“Every writer is different, so in the end, set all advice aside, and do whatever works for you.”

- Madeline Miller

Promptly-Written Photo Prompt:Vapor

Photo credit: Jaroslav Devia

“…that’s what it takes—waking up and knowing you’ve still got challenges within it, and how are you going to crack this problem, and how are you going to compress this section. You’ve got to be able to go into that work lovingly, willingly.”

- Lin Manuel Miranda

Promptly-Written Photo Prompt: Noen

Photo credit: jack dong

Promptly-Written Photo Prompt: Isle of Verdan

Photo credit: Anna Gru

“Sometimes you have to sneak attack the page.”

- Lin Manuel Miranda

“Bad drafts are completely normal, and part of the process. You have to write the bad drafts to get to the better ones. Don’t be afraid to throw things out.”

- Madeline Miller

“There’s no better inspiration or motivation for work than being in love. It’s what you dream of as a creative person.”

- Neil Diamond

“Never stop reading, but take writing breaks when you feel yourself burning out.”

- Casey McQuiston

“When you find something really wonderful, read it first as a reader, and then again as a writer: where you’re watching to see how the author makes the magic happen.”

- Madeline Miller

Promptly-Written Photo Prompt: Break Fast

Photo credit: Pavel Pjatakov

“Make what’s missing.”

- Lin Manuel Miranda

Zodiac Chronicles Book 1

Tristan attends what he thinks is a typical day at school. He does something atypical and pays the price for it with his blood. A small scratch, but enough to leave a lasting impression.

~6400 words

Trampled paths carved through a thin layer of snow in two opposite directions, converging on an old, small schoolhouse. The wider, well-trodden path of footprints led between a pair of farms to a road that led eventually to the village proper several miles off. The smaller path consisted of only one set of very large tracks, boot prints of an unusual size, that led to the small river beside the school. The owner of the large boots crouched by the bank and tucked a sealed bottle into the rocks along the river’s edge, well away from a collection of similar bottles. With any luck, the bottle would still be there by the time he got to it at lunchtime. Tristan turned back to the schoolhouse and eyed his large tracks, hoping that the midday sun might melt the snow enough to obscure them.

He lingered by the river to watch the other students funnel into the small door at the front of the schoolhouse. The door swung outward, held open by a kind bull on the verge of graduation. When the door had to be replaced some years ago, Tristan recalled the village carpenter stressed over the direction of the hinge for days before the installation. He returned every day afterward for a week to apologize for installing it wrong.

As he waited, he allowed his eyes to roam over the schoolhouse’s exterior. The paint chipped very slightly on the older slats of siding to reveal the numerous and varying colors the building had been over the years. He remembered well the year the teacher had organized the students for a day of painting the schoolhouse a vibrant green. The previous color, a faded pink, had been splashed by a graduating student’s experimental project for admittance into the doctor’s college in the capital. She had the carpenter and his wife provide her with information of how they treated the wood to maintain longevity and had the village’s merchers bring books back to describe how the paints earned their pigments.

The door cracked against the frame, the students finished filing inside. Tristan moved to join the wider path of boots and made his way to the door. He opened it gingerly and ascended the few short steps into the mudroom. He moved slowly, careful not to bump his large frame against the door or his horns against the doorframe or any of the other students. The village children paid him little mind, having their heavy woolen coats and other articles on the hooks along the wall. Stains marred the mudroom benches, the wood slightly bowed from years of harboring rain and melted snow. The floorboards creaked with every shift of weight, every step through the one-room schoolhouse. The whole building smelled of faintly of smoke from the small firepit and potbellied stove in the center of the main room, despite the pipe that extended up through the roof.

Tristan pulled the door closed, lifting up on the handle to set it properly in the frame. One step to the side and he lifted a small charcoal bit to scan for his name on the roster hung by the door. His eyes hesitated at the familiar names, ones he remembered from his first few years before the growth spurts started. After that, he stopped trying to remember the newcomers, to connect names on the list to faces. He found his name and checked the small box for his attendance that day.

Several of the girls seemed happy to see each other, giggling and shrieking with glee, leaning to whisper conspiratorially as they headed to their seats. Evelynn lead the group, smoothing and fussing with her hair as they walked, making sure her ringlets survived the morning. Tristan noted that the group appeared smaller, but the little herd never had the same numbers, its members dependent entirely on Evelynn’s whims.

The younger ones, the calves, moved awkwardly, as calves do, and climbed onto the benches to hang up their hats and scarves. Some preferred to stuff their things into the bins below the benches, too short to hang their things. After the removal of their hats, one of the calves became surrounded. Tristan just barely made out their young pronunciations of shock and amazement at the nubs protruding from the center one’s scalp. It would be several years for the nubs to turn into anything even resembling horns, but with the arrival of the nubs, that calf become the coolest and most mature among their little herd. He reflected on his brief moment of approval when his nubs arrived at a surprisingly young age. And struggled to forget the subsequent frustration and terror from his peers as the nubs grew larger and longer than normal at an alarming rate.

A frown pulled at his features and he dropped off his gear on his half of the mudroom. Despite moving to the furthest corner of the mudroom, none ever dared cross beyond the door except to check their attendance. He tried not to let it bother him. This left the boys of the class to wait to remove their gear. Ladies first, as the manners say. And calves have little sense of propriety. Having doffed his gear, Tristan gathered his materials for class, plus an ancient-looking leather journal.

As he finished pulling the drawstring on his pack, Tristan’s ear perked up at a voice that rose above the din.

“We didn’t think you or your brothers would make it today, Jorgus. Are you okay? What happened to your father?”

“Doesn’t really concern you, does it, Seamus.” A thud sounded as Jorgus threw his bag down on the bench under his hook. The adolescent bull had yet to grow properly into his limbs, gangly and long, his shaggy ginger hair left to grow over his eyes.

Seamus, a sturdy young bull with brown hair and a square jaw with the slightest bit of stubble, furrowed his brow. “I’d think it concerns all of us! The attacks have been happening more often, yeah? And with all our grandparents-”

Jorgus spun and growled at the older bull. “Seamus, I said drop it.” The tan and white splotched young bull jerked his head pointedly to his little herd of younger brothers.

The Jones boys, four young calves of varying ages and colorings, sported red and puffy eyes. Tristan glanced at the roster and wondered which brother belonged to which name. The youngest two of four sniffled openly, the older of the pair grabbing his younger brother by the shoulder to lead him to their desks. The youngest’s shoulders lifted and jerked in the obvious signs of barely contained sobs.

Seamus watched the calves, then shared a look with the other boys in Jorgus’s usual group. “We’ll… catch up on the way home, then?” He did his best to sound optimistic.

Tristan watched the boys offer support via a pat on the shoulder or some muttered promise and turn away one by one. The youngest, probably one of Jorgus’s brother’s friends, lingered, fussing with his pale splotchy fingers. Jorgus tilted his head slightly, the only indication on his shrouded face that he noticed the calf, and waited. A light thwack from another broke the calf’s resolve and he scurried through the room to his desk near the front and the younger Jones boys. Jorgus started to turn back to removing his winter gear and caught Tristan’s prying eye. He sneered and angled his horns at him. Tristan started and jerked back to his own preparations.

Part of him wished he could walk home with those boys, to make a group of friends and… do whatever friends do together. He wished he could talk about the orchard with them, about the plants along the path, about their crops, and the state of their land. He wanted to make friends his own age. But he knew how he looked, how they all looked more like his children than friends. Or perhaps younger brothers. He hadn’t grown any manner of stubble yet. The elder Lunars, those that heard the voices from beyond, told him that he had aged quickly, gaining a few years in a few months as a babe. Blessed by the Spirits, they called it. He called it a curse.

The commotion over, Tristan took barely a few steps to round the wall that split the classroom from the mudroom. He settled into the last bench at the table in the back left of the small open schoolhouse. This area in the back typically held the eldest students, the ones closer to the front reserved for the younger calves, or most in danger academically. He caught Seamus chatting with his neighbor on the other side of the aisle. Tristan held the bench in the back alone for years simply due to his size, too large to sit anywhere else in the room. He might block the view of the other students was the official reason, but mostly he took up a desk and a half on a good day. He tried not to think of the bad days.

Unbidden, he remembered vividly the pain in his chest the day the girl he typically sat next to, perhaps eight at the time, had complained before class that he had crushed her hand when attempting to use his ink and bone splinter pen. He barely remembered moving his arm out far enough to even touch her, painfully aware of his size even then. Not that the other students would let him forget it. The teacher had simply calmed the girl down and offered him the bench in the back. As he moved, he watched the girl’s best friend eagerly move up to take his seat with no objections from the teacher. He sat in the middle of the bench and spread out comfortably over the two-desk wide table. He felt his size for the first time and tears stung at his eyes. He looked up then as Miss Shaunessy moved to the blackboard and continued with class, though not without offering an apologetic smile. That remained his table for the following seven years.

