So I made my journal Friends Only. I would have liked to leave it open, but unfortunately people can be a bit stalker-ish, so I decided to stay on the safe side. If you've come over here from hogwarts_elite or anywhere else that I frequent, though, I will most likely add you back if I know who you are.
A few notes that aren't so much a friending policy as a preview of what you might be getting into if you friend me:
1. My journal = my little corner of the Internet. Different people use their LJs for different things. Mine is very much a journal about my own life. If I think of something I want to write about, I write it and post it here. I have a tendency to pretend that no one is watching when I write. Of course, anything that really should be private does get posted privately, but I usually write to myself rather than to other people. This doesn't mean that I don't comment or that my entries are completely boring... well, I sure hope they aren't boring. I just write whatever is on my mind. Hopefully, it's interesting.
2. This journal is a drama-free zone. Maybe this doesn't seem to mesh with Rule One, but trust me, it does. :) Basically, I just don't deal with drama or wank. I try to repel it from my own life, and usually I succeed, with the exception of Term 7 at hogwarts_elite. So naturally, I don't want it in my journal. Of course, there's a line between mature, intelligent debate and calling each other twatmuffins in the comments to some entry or other. It's the latter that I'm not interested in.
3(a). If you're here for my icons, this is not the place to be. I post my icons at skylighting. This serves as my center for real-life rambling. :)
3(b). If you're here for Sim-related things, this is also not the place to be.cobaltchronicle is the journal that you're looking for. I will talk about writing in here when it relates to things like my own goals, but the vast majority of my writing-related things will be over there.
4. For LJ Idol purposes: I make an exception to being friends-only for therealljidol participation. I'm happy if people friend me so that they know when I've posted a competition entry, but please let me know if you want to be a friend-friend. :)
Reading books is not as simple as it used to be. It was much easier when I went to the library or the bookstore every couple of weekends and brought home some new titles. Now, I have ten unread print books on my shelf, three iBooks, three Kindle books (two of which are Idol-related), and one audiobook that is a duplicate of a print book that still resides at my parents’ house. How do I sort through all the different media for reading?
I have decided that I would like to re-read Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books. I originally read those books in the late 90s and early 00s, and I have not reread them recently. In fact, I am so far removed from them that when Mark Oshiro began to read and review them, I realized that I did not remember the books at all. When he started on The Realms of the Gods, I summed it up as follows: “So at some point, they go to the Divine Realms. They run around there for a while. It’s kind of weird. Oh, and I kind of remember how it ends.” Upon reading the reviews, I am half-convinced that I never actually read the book, but only heard about it from something else. I have no memory of almost all of these plot points! But I know I read the books, because my mom had to rip them out of my hands so that I would stop being rude and write my Bat Mitzvah thank you notes!
If I could find my print copies, then I would just read them. I cannot find them. My best guess is that they are in storage near my parents’ house, so I cannot easily get to them. What do I do? Do I get the e-books or the audiobooks? How do I choose what medium to read a book in from here on out? Will the need to choose an option haunt me every time that I want a new book or an old book that’s not in my physical possession?
This has been an entry for Week 9 at therealljidol, where I selected the prompt "Home." Please take a look at the many other excellent entries that will go up this week!
Alice wanted to believe that Orlando merely slept on his hospital bed, but his injuries and the stagnant beep of the machines told her that the accident had taken his life. Fortunately, she could reclaim it. Her arms moved in mechanical motions to touch the talismans she carried in her book bag. The instructions for the long-forbidden spell lurking at the back of her grimoire said that the more tokens a witch could find that had belonged to the dead person, the better the chance that the spell would work.
On what might have been the twenty-fifth day of the journey through the ruined city, Red stumbled over a piece of rubble that came up to her knees and did not get up. Caterina and her traveling companions tried everything they could to make her rise again. Their sealed, silent mouths could not call the redhead's name, even if they knew it, but they poked her plastic skin with the metal rods they normally used to defend themselves and tried to use their tiny hands to open her eyes. The one in charge, who Caterina called Angel, gestured to the remainder of the group to lift Red from the ground. So Caterina teamed up with flame-scarred Green and took Red's shoulders, and Angel placed one hand on Red's head. With her other hand, Angel gestured, and they pushed Red up.
Thanks to comedychick for her beta reading! I am in the poll for Second Chance Idol here, and the main competition's poll is here. Please read the entries and vote!
Red. Could it be? During her assignment studying the Corae Market of 2355, Lyra had never seen a soul dressed in head-to-toe red like the woman she had just spotted out of the corner of her eye. Red attracted the attention of the blood demons, who would inflict untold suffering upon all who walked here if only given the chance. The woman in red could not be from here; otherwise, she would know better. A foreigner? No, even foreigners knew the customs of Corae. Even if they stifled their laughter at any mention of blood demons, they excised all red from their wardrobes and stalls to preserve access to the market.
"Miss? If you don't want your moon fruit, I'll be having it back," the keeper of the fruit stall shouted above the din.
"I'll be having," Lyra echoed. She took her moon fruits and swept them into her brown satchel before turning to pursue the woman in red. Normally, once lost, it took the luck of the gods to find anyone in the Corae Market in the middle of the morning. But the people parted before the stranger this time, believing that any contact with her would bring the blood demons upon them.
