Tracker: Notebook 2025
Contents
February 2025
2/16/25
Some Kind of Heaven
Kharshtha Ahima-kiyoni remembered the first time he'd met Irya several clans gatherings ago in the midautumn before he turned ten. At the time, he'd been both amused and befuddled at Irya's propensity to run around, chatter in his friendly way at kids until they'd become his friends before they really knew how it happened, and despite all his being underfoot in such a crowd, never quite getting hurt.
Of course, that particular faculty of his suddenly made sense.
Ahima vaguely recalled having seen it before once, Irya's arm waving right through a supposedly solid object while he stretched dangerously far overhead for a book on one of his built-in shelves.
"Convenient," Ahima said dryly.
Irya glanced down with a curious expression but kept waving his arm through the bottom of the shelf until he caught on the book he wanted and pulled it through the shelf too.
"Can you make anything like that, so it goes through things?"
"Kind of." Irya tossed the book down on the bed and flopped backward against the pillow. "It's not really making it go through things exactly."
Ahima studied Irya for a long minute, trying to imagine where Irya's contract marks were hidden. He'd never noticed them, though Ahima was fairly certain Irya knew where Ahima's were. "So what is it then?"
Irya frowned. His fingers fiddled with the book a moment, then he sighed, sat up, and draped himself over Ahima's back.
Even though they'd only known each other four years, Ahima knew that Irya actually wasn't much of a cuddler, so he presumed that this wasn't something Irya liked to talk about–or would want him sharing with anyone else.
"It's like your name," Irya said after a moment. "This is the near heaven, but everyone knows there are others."
And wasn't that a startling thought. "You can make things pass through other heavens?"
"Instead of this one. Or this one too, but"–Irya blew out a sigh–"they have to pass through some kind of heaven."
Ahima chewed on that for a long moment. He wasn't sure exactly what about it bothered Irya. "Your head is heavy," he finally said.
"Sorry," Irya answered. And didn't move. At all.
Ahima sighed. "My parents want me to be the next bridge builder of our band."
Ahima was thirteen years old. By all rights, he was far too young to even be thinking about a lifelong sworn duty or whether he was at all well suited for it. But there had never been any question his parents were thinking about it from almost the moment Ahima was born.
Irya hmmmed thoughtfully. "You'd be good at it."
"I wouldn't," Ahima replied promptly.
"Of course, you would." Irya shifted around to go from lying on Ahima's back to basically hugging him. "You're everybody's favorite friend."
Ahima stayed silent.
Irya was the friend maker of their group. Irya had fished Ahima out of the crowded Doschtongar encampments and played with him one year, then introduced him to two more friends the next gathering from completely different clan land allotments, then two more the next. The size of their friend group seemed to grow faster than Ahima really knew how to deal with, but he mostly got by sticking close to Irya and Uchulr and only saying something when he knew how it would go over. Ahima wasn't the favorite, nor the anchor of the wheel, nor the bridge maker, and he never had been.
But trying to change Irya's mind had always been pointless.
"You're my brother, right?" Ahima asked lightly, invoking a promise from several summers back. "You'd say that even if I was just your favorite."
Irya sat up and grabbed Ahima in a playful strangehold. "You are my favorite. You'll just have to deal with it."
Ahima laughed and laughed. There wasn't really escaping someone who could control which heaven your bodies were in, but Ahima didn't particularly want to escape, for all he tried.
Ahima's parents liked Irya and liked that he was forcibly broadening Ahima's friends group beyond what Ahima was willing to do himself. Ahima always felt like he could breathe a little easier when he came out for the summer, slept in Irya's bed, and ran around Irya's mountains where kids were allowed to be kids without being forced to be anything else just yet. So he'd never let on how much he left the friend making and keeping to Irya and just let the tide of other kids ebb and flow around him, as if he was just dangling feet in the ocean instead of swimming.
Ahima stared at the ceiling that night a long time after Irya had fallen asleep and burrowed into Ahima's side as if he were a pillow. Ahima almost wished their other gathering friends were here, so he could figure out if Irya was actually right, but he also shrank from the idea. It was easier not to test the theory.
"Dad."
Ahima found his father in the living room, speculatively eyeing up a bowl of cut glass.
...
"Did you ever want to become anything other than a guardian?"
Irya's mother set the ladle down in the pot and turned her full attention on Ahima.
He stood very still and straight though the weight of that attention made him want to pull away.
She reached out and tucked her hand behind his head and bent to his height. "I wanted to protect my family," she said. "I never thought once about whether I wanted to be the guardian."
Ahima blinked at her for a long moment, not fully comprehending such a statement.
But Irya's mother patted him on the head gently and told him to clean his hands for supper, so he let her words wash over him and dipped his head obediently, turning to action rather than thought. It was only later in the night that he took them down off the shelf of his mind again and considered.
Irya's breath was slow and even beside him. His friend had curled up on his side and gone straight to sleep while Ahima pretended sleepiness. Irya's house was a good place to think things over, so far ashore from the Dragon Sea where Ahima's family lived. High up in the mountains and the river gurgling away too distant to even hear from Irya's house, Ahima could pretend he was free of the water he swam in, the current of his mother's expectations.
And perhaps that was the taste of what Irya's mother meant. She had lived in her own sea, dived below the waves, and to be the guardian was her tool and not her duty.