He enjoyed the space the longer table provided over the years. In the early days of the schoolhouse, students normally shared one large desk, the top able to lift to reveal a compartment below. However, too many instances of one of the students at the desk lifting the table’s top without their partner’s consent resulted in broken pencils, splattered ink, or scattered papers. Deemed far too impractical for use by calves, the village’s carpenter frantically redesigned the furniture for single use. Tristan preferred the width, able to hide plenty of things in his desk that the others had to keep in the mudroom, under their desks, or in the river’s banks. He reveled in the ability to lean forward, elbows as wide as he wanted, his books and parchment and inkwell spread comfortably apart. He never had to worry about knocking over his own inkwell or his neighbor’s.

He placed the leather journal on the middle of the table, his inkwell on the corner with the bone splinter pen leaned away from the aisle, and his parchment squarely between the journal and the edge. Half the table for him. The other remained empty, as it did every day.

An aging Taurus woman, pale splotches covering more of her dark, umber skin every year, walked down the center aisle of the classroom to check the roster by the door. Wrinkles threatened at the corners of her eyes, a few locks of silvery hair escaped from the hair buns under each horn. She assessed the youngest calves first and shot harsh glances to the group of gossiping girls as she walked by. Evelynn greeted her with an overly saccharine, performative “Good morning!” Miss Shaunessy smiled to the girl, not nearly as hollow, but nothing like the warm and silent “Good morning” she mouthed to Tristan. At the head of the room once again, she smiled to the class and listed off her plans for lessons that day. Calves first, as their attention span dwindled as it grew toward lunch, then the higher education lessons for the older children.

“This morning will be the next chapter of history for the calves. After that, a bit of arithmetic as a class. After lunch, we will be going over the essays I assigned you last week, then we will work on our spells and rituals together before the end of the day.” Miss Shaunessy’s face pulled together slightly. “Please, pleaselook over the essays of your friends and neighbors. Some of you are very good with prose and could stand to share your skills with others.”

No names, but she stared very pointedly at a few of the students on the other side of the room. For Tristan she offered another warm smile, then an encouraging nod, all as she swung her attention back to the calves.

“All righty, little ones. Who can tell me what we went over yesterday?” A bright and happy smile took her face, her whole aura changing to matronly and polite.

As a calf, Tristan coveted her to act as his mother at home. When he brought the suggestion to his father, the bull fell into a melancholy. He remembered the oppressive silence that filled their small house for days afterwards, hating every tense and silent second. When his father finally broke the silence, he promised to tell Tristan more of his mother and encouraged him to seek out the journals and diaries she kept around the house. At his young age, Tristan did not understand all the words in the books he found. It became a nightly ritual to read the books together before bed, at least until he could read them on his own.

“We talked about the Bindings, Miss Shaunessy.” Aishling, Evelynn’s youngest sister and lookalike, waved a hand in the air.

“Very good Aishling!” Miss Shaunessy clapped brightly and started to pace as she lectured. “A very brief recap: The Bindings are what led to our ancestors, the Unbound, starting to evolve and change into what we are today. The result of these changes came in the form of the separation of what we now call Constellations. All of us here are called Taurus. But there are eleven others. Can anyone tell me what the other eleven are?”

For the first few years, Tristan eagerly engaged in the lectures about history and the Constellations and whatever else the teacher taught. But as the years moved on, he grew tired of the same information. Then the banishment to the back of the room. After that, his interests became focused on a different kind of history.

As the drone of teacher and student buzzed into the back of Tristan’s ears, his mind drifted to the work left in the orchard. Wasps had moved into a section of the trees that he needed to discourage from the area. An increasingly common occurrence, but nothing difficult. Fruits and flowers had been scattered under a few trees, easy enough to clean up and add to the compost bin or salvage for his jams and jellies. He still had several jars to fill. It might behoove him to check if any of the fruits and nuts could stand to be harvested. And that unknown flower at the edge of the orchard still haunted him. Once he identified it, he might be able to decide its fate. With the shorter days of the season, he pondered how much light he would have to work with.

Old leather straps creaked under the strain of turning pages after many years of neglect. Tristan loved the smell of these journals, the old paper and leather and glue. As the thin leather binding on the outside flopped open with a soft slap on the table, he jumped. He glanced up to find a few of the older students near him turn at the noise as they quietly “discussed” their papers. Their curiosity sated, they returned to their work. He focused his attention on the journal and the detailed diagrams with disproportionately scribbled but familiar handwriting.

The almanacs that littered his family’s home formed the physical connection between his father’s memories and his mother. Each one held notes in the margins, ink splotches, paints that bled through to the parchment beneath, the occasional hidden treasure of dried flowers between the pages. Curiously, every journal contained the same handwriting, no matter their age. Their sister journals contained a language so old not even Miss Shaunessy recognized it, though his father understood a few phrases. His father always dodged questions on how he knew those phrases and Tristan learned to limit his curiosity to what remained in the text.

Thumbing absently through the pages, scanning the detailed diagrams as they passed, he paused on a page and studied the flora depicted. He had started to lose hope that he might find his quarry, his stock of books running low. Only a few more journals and he would’ve had to ask Miss Shaunessy for the latest herbology almanac, though most of them contained the same information as his mother’s journals. But finally, his search had come to an end. It had to be the flower that appeared at the edge of the grove. He tugged a sheet of parchment out of his bundle and dipped his bone into the ink well on his desk to scribble the page number down. The journal contained that old language; he would have to seek his father’s guidance.

At midday, Valerie showed up for a visit. The village’s Postwatch visited Miss Shaunessy often, usually to drop off the special papers the teacher ordered for the roster, though not always. The pair seemed to be best friends. Valerie hauled the box of special order papers into the closet behind Miss Shaunessy’s desk and beckoned the older woman into the room. After a bit of whispering, Miss Shaunessy’s normally warm and grounded cadence shook slightly as she encouraged the students to take lunch outside. The class cheered and headed eagerly to the door. Tristan hesitated by the mudroom as the others filed out with their bundles and their herds. When no chuckles or insults found their way to him, he peeked outside and found the ground glistening with melted snow. He heaved a small sigh of relief, forced into a sharp exhale as Jorgus elbowed him out of the way. Tristan straightened up to allow the boy and his friends passage.

On his way to his things, Tristan caught sight of the Mayor’s daughter, Isolde, watching him from the other side of the mudroom. He furrowed his brow to her, a simple unspoken question. She stiffened, blushed, and turned back to her things to hastily throw her scarf over her head. It caught in her little female horns, the movement too fast or the girl still not used to her horns’ length. The flush moved to her ears as she untangled the knitted muffler to drape around her neck. He watched in amused confusion as she hurried outside with her wrapped bundle of food.

Tristan lingered in the building, watching through the windows as everyone else grabbed their bottles of milk or juice from the river bank. The hushed whispers from the closet gained a frantic and worried tone. Tristan resisted the urge to move closer and kept his focus through the windows. After the other students all split off into their herds and settled down for their meals, Tristan forced himself outside to grab his own bottle of juice. Despite a few snide remarks from the usual suspects, Tristan found his bottle where he had left it in the morning. A small thank you to the Spirits and he took his lunch around the back of the building. A small herd of rambunctious calves gathered around the smith’s son. Not keen to be injured by whatever tool the bull had brought that day, Tristan returned to his desk to eat his salad in peaceful loneliness.

The calves normally spent the time after lunch free to play outside as the older students took their lessons, but Miss Shaunessy herded them all inside with Valerie’s help. Afterwards, Valeria made her way back to her home at the Postwatch. Miss Shaunessy provided the younger calves with some harder math problems to focus on, a topic to discuss amongst themselves, and permission to borrow a few of the easier books from the bookshelf in the closet. She had to approve the book, of course, but everyone had to remain inside.

Dismissal marked an explosion of relief among the students as they darted from their desks and gathered their things. Today, however, the girls from that morning gathered together to whisper again, pointing to Jorgus occasionally. Tristan slowly gathered his books and papers and lifted his inkwell to stopper it.

“I told you to drop it!” Jorgus’s voice filled the small building, startling and quieting the girls for a moment.

Seamus and the herd of boys, all friends of the Jones brothers, shrunk away from their friend’s outburst. Tristan looked down to his desk, dotted with splatter from his inkwell, made by his jump at Jorgus’s shout, and pressed the stopper in. A bin under the bench in the mudroom held the spare cloths to clean spills with. He lifted his eyes back to the scene as the girls’ whispers grew again. Jorgus unceremoniously scooped up his things before Miss Shaunessy could approach him.

Seamus and the herd followed Jorgus and his brothers to the mudroom. Tristan rounded the wall behind his desk and crouched down to seek the box of throwaway cloth under the bench.