Another time traveler, Lyra concluded. But not a licensed one. The Agency of Chronological Management kept close tabs upon each of its operatives. Each agent wore a monitoring device that tracked her whenabouts and whereabouts. The dossier that Lyra carried on every research mission contained the names and photographs of all agents within her vicinity, and the Chief plotted each operative's movements to ensure that no agent crossed over her own timeline. Furthermore, no agent went on assignment without knowledge of the local customs.
Lyra pulled out her dossier, keeping it concealed within her shoulder bag. But instead of showing nearby agents, a message in red ink filled the page: ALL AGENTS RETURN AT ONCE.
She looked back up from the dossier, where the woman in red kept walking as the crowd parted before her. Instead of activating the snap-back device that would return her to 2543, Lyra took a few steps to the right, her eyes on the mystery woman. She knew something more interesting than exchanges of money and people milling around would happen shortly. Did the Agency have to call her back now?
The dossier hummed again under her hands. ALL AGENTS RETURN IMMEDIATELY.
Lyra looked up again and saw her quarry looking directly at her. She stared back at the unknown traveler's pale face, framed by thick brown hair trying to escape a ponytail. What did she do now? It occurred to Lyra that her flight of fancy had to come to an end. Her tangent from her mission had occupied her mind for a while, but she was just a researcher, and she had to obey the dictates of her Agency. She reached for the watch on her left wrist and pressed the knob on its side that would return her to her own time.
--
The disorientation overtook Lyra upon her arrival one hundred and eighty-eight years later. She reached out both her arms, trying to find something to hold onto while the ground spun beneath her feet, and found herself clinging to another operative.
"Agent Tristan," she heard the Chief say. "You're late."
"Sorry, Chief," Lyra mumbled. She should have prepared herself better for the jump. Any leap through time tended to have a vertiginous effect, particularly jumps of a century or more, but sometimes medication alleviated the impact.
The Chief ignored her transgression for the moment. She directed a laser pointer toward the screen in front of the assembled operatives, and an image of the woman in red Lyra had pursued just moments before turned up. In the photograph, the woman looked less pale than she had appeared in the Corae Market, but Lyra could not miss the resemblance.
"This is Camille Sand," the Chief said. Lyra looked around the crowd of agents for her partner so she could share what had just happened to her in Corae, but saw no sign of Jane Harper. "Five years of distinguished service with the Agency, starting in 2666 and ending when she went rogue in 2671."
A murmur ran through the room. Agents seldom dropped off the map, given the battery of psychological tests that any prospective operative had to pass to gain access to the most basic of the advanced chronological devices. Lyra had heard stories of the damage rogue agents could cause during her training. Usually, they consisted of former operatives making futile attempts to alter the course of history, but one had managed to fake the security clearance to read a Chief's Whenabouts Board and reveal the ultimate fates of every agent working in the office that year.
"Camille has been reported in three different locations since she took off her monitor, which last reported from 2671 on this day six hours ago. She could be anywhen, and she is dangerous. I have suspended all of your former missions. Your task is now to locate and capture Camille. Questions?"
"How are we going to find her?" one agent asked.
"Because she wants to be found," Lyra answered.
When all eyes in the room turned to Lyra, she realized she had spoken more loudly than she had intended. "Why do you say that, Agent Tristan?" the Chief asked.
Lyra thought about revealing her prior encounter with Camille Sand, but thought better of it. "No one who wants to go unnoticed wears that color red," she said to the crowd of agents.
The Chief looked at Lyra before returning her gaze to the crowd. "As with any mission, you will each be assigned a year within which to hunt for Camille. Your dossiers are being updated as we speak with information about Camille and the years you have been assigned to. Arm yourselves, but if you get into a situation you cannot manage, use your beacons to signal home for help. Dismissed. Except you, Agent Tristan."
The agents left the room, complaining about the interruption to their research and speculating about how anyone could jump three times in six hours without succumbing to the vertigo. Lyra stayed standing for her upcoming lecture about obeying orders with punctuality.
"You saw her," the Chief said to Lyra.
"Yes, Chief."
"Then you and Agent Harper will return to 2355. Camille's probably long gone by now, but I won't let a solid lead slip through our fingers." The Chief tapped on her Whenabouts Board to denote Lyra and Jane's upcoming locations in time. "Go."
--
"The woman in red--"
"Haven't seen hide nor hair of her, gods bless me!" The shopkeeper ran out of his jewelry stall, mixing prayers into his mumbling about fools and demons.
Lyra looked at Jane. "He saw her."
"Yep."
They squeezed their hands together, then left the stall and walked in the opposite direction from the shopkeeper. Jane's hand went to her concealed gun, while Lyra found her beacon.
"Do you think she's still here?" Lyra asked. With the approach of the midday heat, the crowd in the market had started to dissipate.
"I would have said no, because she's gone on so many jumps already, but you said she looked right at you. She seems interested in you."
"You don't have to be jealous." Lyra swept her eyes along the edges of the crowd. She saw no red.
Jane smiled. "I know. Anyway, she seems to know who you are."
"How?" Had Camille left? She could have found a boat to take her away from the Market, if she had even stayed in this time period.
"I have no idea. Well, she could have gotten her hands on a Whenabouts Board, but a board from 2671 wouldn't show us, and I see no other way. It all depends on whether she wants to be found now or whether she'd rather lead us on a chase through time first."
"Oh, I think I want to find you first."
