RL, insent with Deb's suggested edits.

Crawling back in (asleep on feet, huzzah for meds) to say, remember the conversation we had awhile back about there being no One True Way?

There aint no One True Way.

(thunk)

sleep now....

Someday I won't be on this night shift anymore, someday I'll have only one job and someday I'll have time to write and offer to read Buffistas' writing.

Someday starts the 31st, with any luck.

Good sleep to everyone. I'm off to catch up on Angel episodes.

My characters are all lazy bums - they'd much rather just lay around talking endlessly.

Your characters and mine should get together, but I greatly fear that they'd all talk even more.

But deb (and many other people I've talked to) say they just do stuff. They actually don't thinkabout it that way.

Rebecca, let me clarify this, if I can. You know the kind of people who want to tell you why a piece of music works? "Oh, what the composer did here was to integrate a cunning use of tritone with the descant to the major seventh, and that call-response is specifically designed to provoke that particular emotional response, especially in women..."

I, well, I want to kill these people. Bite me, evil rationalists! Because for me, music is a magic spell; it's purely visceral. There's nothing intellectual or even really cerebral about it, for me. It's straightforward abacadabra, or perhaps nom myoho renge kyo: a mantra.

Magic, mantra, either way, what happens when you deconstruct one of those things? They lose their power.

Ahhhh. I love Deb. So. Damn. Much. I even bookmarked the post this came from. I feel the same way -- about music, writing, movies. I don't like seeing the man behind the curtain.

So I don't. I avoid practicing the craft, or training in it, or considering the word and how it falls, because I'm afraid, if I put too much mind into it, the spirit will fly. When I read it back and change things, it's generally because new bits of the story have come clearer for me, or new bits of what makes the characters who they are. That's all, really. So, I'm a primitive.

And this has been an insanely nourishing few hours. You know?

Oh, yes. Very very good. Definitely.

The fire highlights a girl’s face, making her nose longer, then shorter, casting shadows on her companion through ragged hair. The light dances on the chain, shimmers on the manacles at ankle and wrist. A slim brown hand slides through the hair, smoothing, stroking the scalp underneath. The girl stirs, sighs, stretches, and is hushed by the stroking hand. The speaker goes on.

Yes, I tell you when we are eating, and I tell you when you bathe, but I also tell you now. I think you are beautiful. I do not usually say so much. It is just that when you look at me, when I see you first, with your ragged hair, all yellow and brown and almost white, all hanging down below your ears and half covering your pale eyes and something else covering your eyes that I can’t see, but makes me so I can’t see myself and can’t see what you think, I know I want to be near you and hear you speak in my ear. I do not want that so often, and so I think that must be beauty.

I wish you to know me, but it is hard. I ride my bike across the desert for the gathering people. You may know them; they save things they say are important from the before. I make my own wind when I ride, and I see the bush ripple with pale colors and the animals jump at my noise. Sometimes I find a book or a story. Once I find music and they are very happy. I never find computer parts, too bad, because that makes them also happy. I thought one day, but I guess not.

The voice is silent again; the hand strokes eyelids and brow, up through the hair across the scalp, drawing the hair to its ends before letting it fall. The hushed sounds of the bush reassert themselves before the voice begins again. There is a rhythm to the speech, a melancholic call to prayer.

I bring back food sometimes, like small bags of salt or, once, cumin. That makes them happy too. I like them. They take me in when I am lost without people. I am hungry but I am strong and I have my bike. I think aha, they want to make use of me, but this is okay, because they feed me, and let me sleep and do not steal my things, so this is a good trade for use. I use them and they use me. They say they like me and I am sometimes funny, but this I do not understand.

When I am riding my bike across the bush with the man who also finds things with me, I am almost free. I have one companion, which is not too many, and he speaks little and mostly when I want. I pretend not to hear sometimes, and he stops. We camp and he does not touch me. Sometimes he sings, and that is silly, but it is okay to say I am not alone.

He and I, we go to the mountains, and we go to the tradings, and we bring back things with our rings or other things we know someone wants. This time he brings back a whole set of Shakespeare bound in dark brown with very pale, thin white paper and black ink, no damage except a little damp on the last book. We trade them for a little coffee and a twist of sugar. We trade for the sugar with a ring, but not my ring because I did not want to follow the story to the books so it is not my find. The man will not trade without the sugar, so we have to go get the sugar and it is taking some time, but then he takes the sugar and the coffee and he gives us the books and another thing, a bottle of something that smells nice and my companion says is to put on when I am clean and want to party. He gives it to me, but I do not use it because it is not mine. I did not trade for it.

The hand releases the hair and waves in the firelight, showing rings on every finger before returning to stroke, the curve of an arm, sliding down to the hand.

We trade with gold and gems, in rings like I did for you, because always people want pretty, shiny things, even when they do not know what to eat for sure when it is not now. I like to trade. For the trading, I have a bed of my own and do not share. When I am there where the gathering people live with their two cows and their six chickens and their books in the underground room and the computers, two of those! When I am with them, I am safe. I can eat food from the greenhouse or help the people in the kitchen, or the people with the bikes. I cannot help the many people with the books, because I tore one, once, for a blank piece of paper. I do not know why I cannot use blank paper from a book, but I have made them unhappy, so I do not do anything with the books. I can do laundry, but I do not want to, so I help with the bikes most.