Miss Shaunessy clapped as she made her way through the classroom, checking desks for cleanliness. “Oh, and students! Miss Valerie informed me that from now on you are to travel in a herd as you head directly home.” A few of the students groaned. “It was also emphasized to not be out after dark for any reason. Winter has shorter periods of sun, which means you will have less time to dally. And there is always safety in numbers.”

She wandered the aisles, calling out names attached to messy desks. Liam Jones, Isolde Cennaire, the MacBanions, Kevin McGabhan. At one desk, she picked up a piece of paper and squinted at the top corner. “Oh, Jorgus Jones, it appears you left your essay here.” She placed the paper back down.

The called names sighed and headed back to tidy whatever Miss Shaunessy called them out for. It helped with the bodies attempting to cram through the door at the same time. Apparently one of them had managed to forget a whole tool. Must’ve been the young bull Tristan avoided at lunch.

After checking the whole room, Miss Shaunessy caught sight of Tristan. “Oh, Tristan, I noticed you weren’t paying very close attention during lectures today. Did you need help with anything I covered?”

Heat found Tristan’s cheeks. Miss Shaunessy noticed far more than he gave her credit for. He rarely gave her anything to pay attention to, after all. He shook his head in answer and grabbed a cloth stained with spots of paint and ink from the scrap bin. He brandished the cloth at her with a hopefully gentle smile by way of explanation.

As he stretched to his full height, she leaned back slightly to keep her eyes on his. No fear entered her features. She merely smiled back and patted his arm. She shifted out of his way and walked with him the few steps back to his desk. A small gasp drew his attention. “You don’t have anyone to walk home with, do you, dear?”

He shook his head absently as he cleaned off his desk. Silly question.

A soft and wrinkled hand lifted to tap her fingers against her chin. “You do live alone on the other side of those woods…” She paused, her eyes darting through her thoughts before focusing on him again. “Would you like me to go ask for an escort for you from town?”

His expression darkened immediately with all the heavy and unhealthy thoughts his father attempted desperately to cleanse him of. She pulled back slightly, eyes wide, and he tempered his expression with a gentle shake of his head.

An uneasy smile crossed her face. “No, I suppose you’re big enough to handle most things on your own. But you’re still just a boy, despite outward appearances. I just want to make sure you’re taken care of, is all.”

His breath hitched.

“You mean someone was attacked last night!?” A brown-haired girl with the smallest horns in the group lifted her fist to her chin, brow knit with concern.

Evelynn, the ringleader of the girls and owner of the largest horns, nodded as she made her way to the mudroom. “Isn’t it just awful? And the attacks are getting more frequent. That’s why they want us to walk in herds now.” She gestured to a pair of girls, both younger, as they scrambled for their things. “You heard that right, calves?”

The two calves, one girl and Aishling, chorused a “Yes, sissy!” and proceeded to haphazardly don their layers of clothing. The youngest children moved quickly, faster than their teenage counterparts, thanks to the small growths on their heads not yet formed into horns. Evelynn rolled her eyes and continued on to her hook to don her own set of weather gear. Miss Shaunessy smiled absently at the children and patted Tristan on the arm before wandering back toward her desk.

“But my father told me it was-“ Evelynn glanced at the group of boys across the mudroom and whispered loud enough for them to hear. “-Branach Jones that was attacked last night.” The girls shared a gasp with varying reactions of surprise. “Jorgus’s father-”

“You keep my family’s name out of your dirty mouth, Evelynn!” Jorgus burst through his group of friends, finger pointed sharply at the pale, splotchy ringleader of the gossipers.

Miss Shaunessy stopped in the middle of the building by the firepit. She shared a look with Isolde still at her desk as she turned to the commotion. Tristan dropped the rag on his desk and moved into the mudroom. Though he had no intention of intervening, his size intimidated most folk, forcing cool heads in tense situations. Noone had caught the quake in his hands yet, too focused on their own anger.

Evelynn swatted his hand away as she crossed her arms, big brown eyes glaring daggers into him. Her friends and sisters fanned out around her to cross their arms at Jorgus, though not all of them had their heart in it. One girl stayed behind, the brown-haired one, and glanced at Tristan.

Jorgus narrowed his dark eyes at Evelynn, his head angled to brandish his longer and sharper horns at the girls. His friends, too surprised at his actions, hesitated before stepping in beside their friend to brandish their horns, smaller than Jorgus’s but still as harmful if used properly. Though the youngest Joneses did not involve themselves in the standoff, their friends brandished their nubs as well, eyeing the older bulls for correctness.

Evelynn did not appear fazed, though the tremble of her voice betrayed her. “My father told me that yours was injured last night while they were hunting. He said they had to take him to the doctor because his injuries were so severe.”

All the posturing broke. Whispers of “The Doctor?” moved through both groups, each losing their members to gossip, conjecture, and fear.

“He’s fine. He’ll be home by dinner tonight and tomorrow we’ll work on tilling the land.” Jorgus cracked his neck.

Evelynn’s lip curled. “I’m sure the Doctor will also finally let the Lunars go home, too, then? I haven’t seen my Mamó in so long. I guess if you say so, it has to be true. But, then again, your family has been saying every harvest will be their biggest yet. Until counting day comes and you show up with barely a cartload.” She grinned, confident in her victory.

Jorgus tilted his head the other way, alone in his threats. “The doctor told me himself that Pa would be back by tonight.”

Miss Shaunessy stepped slowly down the center aisle toward the two little herds of teens. She caught Tristan’s eye and nodded at him to step down. He lowered his shoulders and stepped back a bit, but remained ready in case Jorgus made the wrong decision. He had no idea what he might do, but better that he get hurt than someone else.

Just as Miss Shaunessy crossed into the mudroom, the energy between the herds changed. Evelynn rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Young bulls and their posturing.” She grabbed her things and stormed out the door into the chilly winter air. “Come on, girls!”

Most of the girls shot hateful looks as they grabbed their things quickly to follow Evelynn. The brown-haired girl that did not join the posturing, moved slowly to grab her things and hesitated at the door. Jorgus crossed his arms at her. She squeaked and disappeared through the door.

Jorgus growled and stalked back to his desk. His small herd of friends and brothers stayed in the entrance and moved to begin dressing in their jackets and scarves. Isolde hesitated at her desk, but returned to packing up her things. Miss Shaunessy heaved a small sigh and trotted down the center aisle back to her desk.

It didn’t take long for the herds to drift outside to wait for any stragglers. Only Miss Shaunessy, Jorgus, and Isolde remained in the schoolhouse building. He hoped, despite his own solitude, that Jorgus or Isolde had a group to walk home with. Especially if the monster sightings proved to be true. He hoped that Jorgus’s father recovered and that Evelynn’s gossip proved to be only that. But in the case that Tristan’s hope had no basis in reality, he knew the only tangible thing to do. He knew the only thing he wanted his whole life.

“Uh, hey, Jorgus.” Tristan lifted a large hand to wave awkwardly to the young man.

Jorgus jumped at Tristan’s low timbre and backed away, eyeing him up and down as he jammed a few scraps of paper in his bag. “What do you want, cull bait?”

Tristan’s brow furrowed despite being used to the insult. “I just… uh, wanted t-to tell you that… um, I-I’m sorry about your father. I know how… how difficult it is to-to worry about your f-father and, uh… I guess you’re the-the man of the house while he’s injured. A-and at least you still have your-your mother and your little siblings-“

Jorgus’s mouth lifted in disgust as Tristan rambled, his eyes shrouded under his shaggy hair. “What are you rambling about?” He thrust the last of his items into his satchel.

Tristan lifted a hand to the shaft of his horn to grip it and rub absently, a habit from when they had hurt growing in. “If… If you need any help-“

Jorgus spun on the larger boy. “Help!? From you?” He dropped his satchel on the desk. “I can’t believe you haven’t gotten it through that thick skull of yours that nobody even wants you here.” He scoffed. “We’d want your ‘help’ even less.”

Isolde tightened the leather strap on her stack of books and papers. “Jorgus-“

Jorgus shook his head and turned to her, poking a finger at her face. “No, not even from you. Mayor’s daughter, as if that excludes you from suffering just like the rest of us.” Something imperceptible crossed Isolde’s face. “I heard your father is sick. From that plague. The one from before. That it’s coming back. Despite all that stuff your father or the doctor say.” His jaw tensed for a moment. He looked back to Tristan. “I also heard it’s your fault. You and that foreigner father of yours. Your mother knew about it and cast a spell to protect your land, but nobody else’s. That’s why you’re safe. And we’re not.”

Tristan’s arms quivered. He shouldn’t have said anything. He should’ve just gone home, alone, like he did every night. He closed his eyes and gripped his horn tighter, his other arm lifted to cover his torso. He wanted to disappear.

“And then you have the nerve! You continue living here, coming to this school, as if you have any right!” Jorgus angled his head down to brandish his horns again. “You and your father should be driven out of town!”