Jane turned toward Camille's voice and pointed her gun, but within a matter of seconds, a white-clad Camille had disarmed Jane. "If you even think about going for one of those devices on you, I'll make your Agent pay," Camille said, gesturing toward Jane with the gun. "Now, I want to see your hands."
Lyra raised them in the air, away from the beacon she had already activated. "Who sold those to you?" she asked, aware of the idiocy of her question.
"A jump here, a jump there," Camille said. "Should have taken me down when you had the chance."
"I didn't know who you were," Lyra said.
Camille looked around at the people in the market, who ignored them now. Maybe someone had called law enforcement, but the operatives would arrive before any local security did. "Bullshit. Your Agency just hadn't told you, but you knew."
"It's your Agency, too," Jane said.
"I didn't say you could talk." Camille turned back to Jane. "And it's not my Agency. Not after what I've seen."
"That the world can change," Camille said. "Far more than any agency chief ever gave it credit for. We can change time, not just travel in it. You don't believe me? Go to 2546 and find the white--" Then, the bullets hit Camille.
"You all right?" The three backup agents ran over to Lyra and Jane, ignoring Camille's body.
"We're not hurt," Jane said. "Lyra?"
Lyra stared at Camille's body. "The white what?" she asked.
"She was just rambling," Jane said. "The same thing as any other rogue."
"But--" What if Camille had told the truth? What if a device existed that would allow the Agency to break its constraints and use the known chronological devices to do more than simply observe? If so, then that could mean a thousand different things for the Agency that Lyra had never envisioned. If no such thing existed, then why had Camille run? Lyra quelled her thoughts. "Never mind. Are you going to be okay, Jane?"
"Yes. Let's go back."
Lyra looked at her snap-back device and felt the disorientation coming on already. Did it come from anticipation of the return trip, or from having a gun pointed at her partner while a rogue operative tried her best to turn the world upside down? "Not ready yet," she said. "I'm going to take my tonic first this time."
Down, down, down we walked. If I allowed myself to, I could lose my sense of self among the descending throng before we ever reached the river. The farther we descended, the fewer differences distinguished the once-people surrounding me. All sizes and shapes melted and stretched into uniform gray rectangles that bore vague resemblances to people when I glimpsed them out of the corner of my eye. At every turn, more shades of former people joined us for the journey down to the world of the dead.
I wondered if the walk down turned me to gray as well. Gray muting the red hair that drew the eyes and attentions of gods. Gray turning my once-clear intentions to the bare need to put one foot in front of the other for the long trip down, and hopefully for the long trip up again.
I am Zoe Hester, I told myself. Daughter of Leon and Cornelia Hester. Age sixteen. I am here to live my own life. I have not come beneath the earth to die.
I remembered enough to toss my flask of the water from the river of forgetfulness over my shoulder once the spirit attending the newly dead turned its back on me. Among so many new souls, none of the attending spirits noticed me. Perhaps I appeared just as gray and rectangular to them as the true dead did. It would be better that way, to disguise the sound of my beating heart that, to my ears, rang out across the silent fields of the dead. Did the spirits have ears to hear my heart? I had not considered that prospect when I wandered far from home to find a sinkhole and follow it down, down, down to retrieve my fate.
Zoe Hester. Too young to die. Too striking to hide. Too headstrong to obey.
The first field would never hold what I sought. No, that would be too easy. I continued down through waves of washed-out souls with nothing before them but the world beneath the earth. From a distance, I saw no way through the crowd, but every row of immobile, insubstantial souls somehow parted before me. How many souls would I have to walk through before I reached my goal? I reassured myself with thoughts of how far I had come. I had already crossed the river unnoticed and nearly traversed the first field. Surely, I could overcome my aching feet to continue my march through the world of the dead. So long as my feet continued to ache, I could ward off the gray from reaching my heart, for I still had life within me.
I directed my thoughts to the living world as I walked in the hopes that the memories would keep me unaffected by the dead air. I thought of running my hands across the columns of the temples to feel the grooves in the stone. I had tried to live a good life under their protection. I had followed the rules, made the sacrifices, and done my best to avoid sin. If I did those things, then they would be gentle with my fate, for they held my fate in their hands and controlled each aspect of my destiny. But no more. The god I had encountered in the wood had expressed intentions that were anything but gentle. He had called me too pretty to stay hidden and told me I should feel honored. I remembered the shock of cold river water on my skin and the disappointment when the water washed nothing away.
So I dropped beneath the earth to follow a tale that might not even be true. One of the great heroes had descended to the world of the dead to collect his fate from the gods and thus become his own master. Unlike him, I was mortal, and I possessed no great gifts. Yet I had made it this far anyway.
"You are not supposed to be here."
I stopped and turned in the direction of the commanding voice, where I saw a woman clothed in deep purple who seemed to glow in contrast to the dull crowds of the dead surrounding her. Out of instinct, I fell to my knees before her. "Forgive me, my lady," I said. Had I obeyed the proper courtesies? At this point, did my lack of manners even matter? I had trespassed. The very act of coming to the world of the dead for my fate suggested that I could handle my fate better than the gods could. A voice whispered to me that I could do that, but the gods likely would not take the suggestion kindly.
"Your thread is uncut." Her voice had lost none of its authority, but she did not sound angry. "Your heart still beats. Tell me who you are and why you have come here."
