Where Most Comfortable by RS

• @golgaloth Well, it was a #writingPrompt, so I wrote something that might not ever otherwise appear in print. #1stdraft. Sorry if a bit rough.

I pushed open the door to the walkup, then had to push harder. I guess the difficulty substituted for lack of a lock. As the door creaked open, I jerked my head back at the scent of urine. The hard-to-open door proved useless again today. I thumped up the steps two at a time, up four flights, lit by my blue-green sprite and wan nightshine through broken dirty windows. Nobody greeted me; perhaps nobody would except in fullshine as, though I looked like a student, I was also one of those shady characters, despite being reasonably girlish and almost pretty. Perhaps I radiated it.Perhaps the thaumlume sprite floating before me was too perfect, bright, and discomforting.

A rare talent. Which was why I was a student.

I'd just finished a job, too. The idiot would pay back his loan; all I'd had to perform were minor miracles and pyrotechnics that frightened the angel from flying away. Hadn't had to hurt anyone. It was my deal with the boss. I'd be his most efficient enforcer so long as I didn't have to hurt anyone, and I hadn't. The night angel could have fought, and I'd have defended myself and felt bad about the mess afterwards.

Well, a little bad. Maybe.

I'd been flush with gold from the job, which is why I was happy to be home. Tea and scones with plenty of butter in my tummy, I pushed open my door. No lock, but you guessed that, right? I felt a field-tingle passing through, which verified nobody had been so stupid as to enter while I was gone, but I threw the slide bolt behind me. It guaranteed people having to barge in loudly if they wanted to confront me, giving me time to defend myself.

I'd torn off all the wallpaper, leaving stained lath and plaster which to me seemed like a new-art wash of dun and grey that was both pleasing and calming. I'd spent days sanding, filling, and varnishing the partially rotted and distressed floorboards—could it be pine? It was mud color, so the knots were barely a clue. I had a table, similarly refurbished by me, and a periwinkle china wash basin I'd glued back together. No sense on spending anything except on books, food, and rent as far as I was concerned. Beyond that, and the oval window, was my stack of hay. I inhaled. It smelled fresh, since I'd brought it yesterday, and it reminded me of not-city. It combined with the scent of the trash fire at the end of the block. I heard kids laughing and talking.

Kids? They were older than me, but they hadn't been other people's sharp tool so my years counted double! At least.

I still liked the burnt smell. City incense, right? I grinned, dropping my book bag. I dug out my new tome. Leatherbacked. Gilt lettering. Rare and delightfully musty. Merchant Ducket's Codicils and Interlocutory Physics, 3rd Extended Edition. The 19th had been redacted heavily by the Directorate. It cost plenty, but nothing made me happier than warping reality, and I really did love the math. It never hurt when something in your head helped you do the arithmetic! I fluffed the hay up, snuggled into it despite the initial itchiness against my skin. I started reading, figuring I could finish my homework later.

I'd earned this. Lit by my sprite and the nightshine that over the next hours passed across the open book, I read and learned new stuff.

Eventually, I had to stretch.

That revealed a familiar blue envelope. Right. The window had been open and I usually closed it. Bolt, the boss' day angel runner had dropped it in. An urgent job, doubtless. Lots of gold.

Foo on that. I swiped it away. Let the boss try to make me work extra. Wouldn't end well.

I went to sleep, hugging the book like a plush rabbit.

[Author retains copyright]

#writing #author #sff #fantasy #story #shortfiction #minifiction #flashfiction #suddenfiction < 750 words #writingLife #boostingIsSharing.

@Michaelvaliant Wild Encounter by RS

• #Flashfiction of the class #suddenfiction < 750 words. This is a #1st draft written in one hour, so have mercy.

This was me living again. Sandals slapping heels on a forest path, the humidity steaming up from the ground as eveningshine approached, a map in hand guiding my way, and a backpack with a tarp weighing on my shoulders. I liked darkness and gloom; my room as a child had been a grey wonder of silence that made reading my books all day a joy. My world had become green in these last few days, and fragrantly pine-scented. Rabbits skittered through the underbrush. Dirt ground into my sweaty skin reassured me. Not having to care felt like paradise.

I saw the doe and fawn first, and they didn't look happy. The mother stared into the distance, then whirled her head to glance at me. I saw her body tense, before she nosed her fawn, seemingly to say, "The wolves, the wolves!"