A sharp pain on his arm startled Tristan. He inhaled sharply. Blood blossomed on the sleeve over his torso.

“Tristan!” Miss Shaunessy bolted for the scrap fabric Tristan left on his desk.

Jorgus, stunned, raised a hand to touch his horn. It came back red. He shook his head, muttered something, and grabbed his satchel. Isolde hurried around the desks and stumbled as Jorgus pushed past her to run from the building.

“Come here, poor child.” Miss Shaunessy pressed the fabric to Tristan’s arm. “That boy… He may be a handful but ever since his horns grew out the way they did…” She looked to Tristan’s face. “Don’t take it too personally. Like you said, he’s having a rough go of it. It was nice of you to try to connect with him and offer to help out.”

Isolde hovered by the edge of the row. Tristan looked to her, chest empty. He never should’ve tried. He knew what the town thought of him and his father. He knew better. Tears welled in his eyes and he pressed his hand to the cloth. Miss Shaunessy released him with the promise of salves or something, but Tristan had to get out. He had to go home.

He moved back to his desk and found Isolde holding his satchel, all packed and tied and ready. He barely registered the act, how she had moved so fast, and accepted his bag. He dropped the fabric and satchel on the mudroom bench to slip into his woolen clothes. A stray thought reminded him to be careful of the wound bleeding onto his jacket as he only had the one. He growled. All because the town hated him. All because of a stupid rumor.

He grabbed his bag and ripped the door open. A few groups of calves lingered and chatted as they headed back toward the village. Jorgus’s brothers and their herd had waited for him, despite his protestations, and crowded him to point at his bloodied horn.

Tristan’s blood. He stomped down the short stairs. Fury overtook him, strengthening him to speak without a stutter. “All I wanted was to help, Jorgus Jones!”

Jorgus spun around at the voice. Terror pulled at his features at the massive bulk of Tristan charging toward him. He whipped back around and moved swiftly for the path that led back to town.

Tristan growled. He wanted to stop him, to make him understand, to hold him responsible for injuring him. So many emotions threatened to split him open. “Everyone should be allowed to help each other! We’re a community! That’s what it means to be a community!” In his frustration, he looked to the rest of the students that had lingered to gawk.

A loud thud drew everyone’s attention. All eyes turned to Jorgus, groaning on the ground, a large root split through fresh soil at his feet. He writhed a bit and got to his hands and knees. A shrill chuckle came from further up the path. Tristan caught Evelynn through the blur of his tears, hand in front of her mouth, as she laughed at the unfortunate bull on the ground. The rest of her group chuckled, one by one, with varying degrees of mirth. The laughter spread through the rest of the students, including Jorgus’s little herd, even his brothers. He grunted as he stood and bolted down the path, past Evelynn and her friends, horn still pink.

Tristan sniffed and continued to wipe his face, the cold winter air unpleasant on the slight moisture around his eyes. He slipped his satchel over his shoulder and checked the sleeve of his coat. A chill wind whipped past him and his hands hurt. He left his other accessories in the building. He turned around to head back inside and almost bowled over Isolde.

“Oh! Excuse me, Tristan.” She smiled brightly to him, in an uncomfortable way he could not place.

He barely nodded and attempted to move past her.

She gently placed a hand on his arm. He froze, eyes on the contact. He recognized her mitten, knitted by his father some winters ago and sold by the village seamstress Ciara. His brow furrowed. Her other mitten lifted to offer him his forgotten accessories; mittens similar to hers, a long scarf knitted by his father with a less intricate design, and a warm knitted cap that he tied around his horns. He muttered a thank you and dropped his sack on the ground to don the accessories.

She held his items as he donned them individually. “I agree with you, by the way.” He lifted his wet eyes to her. “We should be allowed to help each other, as a community. I think it’s just awful that we are so discriminatory to those that are sick and injured. Or who have been in the past.”

He nodded absently. Paranoia and fear shook his fingers. He looked up to the rest of the students, those that lingered, and found hateful glares. Isolde, the mayor’s daughter, held high regard among the town, high enough that even her father’s illness did not dull her priority among them. To find her speaking to him? He snatched his scarf and easily tossed it over his horns to drape from his shoulders.

Before she could continue, he hurriedly wandered away from her, down the path to the thick row of trees that separated his orchard from the school. He barely heard Isolde sputter after him, the crunch of dead plantlife under her boots with a few steps. He heard the whispers of the other students, however, and quickened his step. He should know better. And so should Isolde.

This has become a write-one-sentence-and-celebrate writing stretch, but you know what? It’s still writing. It’s still a sentence. I’ll take it.

Hypnagogia: The world will be in love with night. (Chapter 2).

Chapter 1 here

WC:1024

TW: mentions of death, funerals.

Summary: Jasper gets angry. Arei comes up with a plan. Hailmya is a genius.

—

Jasper’s day was not going as he had originally planned.

Although, he had no idea he was going to be a ghost hours after waking up that morning, of course. He was aware that whatever The Witch’s plan for him was, it was not going to be something pleasant or happy, but the last thing on his mind was actually dying.

And now it wasn’t even her fault.

Jasper was seated at a circular table, along with Arei, Hailmya and Casleop. Nobody had spoken since they had arrived to the room: Hailmya was more focused on the little spark that every now and then came out of her hands, Casleop was purposely trying not to acknowledge the Magic Star, and Arei seemed lost in thought. 

Maybe he was having another vision of Jasper’s life, now that he was dead. Was it possible to have a destiny when one did not have a body?

The Prince was starting to feel the events that had taken place since last night: he had not felt any kind of pain when the Witch had performed the enchantment, but when he opened his eyes and saw no one else but Casleop right in front of him…

He was definitely dead. He had died. He was never going to walk through Cheasya again, or talk with Ibreth or see any of Eliza’s shows- 

“Jasper,” Arei looked at him, and the boy jolted.

“Yes?”

“Stop worrying, it’s altering my visions.”

“You can tell the kid to stop worrying,” Casleop joined in, visibly more relaxed since he had screamed at Jasper. His face was fleshy, at least, “he is dead, for the Stars’s sake.”

“If you say that he is dead one more time I’m going to-” Hailmya curled her hands and the light around them turned brighter. 

“You two stop fighting already.” Arei cut off, and the sparks of the Star’s hands disappeared. He turned to Jasper and smiled a little. “It’s going to be okay, Jasper. I know it feels like there’s nothing to do, but we will find a way.”

“To bring me back home?” He asked, hopeful. He wanted nothing else but to return to his home. To his life. He wanted to be him again.

There was a silence. It was enough of an answer.

“The fact that you have passed does not mean you are useless yet.” Arei closed his eyes and the air of the room changed. “There’s still something you can do if you wish to be human again.”

“Useless,” the mortal repeated, feeling suddenly numb. He was useless to the Stars now that there wasn’t an impact he could make in the mortal world. “Is that everything you care about?”

His sadness was replaced by bitterness, by resentment, by anger. 

Is that why the Stars wanted to find a solution to this? Because he was a pawn to their game?

“We care about the changes you were destined to make-”

“No!” He exclaimed, getting up from the chair. It fell to the floor but didn’t make a sound. The three Gods were looking at him perplexed. “You took away my life! You took away everything that was important to me with the whisk of a hand-!

“It was a spell, actually,” murmured Hailmya. 

“And now that I think you are sorry for killing me, it turns out you just want to change this because it interferes with your plans!?”

“Jasper, you have to understand that people are killed every day-” started Casleop, hands up, trying to calm the boy. 

“And how many of those are killed by you?!” he spat, and shook his head. His gaze fixed on Hailmya. “You said you weren’t sorry.”

“Would you prefer being a statue in your parents’ hands for eons to come, waiting for the stupid chance of your soulmate coming around to save you?”

“At least there was something to be done about it, Stars!” he cried out. “At least I would not be a ghost at your mercy with no hopes of-”

“His soulmate!” Casleop cut off, clapping in glee. “That ’s it! Hailmya, you are a genius!”

“I- What?”

Arei looked at the Star of the Dead, nodding. “Yes, that might work, Casleop.” He turned to Jasper and, with a snap of his fingers, the fallen chair got back up again. “We might have come up with a solution.”

But the Prince was cautious, and that is why he did not sit down again. “A solution for what?”

“We could make you human again, Jasper.”

Attending one’s funeral was an out of body experience. Quite literally.

Jasper saw the white pristine casket where his body would be in. It layed in the middle of the Winter Plaza, the biggest crowd of Cheasyans around it. He knew they would not weep for him: weeping was not something they did in his kingdom.

Instead, the ghost waited for the first chord to start. A melody of his own, composed for him played and echoed through the open space. Cheasyans lowered their heads and prayed to Casleop, to give him the peace he needed and deserved. 

Jasper also noticed how only his little sister was around, the spotlight in the middle of a sea of commoners thanks to her dark blue dress. She was not praying, but looking up to the sky, to the Azure, as if she could see him if she focused enough. 

