Difference between revisions of "Tracker: Notebook 2024"
(→7/21/24) |
(→7/21/24) |
||
| Line 564: | Line 564: | ||
==== 3 Times It Was Way Too Quiet and 1 Time It Was Way Too Loud ==== | ==== 3 Times It Was Way Too Quiet and 1 Time It Was Way Too Loud ==== | ||
| − | "It's too quiet." | + | "It's too quiet." Irya sat up in the bed and looked around at the still, dark bedroom, listening for any sounds of tiny feet beyond the door. |
| − | "It's 5 a.m. It's supposed to be quiet." | + | His wife Shiset groaned and buried her face in the pillow. "It's 5 a.m. It's supposed to be quiet." |
| + | |||
| + | "I don't trust it." | ||
| + | |||
| + | Shiset squinted up at him a moment. "Well, it's your turn." Then she rolled over and went back to sleep. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Irya 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 some sort of plank they'd dragged from who knows where 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 plank 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 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..." | ||
| + | |||
| + | Yitatse, the six-year-old eldest, his sister Inie, the four-year-old, and open-mouthed Chmsa, their two-year-old brother, clearly did not want to explain themselves. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The cat had meanwhile thoroughly attached itself to Irya's shoulders and hissed at them. | ||
| + | |||
| + | "Well, we heard cats always land on their feet," Yitatse began. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Irya's eyebrows shot up. "So you decided to test the theory?" | ||
| + | |||
| + | Chmsa nodded, Inie tucked her head behind Yitatse, and Yitatse grimaced, clearly knowing that was the wrong answer. | ||
| − | |||
| − | |||
<hr> | <hr> | ||
Revision as of 15:43, 21 July 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, and 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.
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 got 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 anymore 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.
"You're going to be in so much trouble," Ahima told him.
Irya giggled and poured it 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." Irya 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 Shiset groaned and buried her face in the pillow. "It's 5 a.m. It's supposed to be quiet."
"I don't trust it."
Shiset squinted up at him a moment. "Well, it's your turn." Then she rolled over and went back to sleep.
Irya 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 some sort of plank they'd dragged from who knows where 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 plank 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 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..."
Yitatse, the six-year-old eldest, his sister Inie, the four-year-old, and open-mouthed Chmsa, their two-year-old brother, clearly did not want to explain themselves.
The cat had meanwhile thoroughly attached itself to Irya's shoulders and hissed at them.
"Well, we heard cats always land on their feet," Yitatse began.
Irya's eyebrows shot up. "So you decided to test the theory?"
Chmsa nodded, Inie tucked her head behind Yitatse, and Yitatse grimaced, clearly knowing that was the wrong answer.
"Can we get a refund?"
"No! I love my babies!"
"I love our babies too, but you didn't eat cat's claws for breakfast."
Shiset did an admirable job of trying not to laugh.
laundry fort
The book fort - too loud
sneaking around to put all the books back