They bounded off. At a tangent. I'd caught them between...

Needles rustled and I saw light peek through branches.

That direction.

Thaumlight! It had a sparkle to it only someone like me could detect. It wasn't electroluminescent or bioluminescent, or firelight. I mustn't be far enough from the city after all.

I removed my sandals. The leaf litter caressed my feet and proved I'd built up sufficient calluses as I crept forward into the warm dusky world. It wasn't my world, and usually not that of people either. The Wild claimed the wild areas between the cities and the farms as their own, and they didn't like incursions in their unblemished fair demesne. People who passed through respectfully never saw the capital-F Fawn, the Wood-horned. Those that trespassed—

Well, people did disappear. When I'd run away, certainly some people assumed I'd be one of those, but the broadsheets said I'd been kidnapped.

As I padded along, with hushed crinkles and mashing sounds, the shadows and the ghostly forms resolved from glimpses to a tall thin structure with a pointy bark-shingled roof. I saw a cold chimney almost as I scented last night's hearth. My heart beat faster as it all felt wrong. I glanced at the map. I'd paid well for it from a traveler with a rep. I saw no settlement, no indication of a border with the Wild near here.

Closer, the forest veil slid to reveal: Plastered and cracked walls. Wood frame real-glass windows heavily varnished, but dark with age and constant repair. Despite the growing gloom, the three windows glowed with thaumlight.

Homey.

Hospitable?

Someone like me might live there, but in this danger?

Between where I'd stood before and the house, a form moved. A branch cracked. A young man—no, a teenager maybe slightly younger than I.

In the shadows melting into the trees behind him, a glint. It was too far, but I knew those were caramel eyes, looking my way. At first I thought a tree moved, but I saw wood move as she tilted her head. On a deer's, that would be a rack of possibly six points. On her?

Maybe I didn't understand anything about the Wild. Less about one of my kind living amongst them, though intuition said it wasn't bad.

I bowed my head in her gaze and didn't look further. I didn't want to be invited in. I had left the cities of the northeast to disappear, but not in a wild sense. Circumstance had led me to be crowned to lead the syndicate after I'd been responsible for its director's death (not that anyone understood she'd become too stupid to live). The conservative faction would eventually kill me. Those I helped flourish with my advice would die protecting me. I'd done my utmost to calm the conflicts that caused the war, before ghosting the organization.

I wanted to leave no traces of my passage that pursuers might discover. I needed to "disappear" for months on my way to Home City. I didn't need the guilt of more innocent deaths to add to my personal tally.

I dropped my sandals with a measured slap to show I wasn't hiding, and quickly marched away from the welcome light. I liked the gloom, and the humid heat, and was happy to sleep where no one would suffer because I existed.

[Author retains copyright]

#shortfiction #fiction #sff #fantasy #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompt #promptodon #BoostingIsSharing

Could be an #excerpt from my WIP.

#WritingWonders Feb Day 29 — (2 of 2)
#excerpt #snippet of a scene

"Ow!" he said, stumbling over-dramatically. Had the purse strap hit him?

Despite my better judgement, I glanced back. He moved his hand to show a red scratch.

It had!

The buck considered it a mating gambit, or feigned it pretty well. I rolled my eyes and sped up.

So did he and his jeering miscreant friends. Had I not been up since dawn, I might have enjoyed the novelty of the attention as the teens argued about me. His girlfriend pointed out I trampled his manhood.

I rolled my eyes at that. That earned me a lame, "What's your name?"

I made a really? face as I stifled a smile, but my snort, though barely audible, was unmistakable. I shook my head.

He ruined my amusement by speaking over his shoulder, "She's kinda cute."

Another girl said, "Stop playing with your food, Trigger!"

"So," he continued, "Cute Dumpling—"

"Mixed metaphor," I interjected.

"What?"

"Dumplings are not, as a rule, cute."

He growled. "What's —"

"What did that squeaky-voiced one mean by calling me a 'skirt?'" I didn't bother to look back, but heard someone stumble and swear.

"Mustang didn't mean no disrespect," he said, his voice dripping sarcasm.

The No was a dig. "Was it respectful for you to look up my blouse?" I asked.

"Hey!"

"Who's following whom?"