It took a moment too long for my name to spring to my lips. "Zoe Hester, my lady. I heard the tales of the hero Renald, and I--I thought to do the same."
"To claim your fate?" I had always envisioned my fate as a thread according to the stories, but when the glowing outlines of a swan appeared in the goddess's hands, I recognized it as my fate. I rose to accept it, but the goddess drew back her hands, and the swan disappeared.
"Yes, my lady." I bowed my head. "I am but mortal, and I have no great gifts, but--I am no longer welcome in the house of my parents, and I do not know how to make my way. So I thought to claim my fate and bring myself hope."
"Hope," the goddess repeated. I dared to look up again and saw her watching me. I bowed my head again and did not move, even as I wondered what she was waiting for. "Who would I be if I denied a maiden hope?"
"But--my lady--I am not--"
"Take it," she said to me. The swan appeared in her hands again, and she extended them towards me. I touched its glow and gasped, unprepared for the shock of power that came with holding my own fate. "Keep it safe."
"Thank you, my--"
"Don't thank me yet," the goddess said. "I have given you your hope. You must not waste it on your way back to the living."
His teacher for Magical Theory, a woman almost as tall as him who probably lived in her ceremonial blue robes, looked him in the eyes. "Why?"
"Because I want to know when people are lying to me." He needed to know. Regular people had their ways of sensing lies that they thought were foolproof; twitches of eyes and corners of mouths. Mike wasn't a regular person anymore. He should do better than them now.
"Being a truth teller is about more than knowing when someone is lying to you." The teacher pursed her lips. "You will never tell another lie, or even another untruth, again. You have to take it more seriously than that."
"But--"
"You have math class now." The teacher turned away.
Mike couldn't believe that a boarding school for magical teenagers still had math class.
On the whole, magic school bore distressing similarities to real high school. He could make it rain indoors without realizing it, but he still had to struggle to stay awake in his unlucky front row seat while the English teacher droned on about Charles Dickens. Even worse, the English teacher literally had a magic eye in the back of his head. Outside the classroom, the situation showed little improvement. Hierarchies formed among the teenagers cast out from the public high schools as if they had never left, and Mike rapidly fell to the bottom rung.
"You look like you lived in a trailer park. Don't you people marry your cousins?"
"You look like a girl. And you act like one, too."
"You're weird."
Mike thanked his lucky stars that at six foot five, he couldn't fit into any lockers.
In theory, Mike understood why the sorcerers in charge of the school made sure everyone had normal educations. Most of them would leave the Palatine Order's school after obtaining a semblance of mastery over their powers to go back to the real world with a story about their experience as an exchange student in a foreign country to explain their absence. Once they returned to the real world, they would need impeccable transcripts for those ever-important college applications, and the Palatine Order would give them whatever they needed.
Mike wasn't going back. The moment that he walked beneath the stone archway leading to the school, he knew that everything that mattered from this point forward in his life lay inside the arch. The outside world had already offered him everything it ever would. The Palatine Order presented him a future better than anything he'd have back in the trailer park.
Only they didn't seem to want him.
"That's not true," his mentor in Practical Magic told him. "We want all of you to stay. There are never enough of you."
"But you want some of us to stay more than others." Mike tossed a ball of water in the air and willed it to hold its shape. "If I had any real power--" The ball burst over his head. "Whoops."
"It's fine," his mentor said.
"If I had any real power," Mike continued, "someone would have told me by now." He saw the way that the teachers fawned over the students with the strongest magic, turning their best efforts toward convincing them to stay with the Palatine Order. No one seemed to care if Mike stayed or left. "But I still want to stay."
"Good," his mentor said.
"And I want to be a truth-teller," Mike added.
His mentor asked the same question as the Magical Theory teacher: "Why?"
This time, Mike had prepared an answer. "I want to know. How the world ticks, and why it's doing the ticking." It wasn't coming out right, so Mike kept talking. "I'll never know if I don't make a commitment to the truth."
The mentor shook his head. "That won't be good enough."
"Why?" Mike asked. He'd told the truth. He really did want to understand the real reasons of the world's ticking.
"Because I know you prepared that answer. It's not the real reason."
"But it's true!"
"Not completely. If you want to be a truth-teller, you have to tell the truth to yourself first. You have to quit playing games with us. But more importantly, you have to quit playing games with yourself."
"I'm not playing games." Mike tried to create the water ball again. It collapsed before formation.
Classes went on. And on. Mike did well enough in his academic classes, but still couldn't make the turnaround with his magic. He got regular letters from his parents: We know you're doing great. Looking forward to seeing you at Christmas. We love you. So he went back for Christmas, but it didn't feel any more like home than the Palatine Order's school when he had to spend most of the trip studying magic. Okay, maybe he didn't have to, but his younger siblings wanted endless demonstrations. Plus, Mike stayed up at least half of most nights studying magic so he could keep up with the stronger students.
When Mike returned to school, he made one more request to become a truth-teller, this time to the Dean of the school.
"Why?" the Dean asked.
Mike took a deep breath. "I want the power," he said. "I know I don't have a lot of it on my own. I know I need to be a truth-teller if I want to make it here. And I want to make it here. I want you to accept me."
He watched the Dean and tried to calm his racing heart. All the while, the Dean said nothing.
Then, she smiled. "Good," the Dean told Mike. "Keep thinking like that. Keep being that honest with yourself."
