, that great hunter patron of his people. You can never turn aside.
Irya clutched at that voice, his empty hand reaching out as if he could catch her by the paw. "Please," he said, breaking the word into more syllables than it needed, trying to get it out over the pain and the panting breaths he could manage. Please. My sister's little girl. Please.
Is that what you want? asked the gentle chime, its bright note swelling and swelling, brighter, higher. You must always honor the faithful, that note sang.
You must make right whatever you can make right, added the overwhelming expansive mist.
You must never turn aside, growled the tiger.
Irya stared up through the impossible numb weightlessness of the too cold night. He couldn't speak it, only think it, so he thought it with all the strength he had left. Yes.
The wind grew quiet. The snow became calm upon the drifts, no longer swirling over his head. The pain in his body faded, and the numbness went sharp and stinging.
You may call us, if you ever need us, the expanse within him said.
Another ringing chime. But I don't think you often will.
The feeling of them receded, a heavy weight lifted. Irya forced himself to stand. He clutched the snowflowers to his chest and looked for some sign of which direction to go.
His father found him first. An arm grabbed him up before he knew what hit him and he gasped, but then the piney scent of his father's great coat hit him, and Irya grabbed hold. "I got the snowflowers," he told his father.
His father didn't answer, just tightened his grip and trekked back through the tall drifts of crystalline white. His mouth was tight, almost a frown.
Irya didn't press. His father had heard him. He put his head on his father's shoulder and fell asleep.
Uniemi stared as their father carried Irya into the house and gently peeled a wilted bunch of flowers out of Irya's hand and passed it to their mother.
Their mother's face was very grim, but she took them and went to the kitchen. The clang of the teapot soon followed.
Their father set Irya down by the fire and carefully undid the torn and bloody coat while Uniemi gripped her book tight enough to hurt. "Is he–"
"Alive," their father said, curt. He rubbed one hand over Irya's unbroken skin beneath the equally bloody hole in his shirt. "A blanket."
Uniemi fetched a blanket and covered Irya with it.
In the background, a baby wailed, then calmed, and perhaps she should just be grateful that everyone was alive.
Morning brought more questions and finally some answers. Irya popped up like an unlikely snowflower himself, eating his breakfast with his usual irrepressible cheer, feet knocking against the table leg, and Uniemi had never resented having to worry about him so hard as she did in that moment.
"What were you thinking?" she demanded.
"Something I'd also like to know," their mother said quiet but stern.
Yuni said nothing but rocked her happy, sleeping baby as if the terrifying illness of last night was just a dream.
Irya glanced over at Yuni and then back to his porridge, suddenly quiet himself. He shrugged. "I asked the tiger for help."
Silence covered the table a moment. "I see," their father said at last. "That explains a few things."
A few. Not the choice in the first place, though Uniemi could understand it. Why couldn't he have waited just a little longer? Would it even have made a difference? a smaller, more worried part of her wondered more.
She muttered viciously into her porridge, "It didn't have to be you."
Irya just looked at her a moment, then stuffed another spoonful in his mouth. The odd-patterned tap of his kicking resumed.
Easy for him to be happy. Easy for him to go risking his life for somethings and nothings and Uniemi got herself up and washed her bowl and walked outside onto the snowy front porch step, almost surprised her parents didn't stop her. But they understood both their children and always had. They understood the need to sacrifice and protect, and Uniemi surprised herself by beginning to cry.
I want to protect, she said, hand sliding down her own stomach to lie over the mark that rested there. I want to be able to find him if he ever does something stupid again, she added. I want to be able to stop someone from dying.
A soft wind, a faint ringing sound, a low roar as of a sea.
She listened inside herself for the terms, the strictures of what would be her life forevermore. Yes, she answered, hearing them, then gave her name. I will be faithful.