He was supposed to feel empty, and yet sadness washed over him.

“Those are your people.” Arei came to stand next to him, looking down as well. 

“I can’t stop thinking that I’ve somehow failed them all. I was supposed to be king.”

The Star closed his eyes. Maybe he wasn’t having a vision, and did it just to make Jasper feel better. He honestly did not care at the moment.

“They will all live without you. Just have Faith, Jasper. The plan will work.”

The plan. 

Find the soulmate. Make her fall in love with him. Make her see him.

Jasper kept watching as his casket was lit on fire and burnt to ashes: some of them could almost reach him.

—-

Hypnagogia taglist (ask to be +/-):@fiercely-raging-writer,@ryorine

General taglist (ask to be +/-):@euphoniouspandemonium@enchanted-lightning-aes@alexwritesfiction@zonnemaagd@bookish-galaxy

afoolandathief:

Hey, look I finally finished Chapter 6 of Something Wicked!

This was a very, verylong, winding chapter with a lot going on. Over 6,000 words worth, and I’m wondering if I should split it in two, although it does mess up the current pattern I have of two Jade chapters followed by two Caz chapters (which I’m not sure is a great pattern either, but anyway).

There’s quite a few changes I had to make in rewrites, including one extra corpse to dispose of and extending negotiations with Brooks to a scene at a diner.

Anyway, here’s the end of the chapter. TWs for smoking, language, mentions of food, and a sex joke (which may be kind of bad, I’m not sure about keeping it, kind of feels flat).

Something Wicked intro here

Taglist (ask to be +/-) below the cut

The ride back in the police SUV was long and painfully silent. As if to make some kind of point to Jade, Caz decided to sit in the backseat with her this time. It only caused more damage to her thighs as his knee continuously pressed into her, since even four feet of upholstery apparently wasn’t enough for him.

Brooks dropped them off where Jade’s truck was still parked near Matt’s apartment. The party had clearly ended a while ago. She wondered how everyone had reacted to the cops showing up following a nearby explosion.

She leaned against her truck and watched Caz hunch over Brooks’ open window. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but saw Caz put something in his hand and then pat the side of the car before Brooks drove off.

Caz walked over to her. He stood there for a moment, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Well, I can take off from here,” he said. “You’ll be okay getting back?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You didn’t have to ride back with me.”

Caz shrugged and moved over to where light was pooling under a streetlamp.

“Was too full to fly, anyway,” he said.

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Self reblog tonight simply for “The eggs, Shaw.” line

unearthing the compass

This is Edition #23 of Shangrilogs.

Every day, I wake up on the Western side of the house, tucked safely from the crawl of dawn. The valley to the west rolls down in elevation beneath me, still trapped in shadow. All I can hear is the heavy breathing of the dog and the thump of a kitten suddenly aware of the consequences of being caught on the counter. There is no house hum here, only the occasional dripping of the baseboard, set at a cool 65. My side of the bed has extra blankets. Worn linen sheets, a wool Pendleton just for me, the duvet, and then the tabby’s favorite blanket — an impossibly soft knit of burnt orange and white. Pre-dawn calls to me every day, a child too eager for presents to wait. Every day, during the last vestiges of the dark, I pad my feet down onto an animal skin older than I am, and I make my way to the kitchen. The dog doesn’t rustle, the floor boards don’t creak. When the wind isn’t calling to it, the house doesn’t make a noise.

The snow outside is illuminated under the soft light of the moon, the stars dutifully attending the party. Both cats circle my ankles. Maybe some milk? Maybe just a splash on a little plate? For us? This time of day, Finn’s purrs are guttural, overlapping like a record skipping, like he’s never  sure if I will wake up and can’t contain his relief when I do. He’s happier here. More playful, more curious, more relaxed. This time of day, I am still in my dreams. I pour the milk, I refill the kibble, I am unaware of mirrors, moving only through shadows. I know the edges in this house now. And in the glow of the night, I never check the time.

These few minutes, when I am nothing but a creature moving gently in the night, I am at ease, I am free. I open one of the shades and I look out at the ridgeline to the east. Dawn is only just beginning to leak into the sky, but the sun will not show itself until past 9am. I rest my hips against the counter, breathing in the moment. I feel something calling me, stirring in my belly and expanding between my vertebrae, but deep rest calls louder, and I close the shade. I nestle again into the covers as Finn settles back on his blanket between my legs, still licking the milk off his whiskers, locking us into reverie.

When the day really begins, that feeling lingers on my tongue like a dream, and I try to hold the taste as long as I can. It feels like an ethereal gateway to flow, to runner’s high, and to joy. By 8am, it has been diluted by emails from other timezones and drowned out by notifications for meetings about those emails. It is lost to the night, invisible in the bright sun of day, and I am tethered again.

A few years ago, I asked my therapist if she thought I was healed enough to try psychedelics. She laughed. “Your tether to reality is very thin. I wouldn’t recommend it.” One of my family members is on the other side of this reality. He and I, we’re not so different, talking to ourselves in the privacy of our rooms and the great wide opens we find ourselves in. The only difference is someone talks back to him. I am always the other side of my own dialogue.

It was hard to be this person in a city. I felt balled up and folded in. Many years ago now, when my mental health was on the verge of collapse, I fled New York for Colorado. The week before I left, I ran into a guy I had fallen for who had not fallen back on the subway. Maybe he asked how I was, maybe he asked what I was up to, whatever he asked, I practically sang to him that I was leaving. I can still summon the energy I felt in that interaction. It felt like leaning on the kitchen counter before dawn, before emails and meetings and anyone else, with the mountains standing guard around you. It felt warm and fluid and expansive.

Before we left LA, my mental health was the best it had been in decades. My therapist and I agreed I was ready to “graduate.” It had been years since I’d felt the remnants of depersonalization, the things that used to trigger my PTSD were only mild irritants, and panic attacks were limited to only the most extreme of scenarios. I felt like I was on the other side of the pendulum from that last week in New York. It’s one of those things about being human that at the depths of my pain and at the height of my clarity, I was called to the same place.

It’s often Finn that wakes me up in the quiet of night. He climbs onto my chest and purrs until I stir. After the kibble and the milk, when I’m looking at the sleeping giants outside, Finn asks to be picked up and we look out at the wilderness together, his whiskers pressing into my cheek. I wonder if he can feel that expanse in my body, if it’s like purring.

I am happier here. I miss my friends, but I can’t wait to show them my world here. In this world, there is space for my mind to build a stronger tether — not to reality, but to life.

We’ve had a few people tell us they wish they could live this life. They wish they could live in a cabin and spend their days chopping wood and exploring the terrain. I tell them I wish I could too. I am still beholden to a computer, to Zoom meetings, to accrued time-off and embarrassing corporate “benefits.” But at the very least, I have fully unearthed my compass, and I am following it as best I can.

What I wish for them is the same: that they find their North and have the courage and the support to right their ship. This particular life isn’t for everyone, but it is for me. And I can feel the pull of my compass getting stronger and stronger.

I wrote edition #23 of Shangrilogs while listening to Chinstrap Penguins by Jacob Shea & Jasha Klebe,Finder by Cyrus Reynolds & Folial, and Your Peace Will Make Us One by Audrey Assad & Urban Doxology (despite my lack of religion.)

Earlier this month I talked to Cole Noble of Cole’s Climb on his podcast about moving to a small town, the anxiety relief that comes with inconvenience, and the sense of duty that living in a community like this instills in you. I hope you like it.

Cole’s Climb
Getting off the Grid with Kelton Wright
Listen now (39 min) | Welcome Back to Trail Talk During these interview podcast posts, I share stories from other members of the outdoor community. Range from wild adventures to survival skills, conservation, and current events. Look for episodes in your mailbox Sunday mornings at 9 a.m., MST. The stories you’re used to seeing will still arrive at the usual time, Thursday morn…
Read more 14 days ago · 13 likes · 21 comments · Cole Noble

A side note: it appears I have been “shadowbanned’’ on Instagram because I went, uh, extremely viral. Like, 125 million views on one Reel viral. So if you liked this, by all means, share it, because I will be waiting this one out. ️

Is this making friends?

This piece is edition #20 of Shangrilogs. Subscribe to the newsletter and pieces like this will just show up in your inbox.

If we’re ranking mental health salves, enchantment is as close to a natural benzodiazepine that I’ve found. I spent the first five months here talking to trees, sharing giggles with squirrels and apologizing to surprised porcupines like we bumped into each other coming and going from our local coffee haunt. Oop! Sorry, you go! No, no, you go! Ooh, oops, haha! We’re both going! Laughter paired with an embarrassment so mild it feels only like an unexpected warm breeze.