"Hey! Good to see you again!" A tall boy whose T-shirt read I HATE T-SHIRT SLOGANS stopped in front of me and threw his hand up in the air. I slowly raised my right hand while looking into Slogans's blue eyes, trying to figure out how I knew someone at a school I had never set foot in. After the most awkward high five in recorded history, I still hadn't translated the kid's face into anything remotely recognizable.
"Um--"
I stopped talking once Slogans ran off to greet someone else in the parking lot. If I finished his question and asked, "who are you?" it probably wouldn't go well. Maybe Slogans liked to play pranks on new kids by pretending to know them. Yes. That explained the situation perfectly. I adjusted my backpack on my shoulders in a misguided attempt to make twenty pounds of books feel more comfortable and and started walking out of the student parking lot toward the school building.
"Hey! How was your summer?"
"What's up?"
"You cut your hair!"
Student after student pretended to know me, but I ignored them. How had they managed to orchestrate a prank on this scale for a new kid? With over two thousand students enrolled at Great Plains High School, one addition couldn't attract that much attention. I should have blended in with a bare minimum of effort. Instead, it seemed like most of the students in this parking lot thought they were best friends with me. They'd learn soon enough. If I got out of here as quickly as possible, then I could go back to blending in.
"Hold it right there!" an old man driving a golf cart barked in my direction. At me? No way could he be talking to me. I kept walking toward the school steps.
"I told you to halt!" the guy in the golf cart said, accelerating to keep up with me.
"I'm going to class," I said, looking away from the golf cart. I knew the type. A retiree, probably former military, with nothing better to do than abuse every scrap of authority the school had given him. If I kept my head down, I'd be fine.
"You're Liam Cross!"
I stopped. "Yeah," I admitted. How did he know me, and why did it matter? "So what?"
"So what?" The guy in the golf cart made a snorting sound that might have been a laugh. I decided he looked like a rhinoceros. "You can't go in there."
"But I'm supposed to start school." Sure, I wouldn't mind never having to go to school again, but this news seemed too good to be true. "I'm enrolled."
"No, you're not."
"First everyone here knows me, and now I'm not even enrolled here?" I looked around the parking lot. "Did I wake up in opposite world this morning?" No, opposite world didn't explain it. A circle of other kids formed around the golf cart, drawn out of their conversations by the spectacle. I saw a girl with her hair in braids shaking her head, but I looked away before I realized that her gesture might have been a response to my question about opposite world. Or was it?
He dropped his voice. "Kid, you're in way over your head. Go back to your car. Enroll in another school. It'll be better for you and everyone here."
"What other school? This is my neighborhood school." I looked around again. Something about the guy in the golf cart dialing down his aggression made me wonder if I should listen to him, but nothing going on today made sense. "Where else am I supposed to go?"
"That's not my problem--"
"Hey, what's going on here?" A boy about my height with dark brown hair hanging in his eyes blundered through the crowd into the middle of the circle. "Who the hell are you?"
"I'm Liam--" I looked at the boy more closely, then echoed him: "Who the hell are you?" He wasn't about my height. He was exactly my height. He had my hazel eyes and my nose that was way too big for my face. If I grew out my hair so that it would hang in my face, I would be just like him. Maybe I already was him.
I pushed through the crowd, planning to drive away and go somewhere that wasn't Crazytown.
This summer, it occurred to me that I updated my journal so infrequently that many of my LJ friends had no idea how I lived my life. To remedy that situation, I started the 365 Facts series. Every day, I would update my journal with one random fact about myself. The series served a dual purpose: it gave me a reason to update my journal more often, and it allowed my friends to get to know me better than they would with regular entries that assumed everyone already knew everything about me. I may write for myself when Idol isn’t going on, but I don’t want to write an entirely nonsensical journal.
Ambitious? Yes. I failed to post a fact for the two days following the launch of the series. But I bounced back with three facts the following day. I had made a commitment, and I planned to see it through. Surely I was an interesting enough person that I could come up with 365 different things to say about myself.
Did you want basic background information about me? You got it. I talked about my boyfriend, my car, and my dog. For a pet who had joined the family in 2003, why did Miss Puppy and her adorable baby face wait until Fact #13 to turn up? Miss Puppy was definitely more important than my ancient car. On the other hand, my boyfriend’s appearance as Fact #2 made sense. After months of having a long-distance relationship, we would shortly live a short enough distance away from each other that we could take the train to see each other on the weekends.
What about facts with a tendency to slip through the cracks? Fact #9: Lily is a pseudonym. I adopted the name Lily for use online sometime in 2001 after robbing it from my Mary Sue self-insert. It suits me so well it doesn’t always register to people that my name is not actually Lily.
Or I could just tell you something random. Fact #38: I don’t get zombies. I’m sorry. So don’t expect to see any zombie stories from me during Idol. On the other hand, if you do have a working plan for the zombie apocalypse, let me know. I hope I won’t be too much of a liability if it happens (but it won’t happen).
One month into the series, I decided that I liked its results. Although I had discovered nothing new about myself, each fact still made me feel like a more interesting person. After all, I was a jack of many trades (Fact #7), but expressed my dislike of large social groups (Fact #5) and yearned to be a better cook (Fact #14). Who knew how interesting I might seem after eleven more months of facts?