"You're seriously pushing it. We do business in this neighborhood—"

"Like what?" If I was going to be delayed, I might as well have fun. Predators trying to harass me were always fair game.

"I— Uh..."

"Loitering?"

His voice lowered. "You need to show some respect." He aimed a hand at my shoulder.

I brought up an elbow, rotating when he thought his weight would be on me. Kept walking. No magic. He stumbled, and his friends behind him laughed.

"Are you asking for trouble?"

I thought about that. Maybe I was.

He wore a white teeshirt and tight black shorts with gold chains. He was smaller than his fellows, a dyed blond. Meant he thought himself smarter, either in "business" or in the way he fought.

I still hadn't learned how to reliably cast my special spell. Was he the one who might help me break through? I looked at the muscles as he moved, and how he held himself. "I doubt it," I told myself.

"What?"

"I thought you might teach me something, but was mistaken."

He sped up to cross my path but didn't take the last step. Guess I'd intimidated him. It gave me a good, unimpressive view of his rear end. I made a point of looking, tit for tat.

"What are you, Trigger?" I asked.

"Nightingale Glory Syndicate. We all are.You're going to regret trespassing—"

Ah. Now I understood. "Not in a gang. Was walking home after a long day at work when someone rudely wolf-whistled me—"

He stepped in front of me.

I stepped the other direction, taking one last glance at his flank. As I passed him, I said into his ear, "Gelding."

"Gelding? Are you calling me a horse's—?"

"I was thinking of it as a verb."

His face darkened. "You think you can take me on?!"

I gave the guy a cursory glance. He had none of the brute strength of the monster who'd assaulted me last spring and whom I'd put down, nor, I doubted, the tenacity. I wouldn't learn anything. Realistically, I might if the entire gang mobbed me, but then I might very well lose that battle. I wasn't stupid.

"You asked my name," I corrected.

He jerked his head back. "I asked— what?"

"My name."

"Gelding?"

"My name." I'd be lying if I said it was my name, but it wasn't what I'd said to him.

"It's not very feminine."

"Is Trigger masculine?" A nickname signifying anger-management issues?

"But... Gelding?"

"You earned your name, didn't you? What about me?"

That stopped him. He looked up and saw we'd walked up to another gathering of late teens. They looked just like Trigger's but wore button-down shirts, plaid, and steel bracelets they started clinking together.

The term gang colors suddenly made sense. I had gotten him to follow me into a rival territory.

Shoot! Now I needed popcorn.

#fiction #fantasy #dialogue #writing #writer #writers #author
#BoostingIsSharing

#WritingWonders 3.4: Interview question 1: Director Midnight, tell us something you envy about your closest friend.

My first question was this? About friends? I froze under the bright lights, because if I didn't freeze I was going to stand, scream, and march right out of the studio. That would help no one, and certainly not boost my public reputation.

Of course, the Director of Home had set up this interview after the announcement of my wedding the same way she'd blindsided me with a news conference before my unwilling installation as her second in command. The fatal question two weeks ago, from the prestigious Seacoast Sentinel of all broadsides, had been,

"Are you the 'Nameless Teenager, the Hero of Harbor Beach?'"

The reporter had displayed the color image that graced the front page almost a year ago. It showed a devil-girl in bronze-red pigtails with olive skin. She sat spattered in crimson blood, her magic holding down compression bandages on six constables while her hands worked removing a glass dagger from a seventh. In a fugue, her eyes blazed with a fiery glow—a reflection of the fire that illuminated the contrasty scene. 

I was the first person at the scene because I was responsible for the disaster. What did it matter that Nightingale Glory had tricked me into helping her cause it?

The Director of Home, that vile woman who knew my secrets and manipulated my life, had forced me to take credit for the 271 saved. I'd been naïve, stupid, and a coward, unwilling to do what obviously needed doing before that terrible moment I had to decide.

I'd chosen to evacuate the building so I did save them all. But how many times had I saved Boss Glory that day! Had I not done so, the 6 dead and 10 maimed that day wouldn't now taint my soul.

They weren't my only dead.

I was evil. I didn't deserve friends.

I swallowed my anger as tears burned in my eyes. It had only been in the last few weeks that I'd been willing to admit that anyone would want me as a friend, let alone that I might actually have friends—not just trusted subordinates, team mates who had my back without asking, or an upper-classmate who liked to pal around with me to restaurants to get herself drunk, who wanted to spend time studying magic together, or who invited me to sleep in her bed when I'd otherwise have been homeless.