The day was very quiet, tall evergreen trees swaying in the soft rush of wind the only real sound. Ahima had thought he'd be able to hear the distant gurgle of the river, but it was quiet.
His left hand rested over the contract mark on his right arm. It wasn't the only one, but it was the most visible and accessible. He held it and really thought in the direction of whatever high one was on the other end.
"Can you help?" he asked.
2/18/25
Story 2
Light shines in the most unexpected of places. Sometimes Song things it'd be nice to know that someone actually cared about her and her brother, but she doesn't focus on that most days. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing worth focusing on, nice to haves and wishful dreams airier than summer clouds above them.
Her brother has a sullen face and he sometimes looks at her like he's brooding over some idea that's also not worth focusing on. She taps her shoulder against his to make him stop.
They reach a likely corner where she sets down her mother's violin, the only thing of value they really had, opens the case in front of her, and starts to play. Her brother sits just far enough away to not detract from the pitiful sight Song makes while still giving off a vaguely protective vibe.
Song does not play the violin well. It's pity that drives a handful of people over the next few hours to drop just enough dollars in the violin case that they'll buy a meal for the day to split. It's not enjoyment. No one would look at Song as she is now and enjoy it.
Grow What You Have
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey." – Matthew 25:14-15 NKJV
If I want him to live until I come, what is that to you? Follow me.
2/24/25
Note to Self: What is That to You?
I am reminded often lately of the line in Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis where Aslan tells various characters: "That is someone else's story. I am telling you your story."
And in that, I see the echoes of the Gospel of John, towards the final words of the book, where Jesus tells Peter, "If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow me."
It is easy to look at the spirituality of others, those you have loved and admired and looked up to over the years, and think to yourself, but I am the least, how could I be the one that God has chosen? It can be easy to think to yourself that you do not have the talents or the promises or the strengths that others have.
But again, the Parable of the Talents, where some are given five, some two, some one. Was the one who was given two talents unable to find the approval of his Lord? No, his master did not look upon the one who had ten talents to return to him and compare him who had only four. He told them both, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
Sometimes, you see those who are so much younger than you and yet who have done so much more than you. You see those who seem to have greater skills and capabilities, who have accomplished more though they started later, who are able to work harder. And yet, what is that to you? Follow Him.
Again, the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. Those who idled until late, even the eleventh hour, who worked only one hour, they received the same wages as those who worked from the early morning.
There are days you feel you are worthless, you have accomplished nothing for all you were given talents, and perhaps you are not even remaining in God's plan. But God's will for you is not dependent on the strength of others, or whether you are as righteous, as early, as strong, or even as productive as they are. His will for you is that you take what you have been given, no matter how meagre or abundant, and follow Him. His favor is found by simply choosing to come and serve as best you may.
March 2025
3/31/25
Some Kind of Heaven
"Hello, Yinna." Ahima tucked his folded hands beneath his chin and aimed the faintest of smiles into the device screen. Irya wasn't in the room, so he had free room to flop out on the bed and call whoever he wanted.
Yinna turned his nose up suspiciously and eyed the entire screen with obvious scrutiny. "Just you?" he sounded surprised. "I thought you'd drag Irya along."
Ahima tapped a finger on the spread, considering those words with interest. "Usually Irya's the one dragging me along."
"Ah." Instant understanding lit in Yinna's eyes. He leaned back, apparently at his desk, the top edges of a book in frame.
"Studying?" Ahima asked.
Yinna nodded easily. "We all get homework."
Whatever candidate pool he was automatically in from birth, Ahima surmised. It tended to be a thing with the eastern clans; they didn't give their children time to decide whether they wanted to be in it.
April 2025
4/15/25
Some Kind of Heaven
"Are there really twelve heavens?" Ahima asked, dropping onto the bed beside Irya.
Layers upon layers. He didn't really have to choose between them, did he?
Irya eyed Ahima's exposed shoulder. yees clothing had really been designed for recognized adults who had sworn marks to show off, not children without them.
"I've never counted," Irya answered, sounding distracted. He gestured at the shirt. "You'll get cold."
Ginieng's summers were pleasant, but this high up in the mountains, it was cold.
Ahima hmmed thoughtfully, watching the dance of threads radiating from his friend–one thick and golden as any of the ones leading to the members of Irya's born siblings–then finally answered, "I won't."
4/16/25
Cry Aloud! (poem)
Cry out in the midst of a barren wasteland!
Cry out for its King to return!
Cry out that the Sun of righteousness rise
And let not the latter rains spurn!
Cry out for the talents unburied, unwasted!
Cry out for the Spirit to
4/21/25
High
"Ah, little mist. What dark did you wander out of?"
He smiled so that his teeth just showed.
"What are the high ones?" he'd asked once, simply, faint curiosity underpinning it but barely edging the tide of true feeling. "Gods?"
"I've heard men call us that." A diffident shrug from one who glowed with a blue light, though he'd carved himself in the shape of a man. "What is a god to you?"
Tayas' hands stilled from their ceaseless, restless typing. The electric impulse of his mind and essence continued zinging through the networks of his intelligence. "One who has great power, who answers what is asked of them."
The fierce blue wind, the high one of Tayas' wife, shrugged again. "Yes."
"One who made the heavens."
Such a smile, the edge of white bone teeth and glitter of eye. "No."
Tayas' fingers started back up, comfortable when the gleam of reality shone through.
"Child, we are the heavens."