Yet the cracks had already started showing. LiveJournal stopped cooperating with my internet connection. I had to start asking my friends for facts to include (Fact #25: I went into law on a suggestion from my parents). Then, my need for a journal began bleeding into the fact-selection process. Fact #39 involved a recitation of my fall TV schedule, fitting into a trend in which I repurposed the content of other journal entries as facts about myself. At the end of September, I entered a string of business trips and failed to update my journal for eight days. When I did post, I wrote no facts. I had other news to discuss.
I ended the series on Fact #67 (I can’t roll my tongue). When I wrote that entry, I was eleven facts behind, but still hoped to write a full complement of 365 by the time July 2013 came around. I never resumed it. By then, presenting my friends list with pieces of myself felt like nothing more than an obligation, for a new fact had snuck up on me that I desperately wanted to deny.
Fact #68: I am single.
I gave my friends list sixty-seven tesserae of a mosaic about me, but it had to end there. After breaking up with my boyfriend, I barely had the will to get through a day of work. I had to put the pieces of myself back together, not take them out and reveal them to my friends list one by one.
Maybe—just maybe—I’m a whole enough person now that I can present myself again.
[Edited to add: I was nialyind and competed under that name for two seasons.]
We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected to beta test the Fairview Corporation’s TimeMaster™, which will be the first time machine ever developed for personal use. Please find the TimeMaster™ enclosed within this box.
For the convenience of our beta testers, the machine comes pre-loaded with a packet of five slides that our engineers have determined represent safe zones of history for time travelers. To operate the machine, simply turn it on, raise it to your eyes, and press the lever on the right-hand side to advance slides. The TimeMaster™ comes with an audio file designed to help you make the most of your voyage through time. You will have thirty minutes to explore the pocket of history contained within each slide. The TimeMaster™ is designed only for observation and study. Failure to adhere to these rules may lead to the destabilization of the pocket of history you are currently within.
We ask that you record your observations about each time period on the enclosed form and return them to us by August 31, 2012.
Two more pieces of paper rested on top of the box: the observation form and the corporation’s limitation of legal liability for use of the time machine. Walsh skimmed the page without absorbing any of its contents. Nothing that it said could persuade him to change his course when the ability to move in time lay within his grasp after months of the application process.
The real prize lay beneath the Styrofoam packaging. Walsh seized the cover and pulled it out of the box, trying to ignore the scraping of the Styrofoam against the cardboard, then pulled out the packing peanuts handful by handful. Finally, he had thrown out enough packing peanuts to reveal a bright blue pair of larger-than-average binoculars with the lever
That was it? How could this tiny little thing be a time machine? Walsh continued to look through the package and found a pair of headphones, which he connected using the audio jack on the left side of the machine. He switched it on and connected the headphones.
“Hello, and welcome to the TimeMaster,” a calm female voice instructed. “We will be departing the twenty-first century in ten…nine…”
Walsh could have turned off the switch, but he had prepared enough for this. He raised the binoculars to his eyes and listened to the countdown: “seven…six…”
He saw what looked like a forest through a long, dark tunnel. Exactly how far back in time did the machine plan to take him? The small glimpse of trees that Walsh saw offered no real clues. It could be anywhere from five hundred to five thousand years ago. In fact, it could go even further back than five thousand years ago.
“Three…two…one,” the voice finished. “Prepare to transport.”
Walsh knew that he was standing still in his office, but he felt something pushing him down the long, dark tunnel. The forest-like image advanced closer and closer to him, and he heard a whooshing noise through the headphones. He tried to turn down the volume, but couldn’t move. From this point on, it seemed that he could only go forward through the tunnel. Walsh generally believed that flights of fancy distracted him from his work, but he still had to marvel at the dreamlike quality of the primeval forest rushing closer and closer to him until it filled his entire field of vision.
“You have arrived in the year 1000 BC,” the voice told him. “Your thirty minutes begin now.”
Walsh lowered the binoculars and found the forest from three thousand years ago surrounding him.
This point in an LJ Idol season can be really sad. I hate seeing writers with so much talent doubt themselves when the poll results take a bad turn for them. Then I remembered that theafaye hosted a snaps cup in her journal at about this point last season to fend that off. I also thought of a Green Room last season when Gary asked us what our favorite entries from Season 7 were.
So it is time for a love meme for our Season 8 entries!
The Rules
1. Anyone who participated in Season 8, for any length of time and any username, can ask for favorite entries. Anyone at all can say what their favorite entries by Idol participants are, of course.
2. Comment to this post with your username.
3. Respond to others' comments with your favorite entry/entries by that person. Explanations are of the good.
[Intersection with ecosopher! :) Her entry is located here.]
“Good morning, AdventCo. This is Mary—”
“Are you a supervisor?” the man on the other end of the phone demanded.
One of the difficult customers wanted to cross her desk with twenty minutes to lunch? Could this day get any worse? “Yes,” Mary said. She swiveled her chair toward her computer once again to view the man’s file. “How may I help—”
“You people have called me three times this week yammering about a call to adventure,” the man said. “I’ve told you I don’t want an adventure! But you don’t listen!”
“Sir, I apologize for any inconvenience,” Mary said as she read the succinct version of the file that popped up on her screen. She was speaking to Robert Parker, age twenty-two (but sounded thirty-two), who was about to graduate from the most prestigious university in the country and embark upon a career in investment banking. “The Call to Adventure—”
“How many people do I need to talk to before I get you to take me off your call list?” Robert asked.