I found myself breathing like I had run a race. When the interviewer offered me a tissue, I wiped my cheek, then snuffled. I blinked in dismay at the lights, at the recorder lens, at the twinkling red light. There went the former street tough image I wanted to cement, with my torn ear and the faint scars I'd refused to let the makeup artist erase with green powder.

I whispered, "It's not fair."

Did I say that? Ugh!

"What's not fair?" asked the saintly interviewer.

Get up. Get up! Walk out! Now!

Instead, I shuddered before blurting, "What do I envy? 'Closest friends?' About any of my friends...? How can they possibly trust me!?"

I moaned and burst into tears. Not unlike two weeks ago.

I didn't add, I don't even trust me!

#fiction #fantasy #sf #sff #sciencefiction #writing #writer #writers #author #writingcommunity #excerpt

#BoostingIsSharing

#WritingWonders 3.11 — Interview question 2: Briefly describe your relationship with your parents.

When I heard that question, I laughed and said, "Good. No conflicts. Ever."

I'd had tears in my eyes from Cliftown's last question about what I envied in my friends. I sniffed and wiped to hide the new ones. Obviously the Director of Home had written the script and the ancient woman was evil.

So was I.

I added, "My mother was an opera singer..." Note the tense of the verb there, Cliftown.

She looked down at the paper she held. "Midnight?" she asked in a way to prompt me.

I inhaled deeply and let out a long sigh. My mother had been one of those celebrities known by one name, but Cliftown looked pretty—probably hired for that feature and not reporting—and no more than a few years older than me. Midnight's album Broad Street and Main had likely came out before she was 10. Maybe never heard the name? Or ignored it because it was her mother's generation's music?

Parents. Plural. I didn't miss that, either. Nobody cared who your father was, only that another human got born. However...

"I knew who my father was because he was my mother's manager and Mom acknowledged it. I remember that he used to read me bedtime stories, and that he had a pet name for me."

"Which was?"

Yeah, clueless.

"Which I can't remember, other than it made me happy."

"What do you remember?"

"I remember visiting Home City and Director Rainy Days' personal space with them, having recently been invited back into it. Not much changed. Her and Mom were apparently friends—and I'm pretty sure that isn't public knowledge. I didn't know until two weeks ago." I brought my hand up to my chin, as if thinking about it... though I wasn't. I added, "I guess that explains why she gave the eulogy at my parents' funeral when I was 5."

The papers fell out of the woman's hands and fluttered to the wood floor as she went down on bent knee. I'd taken out my spite on the wrong target, forgetting I'd gone from the nobody I'd pretended to be to somebody whose flippant words could destroy lives and fortunes.

I swooped down, saying "Sorry! Sorry!" and hugged the bony wisp of a woman as she shuddered and cried. Rainy Days had set up the interviewer, and me. She'd made us both her tool.

As she had my parents. Midnight's international fame had made her the perfect spy, and the Director of Home had sent my parents on their last mission.

One day I would make her pay for that decision.

#fiction #fantasy #sf #sff #sciencefiction #writing #writer #writers #author #writingcommunity #microfiction

#BoostingIsSharing

#WritingWonders 3.13 —Interview question 3.

After the question about my parents ended with two sobbing idiots being recorded for all of Home to see, I gathered the interview script from the floor and thumbed through it crosslegged. I would not let the Director of Home render me relatable to her citizens by making her sharp tool into some pathetic blithering fool.

I handed over the page, tapping the line. I resumed my chair.

"N-name the three most important things in your life."

I'd picked the question, but I had to think about it. I had to admit, to myself at least, revenge had been and still was up there. I now understood that Rainy Days only thought of the well-being of Home and humanity, and no individual—not my parents, not me—would ever stand in her way. But she was the keystone that kept it all running, so making her pay was beyond me at the moment. I wasn't going to blurt that because no person would then let me execute the power given me to save the world from onrushing disaster. I'd taught Rainy Days a lesson when I surprised her by fighting back, throwing her to the pavement and hitting her with her crown. The broadsheets had published the images. I'd have to settle for that.

Eventually, I answered, "Until a few weeks ago, I'd have said magic, solitude, and being left alone. Recent events have changed me, though."