This connectivity kept me company, but the trees are, for the most part, napping. The squirrels and porcupines are only evidenced by their chaotic drawings across the snow fields from one pine well to another. Only a peppering of magpies remain at this elevation, save for the few songbird calls I can hear when I pause the unfathomably loud swishing of my snowpants against themselves. I sing back, but it falls flat against the snow and I am alone again.

It’s been six months since I moved here, and I am lonely.

There’s an inevitability to loneliness in moving. Like exercise brings sore muscles, it’s built in. And in a way, it’s required to become a member of a community. There needs to be a drive, a desperation to break in to a dance very much in progress, to show you are the kind of troupe mate who makes dancing weightless. I have not accrued enough desperation to try this dance, and I am more Darcy than Elizabeth in this regard — crippled by my fears and not yet sufficiently encouraged by my hopes to give in.

This has been a persistent issue for me. Multiple people at multiple company Christmas parties have said verbatim, “You’re way more fun than I thought you were,” like my whole personality has resting bitch face. The reality is much, much lamer: I’m scared. Like a street cat, it’s not that I’m incapable of being friendly, it’s more that I don’t trust other people to be friendly back, which often leaves me waiting for them to be friendly first, repeatedly, before I engage. But also, I still look like this:

A person who gets me some 4,600 miles away joked I should put an ad in the classifieds requesting friends, reminding me of the once heavily advertised but now suspiciously quiet Bumble BFF. The reviews of Bumble BFF are bad because making friends is awkward. When romance is involved, there’s always the good ole fall-back of “you’re not my person,” but with friends? It’s so much more brutal to be like, “you’re not one of the thousands of people I’ve connected with in all sorts of situations and places over the course of my whole life, and honestly, I have more deeply enjoyed conversations I was forced into with strangers on planes than I did doing something we agreed upon in advance with you.” I mean fuck.

I wish making friends was as easy as a Classified ad because I like thinking about what my “friend profile” would say. Sometimes I actually fantasize about what a dating profile would say now that I know myself so much better. I think I’ve narrowed my entire personality to this:

I take the stairs at the airport, I use my turn signal when no one’s there, and I always return my grocery cart.

To me this conveys I am annoying, I am paranoid, and I think convenience is a pretty word for the laziness that continues to disintegrate the community values so many of us are desperately craving. But also that I am annoying.

You don’t need classifieds here, though. You just need to go outside. In a city, if you don’t get someone’s number the first time you meet, you are relying either on FBI-level stalking or kismet to connect again. Here, all you have to do is quite literally go outside and you are contractually guaranteed by the Law of Small World Likelihood to run into that person again. In fact, it’s harder to not see someone than to see them. Which means if you’re having a bad day, you better cheer the fuck up or the next time they see you they’re gonna be like, “there’s the girl with resting bitch personality.”

If you’ve been reading since the beginning, you might recall a girl I encountered on the trail — an encounter that made me feel small and like I was somehow a traitorous snake without ever having met her before. Well, I ran into her again and I report with dishonor that she was incredibly nice. Maybe that day we met she was having a bad day. Maybe (harder to admit) I was the one having a bad day. But in a small town, you need to have grace for the people around you and plead they have the same for you.

I am lonely, but I should be. It’s winter in a cabin in a pandemic in a town of 180 people where I have lived for 6 months, most of which I spent sitting at a desk. And upon close inspection, friendship is probably only a few more months away. Since my avalanche class, I’ve run into three people from the course. Each one remembered me by name. They’re not my friends, but they could be! I ran into a neighbor I’ve been hoping to have dinner with for months, wondering why she hadn’t texted back — can you guess why? It starts with 2020 and ends with learning to make sourdough.

But there is a swirl, and it is pulling me.

Imagine LA or New York or London for the oceans they are, you know, the seas where your aunt says there are plenty of fish. And there are — there are fish fucking everywhere. Shitty fish, loud fish, secretive fish, fish that you’re like “that fish is bad news” while you put a worm on a hook as your friends say, “you’re literally allergic to that fish,” and you say “hm?” as you cast the line. But this is a pond, and somehow that is much scarier. No one notices you in an ocean! You’re just another dumb fish! But here, I’m a scared ass little fish who doesn’t smile and because I work from home and just moved here, I am under a rock, not even going out for food because my partner fish does that, so only a few other fish have even noticed I’m here. And they’re like, “the fuck is with that reclusive new fish?”

Even in the seas of a metropolis, there are those people you don’t technically know, but might be the first person you’d talk to if your subway car was trapped underground. You’d be like, “look we’ve been riding this train together for 3.5 years, and you’ve never done anything weird like huff glue or fondle your balls, so do you want to form an alliance in case shit gets weird?”

Those people still exist in small towns — the ones who share your paths and your routes and your elevators and your favorite Thai place. They’re called everyone. You see everyone over and over here, and you sniff them out because anyone who isn’t everyone is a tourist. That, or they’re also a weird fish hiding under a rock, too yet scared to dance.

We went to the vet the other day to take care of a cat injury. While waiting in the truck, a technician came out with an excited mid-sized black mutt, returning him to his dad. They made small talk and she headed back to the building, but as she opened the front door, she turned back to him.

“Hey, tell your wife that Brandy says hi!” She yelled through her mask, holding the door open with one hand and gesticulating with the other so the mask couldn’t be held responsible for obscuring her from his attention.

This is the siren call of the small town. If you don’t know me yet, someone you know does. There’s an occasional implicit so watch it but usually the only thing implied is I’ll be seeing you at the grocery. Every person comes with clues. Sometimes they’re easy, like:

“Oh you live on Spruce St? Do you know…”

But sometimes they’re small town chaos:

“Excuse me, is your dog’s name Cooper? I ran into a friend on the gondola the other day, and he was telling me his ex-wife Sarah — they’re still friends — was starting a new business over on Fur St with her best friend Liz, and that Liz had this woman helping her with her social who’d just moved to town and that she had this great dog, and he showed me a picture of it, and I think it’s this dog.”

This happens with Cooper and is not a stretch. People know Cooper, notably all the children in this tiny town. When it’s a nice day and Cooper is outside being a dog, I hear children I’ve never even seen before call his name to come play. Cooper has more friends than I do by what I would consider quite a large margin.

But the tides, the swirl, are pulling me from my rock. The Law of Small World Living and Likelihood will tickle the doorknobs of even the most reclusive, and you can’t help but peek out the door to see who’s there. Here are some examples:

• Our neighbor’s little sister played high school soccer with Ben’s cousin.
• That neighbor’s daughter goes to a school in Colorado where Ben’s uncle taught.
• Ben’s closest friend in LA went to a wedding a month back where the best man at the wedding is actually building a house in this town — this town of 60 odd houses.
• One of my best friends in Topanga, her ex-boyfriend (who moved from LA to the midwest) is now dating the butcher here, and they just moved to this tiny town, too. What brought him here? Well friends of his moved to this area four years ago, and he visits them. So do we — they were the ones who introduced us to our realtors. They were acquaintances in LA, but fast friends here. Not to mention the realtors they introduced us to now text about grabbing beers.
• One of my other dear friends from Topanga, living in New Hampshire for the season, struck up a conversation with a friend of hers and our tiny town came up — that friend said, I know someone there! I know one of those 180 people! My friend texted to prompt an introduction, but you know who it was? The postponed-by-Covid dinner friend. I texted her immediately, house-to-house some hundred yards away, and she was already texting with her friend about it.
• Not to mention the fellow LA bike scener who has a place on the other side of town (hi Kevin!) or the gal who also moved to this area in July and was forwarded this newsletter by a friend over the range saying, “this girl needs friends.” (Hi Dévon!)

Somewhat foolishly, Western culture all agreed that the most lifeless time of year was the best time to reinvent ourselves, to expand our horizons even as the actual horizon is only lit for a sad few hours a day. These dark days, built for hibernating and cocoa, they don’t exactly lend themselves well to expansion and growth. Even in sport, we’re cocooned into layers and backpacks and helmets and goggles. Meeting people isn’t easy. It’s never really easy, but it is somehow easier when everyone is in tank tops. But the swirl continues, even if slowly, and the tides are pulling me from my rock as the cold has slowed the dance enough that I can begin to see the steps.

So I’d like to contribute to the swirl. Here is my Be My Friend Profile so the Law of Small World can carry it on the wind. May it tickle every doorknob in a 30 mile range.