According to the file, Mr. Parker would barely stop to purchase two new suits before embarking upon a career in investment banking. He had never had an adventure in his life. That was about to change. For a moment, Mary hated this man for more than his telephone call coming in twenty minutes before her lunch break. She ignored it. Hatred had no use.
“Mr. Parker, the Call is for your benefit,” Mary explained. Now, the screen showed a new call coming in from Fred Stratton.
“Not when you’re pestering me, it’s not.”
Where had she heard that name before? Of course! They had gone to school together. But aside from the occasional photograph that made it onto her news feed, Mary hadn’t heard from Freddie in years. When they parted ways, Freddie had been about to embark upon the perfect life. Mary had thought that she was on the verge of the perfect life, too.
“Hello? Are you even listening to me?”
Yes, yes, of course she was. Mary switched to the argument that usually worked on men whose egos were bigger than their souls for adventure: “Mr. Parker, you could be a hero if you listened to the Call.” She paused for dramatic effect.
The customer took the bait: “Really?”
“Really. Haven’t you ever dreamed of making the world a better place? More importantly, haven’t you dreamed of everyone recognizing you for it? Keep ignoring the Call, and you’ll be stuck behind your desk for the next thirty to forty years wondering where your life went. Listen to it, and you’ll know. Most importantly, everyone else will know, too.”
“Huh.” Mary could hear Robert’s ego expanding as he spoke that one word. “I’ll have to think about that.”
“Thank you for calling AdventCo. We look forward to helping you achieve a more adventurous tomorrow,” Mary intoned. Two more calls had popped up on her screen. She pushed the button to take Freddie’s call.
The greeting script should have leapt out of her mouth, but Mary’s hopes were up that this would be a more friendly call, so she tried to issue a more familiar greeting: “Freddie.” She sounded like death warmed over. She should have stuck with the chirpy greeting script.
“I prefer Fred, now.”
Right. The file said Fred. Mary rubbed her eyes and took another look at the computer screen to find more information about her old friend. Her eyes didn’t deceive her: the file was blank. It should have contained the customer’s biography, the reason for the Call to Adventure, and a history of previous attempts to make Calls in the case of difficult customers. Why was he calling?
“What is it?” she asked, confused. She tried to sound like this was an ordinary conversation. This conversation was probably being recorded for training purposes. “We have a lot of Calls to make today, and we’re short-staffed. I’ve been on phones all morning.”
“Well, that’s basically the reason I’m calling.” Fred paused.
Mary could not read his mind, and he had no file for her to read. He would just have to tell her why he needed to reach her here. “What is it?”
“I never got a Call to Adventure.”
How could that be possible? Well, the lack of a Call explained the blank file, but Mary had always assumed that Fred got a Call. “I thought you did,” she said.
“No. I never got it.”
“But you spent that year traveling around Europe. You even went skydiving that one time. I thought you must have gotten the Call.” Why did Mary press on in her belief, even with the evidence before her eyes and ears that Fred had never received a Call?
“I spent a year in Europe because everyone else at our school went, Mary. I went skydiving because my brother talked me into it and I didn’t want him to die alone. I did everything I was supposed to. I never thought about what I wanted. And now—” Fred stopped talking, then tried again. “I’m probably too old to ever get the Call. It’s never going to come unless I make it come.”
On a certain level, Mary felt for him. He sounded so sad. Sometimes she felt jealous of the customers because they were about to embark upon adventures that she could never have. She had missed the Call three years ago and almost given up hope that it would ever come back. But what could she do about it? “I can’t just call someone who isn’t on the list.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t make the lists,” Mary explained as if she was talking to an ordinary customer.
“But what makes me that different from the people who are on the lists?” Fred asked. “I know I’m supposed to be settling down. I’ve done what I’m supposed to do my whole life.”
Mary tried to formulate an answer, but failed. The words should be on the tip of her tongue. She tried again. At that moment, she realized that she had spent so many years convincing people to welcome the Call into their lives that she could not adequately explain why the Call had to be limited to those on the lists her employer gave her.
“I’m tired, Mary,” Fred confessed.
What had happened to the Freddie she knew? He had always seemed so energetic while they were in school together. Parties had no life to them if Freddie wasn’t there. Something awful must have happened to him during the years that had intervened between now and then.
“It’s not…” Mary’s attempt to comfort Fred had sounded better in her head. “If you don’t get the Call…” So had that one. How could she fill the emptiness in his heart when she couldn’t fix her own? She wanted the Call to come back and take her away so badly. What could Mary do if it came, though? She supported both of her parents on her income from this job. If the Call had come at a better time, then she could have done whatever she wanted. It was too late for her now.
“It’s fine, Mary.” Fred sounded like he was trying to convince himself. “Really, it is. I guess I was expecting to get the Call, but maybe it’s not coming for me. You’re right. I can’t make it come.”
Mary wished that she could be wrong. “I’m—” she started apologizing.
“It’s okay, Mary. I’m not sure I want to wait any longer for someone else to tell me when the adventure should begin.”
“I’m sorry, Fred. I’d help you if I could—”
“Thanks, Mary. I’ll catch up with you later.” The call ended.
Mary dropped her head onto her desk, then craned it upward to check the clock. She had five minutes left until lunch. Maybe the next call would be quick and she could have some time away from the lucky ducks who received their Calls. Mary took a deep breath before speaking and tried to sound happy.