She bites her lip and tosses her hair back before settling on the blanket beside the other girl, spooning against her side.

When I go out, just beyond the before time, when I hear my mam is dead and all my people gone and I am in a strange place far across the blue and green sea, I am found by a man who gives me food and takes me with him in his old truck with a tent on the back and many things to trade. He is okay nice to me. But, one day he trades for many bottles of wine or beer or something. It is not now, but many days before now, and I am very small and younger then, so when he drinks the bottles and makes me lay down beside him and pulls at my clothes, I do not know what to do for sure. If I fight, I think he will make me leave and I do not want to eat bugs anymore. I lay still.

The voice grows fierce and her nails score the hand she holds.

I do not cry. I cannot cry since my mam is gone, but I do not cry because I do not want to cry too. I am strong. This is the now. I do what I must in the now.

Realizing what she has done, she soothes the hand with kisses, and then lies back down, stroking still the curve of hip, the jutting bones, counting the ribs with a skipping finger.

He dies when he tries to trade with a motorcycle gang. They are very fierce and if they think you cheat, they get angry. I do not know if he tries to cheat or not, but there are loud voices and a bang and then he is bleeding in the dust. They take me with them because I can drive the truck. They trade the truck but they keep me. I belong to them, but when many more days pass, I belong to only one and that is good. I trade with them, or they send me to places where a small female alone getting sympathy can unlock a door or unbar a gate. I am with them awhile; until one time I do not open the door though my heart beats hard and my hands shake, but I do something else, and someone maybe hears a sound or sees something and the ones who own me are treated like scavengers and are killed with birdshot, maybe. There are loud noises and shouting. I don’t know what, but they are dead in the dirt, their bikes scattered and their legs and arms all thrown wide, with the ants already on their faces and the birds circling in the morning sky. I see them when I go out the gate before anyone else and take the bike I like best and go away.

I go that way for a long time, a long time. I trade some, and I eat what I can. I learn about colors. I think, in the before time, about colors. Before there are lots of colors, like red and blue and green. Clothes have lots of colors and I like them. Bright colors are my favorite in the before, but in the now I like small colors.

She smoothes a hand over the other’s small breast, toys with a nipple.

I like this small color. Your eyes are a small color. I cannot tell what. Like blue but green, only ice or opal with no fire.

She sits up suddenly, pushes the other completely on her back and brushes the hair out of her eyes, looking deep, looking for a spark.

When I first see you, with my companion all full of the Shakespeare books and me with nothing to show, and nothing to trade, at Smitties, we come there for me, to trade some small thing, but we are there late in the dark so we get a room and I take a bath. I love to take baths. Then we go down and smell the funny smells and there are almost no colors that are good, but we sleep inside and drink beer and talk, talk with friends and enemies and people we don’t know, so we can hear the stories.

In the morning, my head hurts and there is no trade except the small gray man in the corner, ribbons and plastics that no one wants scattered on a folding tray in front of him. He doesn’t look at us and we try not to look much at him because we do not ever want to be there in the corner like that. We are going, our small bags packed and the Shakespeare bundled safely. We pay and we go to the door, and there you are with the one who owns you. Your man has no good colors. He is dirty and his eyes are brown like shit without shine. He says you are worth more to him in an hour than the rings my companion holds out for you. So my companion cannot buy you because he doesn’t have enough rings. When I look at you, with your hair all colors falling down and your eyes hiding secrets, I think I feel something that makes my face red. I do not look at you. I look at the men. They talk serious. He says he cannot trade you for too little. I look at you again, and then I see that your skin is almost as brown as me, but there is white just under the top.

A small hand curves along the top of one breast.

Here, and I see that, and I want to see more, what is in the shadows. I am hot to my ears, but I still want to see. Then you smile, a little, at me. I have my rings to trade, and my companion is angry and talks about rights and slavery, but I remember what it is to be in the now and do what I must do. So, I give your man all the rings on my left hand and I take your chains in that hand and I walk away. He shouts that it is not enough, and that he wants his chains, but I do not listen because I know better. When we are outside, my companion is happy. He looks young, smiling wide with white teeth and lines around his mouth. His yellow hair flaps in the sun as he dances. He slaps my back and tells me that we will take you back to the gathering people, but I do not go. He gets angry, but I take you here, alone, because I want to know. I do not understand. I look at your eyes and I cannot see. I want to know what you see.

The chained girl stretches slim brown arms above her head and arches her back, bruises and scrapes occluded by the darkness and the flickering fire. Her eyes are flat. The links rattle. The speaker takes a key from her belt and removes the chains, setting them aside. A glint of knowledge in the eyes, a hand rises and slides to the back of the speaker’s neck, pulls her down, mouths meet. The speaker sobs as the kisses grow violent, both girls stroke and shift, rocks bruise bones through the thin blanket. They come together violently, the speaker finally spending herself by wrapping her thighs around the other girl and rocking violently, thrashing in her haste and eagerness. They sprawl together, half on the blanket, half on the ground, until the speaker’s heart slows and she realizes the blanket is wrapped around the other girl and she is alone, naked in the sand. She rolls away and speaks.

I do not know if you hear me. I wish you to. I will take you to the gathering people in the morning. They will give you my room, maybe. I have other clothes there. Maybe you will use them. Maybe you will know how to treat books.

Damn, Deena.

Damn, but that's good. Yes. Lovely. VERY evocative indeed.