I am only softly and gently rad. I love memes. I love taking pictures and word puzzles and self-improvement challenges. I was a cat person until I met the right dog. I’m still a cat person, but that one dog made me love all of them. I am allergic to dandelions and bananas. I love glamour and if you want to dress up, I was hoping you would say so. I will say yes to running errands, going for walks, multi-day hikes, bike rides, skiing, coffee stops, animal shelter visits, physical labor including shoveling, mucking stalls, cleaning the house, stacking firewood, washing cars, raking leaves, and closet cleanouts. I like being useful to people. I mostly read non-fiction, but will always forsake it for ambitious and adventurous sci-fi, fantasy, and adventure. I love finding new music, and I love dancing to music so loud that you can get completely consumed by it and find yourself crying with release. I like friends who hold my hand and hug me even though I flinch at being touched. I am extremely passionate about workers’ rights and am not afraid to get fired for arguing about it. I will talk for hours about how stupid I think the 40-hr-work-week is, but I will help you with your resume and practice interviewing you. If I am alone, I am talking to myself. If I am at a party, I am with the pets who live there. If you ask me to sing, I will say no twice, but hope you ask the third time, because then I will, and I’ll feel so proud and full of joy. I hate vodka and love mezcal. Chicken tenders are still my favorite food. I genuinely think I look cool in my pick-up. If you ask, I will tell you. If you need help, I will come. I am at my worst when I feel trapped, and I am at my best when I feel like the whole world is in front of us.

Oh, and I take the stairs at the airport, I use my turn signal when no one’s there, and I always return my grocery cart.

May the swirl carry it far, and may my courage to dance swirl right along with it.

—-

For more high-altitude cabin adventures in a town of 180 people and 51 dogs, subscribe to the newsletter at Shangrilogs.

Shoveling out cars, paths, and bodies.

This is edition #19 of the Shangrilogs newsletter.

Shoveling out three bodies in under 12 minutes isn’t bad, but there’s room to improve. After all, shoveling has been the hobby du jour lately. And it’s almost entirely the wind’s fault. We’ll get to the bodies in a minute, but we have to start with the wind.

The wind has shown herself to be a worthy adversary, a trickster if I ever knew one, and she takes everything she can. The only time I remember being in the presence of wind with this kind of command was during Hurricane Ike in 2008. I was living in a shoddy hotel room at the resort I worked at on Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. The western wall of my room was entirely glass, and the night that Category 4 hurricane made landfall, I crouched on the eastern side of my bed, away from the glass, knees pulled to my chest and head tucked. The glass patio doors shook violently in their metal cradles and the 450-mile-wide jet engine that was Ike bellowed through the night. That was the only time I feared wind until the other night.

I have to give credit where it’s due, and the wind jolted me out of the bed I was holding myself so tightly in as she smashed into the French doors in our bedroom, shoving them in and out of frame as she howled through. They were locked, holding hands like children spinning as fast as they can ‘til their grip gives out and they tumble into the grass. Snow swirled in like a devil searching for a body, phantom fingers curling in the air, and it was only then we noticed it was also snowing above our heads, soaking our headboard. I respect the wind outside. But I don’t appreciate unannounced guests even when I like them. The bedroom temperature dipped into the 40s.

Her battering ram didn’t work, but it’s not her only war strategy. If you cannot get in the castle, you trap and starve the people inside. We’ve had some four feet in the last week or so, with 15 more inches coming tomorrow. It is the medium with which the wind paints, her brush strokes severe and energetic; she has patterns that help you recognize her work, like the six foot snow drift in front of our latest main entry. I say “latest” because the wind is having a real laugh taking them one by one. You want to use the front door? Permanent 5-foot snow drift. Your French doors? Taped shut with Peel and Seal tape, just giant pieces of shiny silver tape gift wrapping every seam in the bedroom doors and window. Your garage door? A massive wall of wind-whipped layered snow, compressing and compacting by the hour so if you wait til the storm is over, it will be back-breaking. Get out there where I can see you so I can slither through every zipper you have and chill you to the bone.

But she does have a sense of humor. After filling the screened-in patio with two foot snow drifts, she left the path from the patio door down to the cars so perfectly clear you can see the ground. She has quite literally swept the path for us, like some kind of game. After all, she wants to see you desperately shovel out the other doors over and over, like a whole town of Sisyphean fools.

But the shoveling didn’t stop there. We’ve been shoveling out our driveways, shoveling out the truck bed, shoveling out the internet satellite, shoveling out the compost bin, shoveling out the cars — the cars! My and Ben’s egos remain strangled by a warm taunt offered before the snow came: “if you can’t make it up the hill, you can park at my house.” All generosity was wiped clean by the very idea that there would be something Ben and I couldn’t do. If we can’t make it up the hill? It was like insulting our competency, our capabilities, and our cars all at the same time. But lately, I’ve come to understand what he meant.

There are cars abandoned everywhere. I shouldn’t even say cars: 4-wheel drive trucks, Land Cruisers, Subarus, vehicles capable of wintering and presumably driven by people who should understand at least marginally better than us how snow driving works. Maybe everyone is lazier than us. Maybe snow tires are sitting in the garage waiting to prove their value and earn their space. But everywhere you go there’s just another car left in a snowbank, fallen into the creek, jammed between trees, or just abandoned and left to be plowed in. We’ve seen a minimum of ten cars sitting in piles of snowy shame and frustration. There’s only 180 people in this town! It seems like a town ritual to dig out cars. It would be practical to buy shovels to keep in both our vehicles, but thus far we’re too smugly driving up the icy, snow-whipped road in 2-wheel drive knowing we could switch to 4-wheel, and slipping into the driveway without it. Never mind that each vehicle looks like it had one too many when we pull in, swaying from side to side, because the driveway we shoveled out in the morning is, yet again, covered in snow.

But all this shoveling pales in comparison to the shoveling that matters.

On Monday, Ben and I went to our first avalanche rescue course. It was an all day course, 15°F with (you guessed it) wind gusts upwards of 40mph, but mostly just strong enough to be persistently annoying. It seems important to reality-set a little here: it’s very unlikely that just living here will ever put you in likely avalanche danger. There are often avalanches along the 2.5 mile road into town, but no one in modern history has ever died in one. You’re usually just driving over avalanche debris (assuming you haven’t lost control of the vehicle, which, we’ve seen how people drive here.) The massive avalanche field that splits the town into two sections threatens to annihilate only two houses, and typically conditions are easy enough to understand that those people can evacuate in advance if risk is high. In the last ten years or so, they’ve only stayed with friends once.

The most persistent avalanche risk is actually the one you seek out, and because backcountry skiing is now part of our “move your body” roster, we are seeking out that risk, even with all precautions in place. So we need to know how to protect ourselves and anyone else who might be out there. Death by trauma in an avalanche is possible, but plenty of people live through the slide — it’s how fast you get them out of that slide that determines whether they live past it. A person who is completely buried in an avalanche can live for about 15 minutes before incurring serious brain damage. Snow is porous, but victims are typically breathing their own exhaled air (if their airways aren’t clogged by snow), resulting in carbon dioxide poisoning, as well as their breath melting the snow around their mouth which can refreeze as ice (non-porous). Point being, you gotta dig them out, and you need to do it quick.

In the backcountry, you should be wearing a radio to communicate with your party (e.g., “clear, follow my line” or “dropping down in 3”), but everyone also needs to be wearing a beacon. The beacon is how you find someone trapped in the snow, or multiple someones. In the event of a burial in an avalanche, all parties not buried turn their beacons to Search. Once you get your beacon as close to the person trapped as you can, you use a ~10-foot probe (longer in regions with deeper snow) to try to locate the body beneath you. And once you jab into something that feels like a person or a backpack or a ski, you start digging for your life, or more accurately, theirs.

At the top of the class, our instructor started with a warning: “this class will simulate high stress scenarios. I know some of you know people who’ve died in avalanches. I can’t know how you will react, so please do what you need to to take care of yourself through the class.”

I don’t personally know any avalanche victims (probably “yet”), but it didn’t make the simulations any less serious. In the screaming winds, at the end of a day of skinning and digging and learning, we were set up with a scenario. They separated us into three groups far enough apart to not hear the instructions the other group were receiving, “you don’t know each other, you’re all out in the backcountry on separate trips, and there’s been an avalanche, you have no idea how many people might be buried — rescue all of them, now, or they’ll die.”

They taught us an acronym for avalanche safety: ALONE.

A: Any additional threat of avalanche? No? Assign a leader. 
L: Look for clues. Do you see a pole or ski sticking up? Where was the last place you saw the people before the snow broke?
O: Outside help. Use your Spot or Garmin and phone and call for help. Call it in over the radio, too. 
N: Number of people you’re looking for, if you know.
E: Everyone turns their beacons to search mode and begins the hunt.

We were disorganized. Each group assigned their own leader. We didn’t work together. The beacons don’t lead you in a straight line and we didn’t designate paths for each group to search. The wind reveled in the chaos as my beacon led us within 1.5m of a signal. We unearthed probes and shovels from our packs, ditching our skis and bags, probing into the snow until we made contact with something. And then, the shoveling began. You don’t think of shoveling your driveway or your stoop. You don’t think of shoveling out paths and cars. You only think of who you would be shoveling out. Of how many seconds it’s been since you began searching, of how many seconds that might mean their airways have been packed with snow, of how many seconds they have left.