When I woke, the need overwhelmed me. It curled in my chest and brought tears to my eyes. I indulged it, closing my eyes again and clinging to my stuffed bunny rabbit as if it could give me the affection that I yearned for. It couldn’t. No one but my love could drive the tears from my eyes. Perhaps I could conjure him next to me if I only wished hard enough.
There. He slept beside me, his presence physically impossible in my twin bed. I reached out anyway to rub his back and then wrapped my arms around him, hoping he would stir from sleep. Even if my best efforts could not wake him, as so often occurred, the terrible need would still ebb with his presence.
He did stir, opening his eyes slowly, as if he never would have done so without the encouragement of my touch. "Good morning." I heard vestiges of sleep in his voice. He turned on a dime in the twin bed to face me, momentarily breaking the illusion before I forced it back into place. "I love you."
"I love you, too." A smile spread across my face as I cuddled up closer and rested my head just beneath his shoulder.
I put words he had said many times before and would surely say again into the illusion's mouth: "Do you know how much I love you?"
"No," I answered, as always.
"That's right," he responded. "More than you'll ever know."
My smile widened. I wanted nothing more than to rest here with him for the rest of the morning. Now, I could have that. "I love you," I said again as I slipped away into sleep.
I woke up alone a couple of hours later. The illusion had dissipated long before, so my arms only contained a brown stuffed bunny. My need to see my love again had faded as well, although it would never evaporate completely as long as distance separated us. For now, I could handle it. I rose from the small bed, leaving my mind’s magic tricks behind.
She might be the last one left to chant the sunset prayers to the Twelve. She had no way of knowing. For days, she had run for what little cover the bare trees provided at the slightest sign of other people in fear that they would see the tattoos that marked her as a Duodecimean. She might have spent weeks running. All the days after the first blended together in a haze of running across the dead winter hills from the army that would hunt her people down.
She could not risk a fire, but she chanted the prayers in a whisper. The traditional words of thanksgiving for the day and entreaties for the light to return sounded hollow. The gods meant everyone to gather around a great fire and chant in unison, but she could only give them her own voice. She added an additional prayer for survival, wondering if she wanted to continue living even as she spoke it. She knew nothing but this world, but the ghost king of the afterlife had reached out for her so many times in the last days or weeks that she longed for the solace he could provide if he deemed her worthy.
As she considered the afterlife, she prayed for the dead. The traditional prayer gave praise to the gods for their wisdom in sending each soul to its proper place in both life and death, but she tasted ashes in her mouth as she chanted the words. She would rather pray for vengeance. If she was the last of her people, then let the gods answer by raining down their fury upon the armies who killed her people and drove her from her home in the Duodecimean Quarter. Some of the soldiers in the mob thought that the believers in the Twelve turned the water to fire and caused the crops to wither in the fields. Others decided that their god cast those plagues upon them to punish them for allowing sinners to live and work among them. If they believed that the Duodecimeans are so dangerous, then they needed to understand the true fury that the Twelve were capable of. Let the goddess of the fields turn their remaining food stores to dust. Let the lord of shadows trick them into making war against each other.
But the days in which the Twelve openly intervened in the lives of their believers had long since passed. Now, the world belonged to unbelievers who only believed in one god, as if one could do more than twelve. At best, they kept the Duodecimeans penned up in separate quarters, tattooed their faces to mark their low status, and bombarded them with inducements of money and favor to convert to the faith they called true. And now, the worst had come: They had set their forces upon the Duodecimean quarter to punish them for a series of imagined slights.
Perhaps the Twelve had turned their backs on her people. But somehow, she kept chanting the prayers, same as always. She could not turn her back on the gods she had always known.
If the stars and the planets tell the truth, then I am a fire person. Bring me into the light of the sun to awaken my passions. Watch me thrive in the crowd, feeding upon their energy to make the fire burn stronger. Put me in water to quench the flames of my passions and anxieties when they threaten to consume me.
But how can I be a fire person when I am so full of fear? I won’t light a match without cringing. I won’t enter into a room full of people without second-guessing myself for hours, and I’ll only stay there if I know someone. I yearn for the gentle moon, the dreaminess of the air, the imagination of water, or even the stability of earth. Anything but this expectation to take the confidence of fire into myself.
The dictates of the stars should mean nothing. They’re only games to most people. But they speak in harmony with the rest of the world when they tell me I should have every quality that I do not. I should be assertive. I should be outgoing. I should be a leader. I don’t know how to be any of those things. The fire that’s supposed to burn within me was never born. With the heavens and the earth screaming out in unison, how can I do anything but take their messages into my heart?
Yet after years of bombardment with my failure, I find something new: Anger. I am so slow to anger that I thought myself incapable of it. It burns with a heat I never could have imagined. I do not act on my newfound wrath, but watch its blaze, warming myself by the leaping flames. A part of me that slept for years comes alive under its light.
The anger passes, but the fire remains. It will never dominate me. It burns as a controlled candle flame, not a raging inferno. But underneath my calm, dreamy, air-and-water self, that flame keeps telling me, You are more capable than you think you are.
Inspired by belgatherial. Specifically, her Elementals entry from last season (read it if you haven't! Reread it if you have!), and generally from the theme of empowerment that runs through her entries.
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