We recovered the first body in three minutes, but we made a dumb mistake of not turning off the dummy’s beacon once we recovered them. We dug a hole only a meter away looking for the second body, our beacons all still alerting us someone was near. It was the beacon we hadn’t turned off, wasting time, wasting seconds of someone’s chance of survival if that had happened in a real slide. A few meters away, more of the search party located another body, and we stomped through the snow to dig them out, your top speed embarrassingly slow as you collapse through the snowpack. At the final shovel strike, we heard another member of our party, completely alone, call out across the slope some 25 meters away, “I’m 1 meter away from a signal!” A third body. My and my friend’s skis were, at this point, maybe 8 meters uphill, so we army-crawled with our shovels out across the snow as fast as we could, trying not to sink in, digging with fury at the site once we arrived. We found the legs, and like idiots, we started digging out the legs, then the belly, then the chest, instead of just trying to dig out the head first so the dummy could breathe.

But we recovered all three bodies in 12 minutes. A little too close for comfort. A little too comfortable for actual close calls. I kneeled in the snow panting, shovel in hand, finally released enough from the simulated disaster to notice how exhausted I was.

We made a lot of mistakes in the simulation. We should have designated a leader, assigned dedicated search paths, assigned probe and first shovel duties, turned off beacons on the dummies as soon as we found them, we should have kept our equipment closer in order to reach bodies faster and have better access to the tools at our disposal, and many, many more. But that’s why you take classes and courses, and you keep taking them because the reality is, these skills aren’t tested that often. And between the classes and the books and the videos and the practice drills, you shovel. You shovel all the drifts, over and over, even when she fills them before your eyes, even when she whips and taunts you, yelling through the night, because only then can you see the wind for what she is: a general, fraying and testing your nerve, preparing you for the day when shoveling isn’t in or out, but life or death.

If you enjoyed this, subscribe to the newsletter at shangrilogs.substack.com for my high-altitude adventures. For information on staying safe in avalanche country, check out: Avalanche.org,Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CIAC),Sierra Avalanche Center, and Know Before You Go (KBYG).

When’s your off-season?

This post was originally published on Shangrilogs Substack. Subscribe here.

Do you have a personal off-season? Can you?

My life here is supported by a resort town. There’s not a single amenity in our “town”, so we head into the actual town 25 minutes away for restaurants, stores, salons, etc. Those businesses all operate on a resort schedule, which is the closest American Industry gets to European. Beginning in late October through early December, hours are reduced and many places close up for a well-earned off-season. And I love every moment of minor inconvenience. Good for you, Siam Thai. Get out of here! No problem, ski shop. You go climb those mountains.

Unfortunately my own sanctioned off-season this time of year probably looks like yours: here are two days off — we know you’re likely spending them negotiating familial relationships, walking on Covid eggshells, trying to recover from years of getting hammered by 40-hr-work-weeks that are actually boundary-less tethers to tiny dinny nightmare sounds coming from your tracking device, all while cooking an actual feast you haven’t practiced in a year — but we hope you come back refreshed on Monday because Carl scheduled that 8am. (Carl thinks we should be back in the office because he’s a sycophant who believes the American Dream is real. Carl doesn’t give a shit what timezone you’re in.)

Corporate jobs don’t have off-seasons. And no, vacation days don’t count, because the point of shutting down the whole business is that there’s not 738 emails waiting to destroy your newly replenished zen when you get back. Which is why I believe in manufacturing your own off-seasons: breaks from fitness, upping the frequency of takeout meals, a pre-determined month of caring less when the house is a mess, a couple weeks’ work of “phoning it in” which I love and have loved since college when I realized it was possible to give a C performance and still get A- life results. And to be clear, despite years of professional work promoting it, I’m not talking about self-care. I am instead talking about self-reallocation-of-care. For me, the perfect off-season isn’t punctuated by massages and elaborate tea routines, it’s just doing a whole lot less of the bullshit and a whole lot more of the best shit.

But what is the best shit?

I have to give my brain a long enough break from the day-to-day to even figure out what a fulfilling day even is. A natural place to start here is to just think about what you’re grateful for. But when I’ve attempted gratitude journals in the past, it gets a little old writing “my legs, Finn, Ben, parents, the outdoors” over and over again. So instead, I like to think about what I regret. After all, when we sit around talking about what we’re grateful for, we’re just dancing around what we regret, or more often, what we’re attempting to not regret, e.g., ignoring your children, spending your life at a desk, never seeing Paris or whatever. Gratitude is a nostalgia-laced reverence, a practice of really nesting in the good things brought into our lives, where regret is that same nostalgia-driven awe, just this time with a big ole complicated layer of “whoops.”

I only have one serious regret — the rest all fall under the categories of “learning experiences” and “well what are ya gonna do.” (I guess the third category is “yes, I absolutely wouldn’t have gone to that restaurant that night” but that’s rewriting history — not choosing a better decision.) My biggest regret is when I had something really good and I let another person convince me it wasn’t. Or, in more explicit terms, I had a popular Tumblr from 2010-2013 that was optioned into a book and instead of converting that audience to a newsletter or different platform and continuing to write for myself, I just let it die because my Worst Boyfriend™ convinced me it (and I) were trash.

I used to resent him for that, but it was my choice. There will always be people who want to influence your decisions — usually not with any malice. But an off-season, a time when I let my brain get a full dose of introspection, allows me to pay closer attention to what’s bringing me real joy and flow immersion. When I can pay attention like this, and burrow into that feeling, I’m not so easily led astray in the woods.

Sort of like moving to this town in the first place.

“Isn’t that kind of far from a hospital?”
“Aren’t you worried about avalanches?”
“Do you even have snow tires?”

I had conviction around this decision. (To be fair, I also didn’t have any manipulative sacs of bitterness in my circle anymore.) Which brings me to the present, an off-season if I ever had one. Living somewhere without endless city entertainments, my job in transition with our budget slashed, friends to see in person at a near all-time low, and only six hours of actual sunshine — there’s not a lot to do but dedicate myself to figuring out what I want to do with myself.

At the tail-end of my last off-season, I and three other women set out to read Designing Your Life together. I was swimming with big ideas and bigger dreams, and I needed to shape the clay of them into something I could use, which is exactly what that book advertised it could help with. For the most part, I really enjoyed that book, but one exercise struck me as particularly futile. It asked for you to write down a thing you love, e.g., “the outdoors” or “making to-do lists”, and then make a word web in all directions under a time limit, and at the end, circle the words you wanted to be a bigger part of your life. I remember thinking this was so dumb. Then earlier this week, I came across all these old papers while unpacking. Here are the words I circled:

• Home decor
• Sharing
• Community
• Inspiration
• Tropical
• Rustic
• Connection
• Stories
• Newsletter

*Gestures around at exactly what I’m doing right now, in a house I themed #tropicabin, sharing my stories and building a little community of people who care via a newsletter.*

Which brings me back to my big regret: abandoning the blog I worked tremendously hard to build. I knew when I was working on that blog that I was fulfilled. Is it ironic to do years of on-and-off soul-searching to come to the same conclusion that you did years ago? This is the plot of countless successful movies, after all. It took me a few years, and a couple very good off-seasons, but here I am, spinning my regret back in the gratitude direction.

So I want to say thank you for supporting this writing endeavor. I don’t wake up each day excited to log in to work, but I do wake up excited to work on this. And I still get questions that make me doubt myself.

“Are you doing it to just practice your writing?”
“Do people actually read it?”
“It seems a little aimless?”

But thanks to the right kind of rest, my conviction is happy to answer: no, yes, so?

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We have to give ourselves off-seasons. It wasn’t that long ago that humans knew a couple hundred people and read the paper and a few books. We have got to give ourselves a break because no one else is going to give it to us. Shut your kitchen down. Shut your social down. Put an out-of-office on your personal email. We need our own permission slips to care less about some things so we can care more about finding and funding and defending the things that light us up.

Here’s my recommendation for a little Sunday journaling in the afternoon sun: Use the past week of stirring up the pot of gratitude to see which regrets are adding that depth of flavor to the stew. Write down all the joy-giving things in your life, from things you do frequently to things you rarely get to do. Then, write down your regrets and what you would do differently. The reality is, we can always start “differently” right now. Be more honest, commit more deeply, love bigger, draw stronger boundaries, and so on. Finally, give yourself a time-constrained off-season. Put it on the calendar. “Do not spend time picking up the house.” Because it doesn’t matter how good your list of loves’n’loathes is if you don’t give your brain the space to figure out how to apply that to your life.

So when I’m re-shaping that ball of clay called life, I try to remember this:

1. Gratitude tells us what we’re getting right
2. Regret tells us what we could get right
3. And rest tells us how

It’s been almost a decade since I was this excited about my own ball of clay. It took one off-season to realize what I had, one to realize what I wanted, and this one to finally pursue it. Thank you being the ones to help me shape it.

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