"Like nearly dying?" Clifftown helpfully asked.

"I knew I was really sick." Sepsis. "I had to save him, though." I had to stop prioritizing others. Was this the fourth or fifth time I'd almost died? We both laughed nervously.

I continued, "I've only recently learned I have friends, though I can't always see why people trust me, or why I deserve them, but I accept I have friends now. I've realized they are very valuable to me. So that's number one."

I steepled my hands in front of my mouth, allowing my subconscious to battle it out before saying through my fingers, "I can perform miracles. I will never be chattel because of that, and I am very grateful even to the man who tried to murder me and inadvertently taught me that lesson."

My interviewer paled. After the last two questions, no doubt she'd begun to expect a third explosion that would surely ruin her reputation for life, if not merely her career.

"Third," I said, "Most importantly, I learned in the last two weeks that I can love, am capable of it, and capable of being loved. I can open my heart. I have a definition of it in my head, and I know what it feels like, and that it is beyond friendship—and while often physical, it is so much more. And. When people share it, it not only changes your world, it changes the world."

[ In away, this MC is a lot like me, and likely more on the spectrum than I am. I really did have to learn what love was and define it in my head, and that I could open my heart. —RS ]

#fiction #fantasy #sf #sff #sciencefiction #writing #writer #writers #author #writingcommunity #actuallyautistic (self-diagnosed)

#BoostingIsSharing

Blue phosphines circled me; he'd bounced my head off a rock.

I'd begged: offered coins, frightened, oblivious I wore nothing—neither my purse nor anything, as he climbed the muddy hill. My skull ached, in addition to my jaw from the sucker punch and my bruised pelvis.

I was a witness. I'd die if I failed to act.

My head lolled, my body clenched by his right arm. He jostled me with each slip; mud sluiced along my rear, down my legs as he reached forward with his free arm and pulled us up.

Panic gave way to calm as defense training cried: surprise, distract, disable, run. Couldn't perform magic; he'd see the glow and I'd never wake again. I was a devil-girl, though, with tiny rebar-like meat-hooks sticking backwards out of my temples.

My head lolled. One bounce, two, three. I took the momentum, bounced my head upward, speared—

He yelped, reflexively flinging me aside, ripping flesh, wrenching my neck. I landed in rotting leaves. I brought my legs to my stomach and connected. Stomach? Groin? I pushed him, pushing myself away.

Lightning flashed—Built like a bear, hand to his cheek his hard eyes met mine—Darkness.

Scrambling downhill on my rear, I spun up Push, providing wan light as my horns burned with magic. He lunged to pin me. My Push shoved me downhill, barely avoiding him... into a tree; this time my magic threw him aside—

Barely a couple paces. "Oh, come on!"

I had shoes, at least. I braced against the tree, kicked as he lunged. Stupid, reflexive. He grabbed but overbalanced, lost his grip.

As he twisted toward me, I performed, lifting him—barely. My magic balked trying to hurt anyone, but I swung toward a low branch. The magic died, but his head struck as thunder rumbled. He fell onto a gnarled root. He thrashed, yelling incoherently.

I slipped downhill, arms out. It felt like skiing had to feel.

Behind, footsteps splashed.

My Stars! I spun up, performed, shoving myself from a tree in my path. I glanced back, targeted, and performed Levitate, lifting him left off his feet. My performance flicked out, of course it did, but yes!, momentum bounced him off the trunk.

I stumbled, shoes hitting the road, coming down sliding painfully on a knee on crumbled asphalt. It struck me as the monster roared his rage: I could not outrun the beast. I threw a chunk of road, then the other piece. I hit him.

He smiled, wiping his dripping nose and bloody face. I was nothing!

He rushed me.

I spun up Push, narrowing it. Work, work, work! At least punch him! I clenched my body, falling on all fours, screaming as I flooded everything into my performance, folding and refolding the area of affect.

Purple-blue flashed blindingly through closed eyelids. I heard a clap of immediate thunder that drowned a cry of pain. I dodged and he misstepped, came down rolling, bounding by to slide into the drainage ditch.

He splashed and immediately levered himself up, mud dripping, eyes enraged.

"What does it take!" I yelled.

I couldn't get up—bruised, scraped, blood in my mouth as nausea rose. My head pounded. I backed on raw hands and knees as he stood, now on the road—

He kept his distance. He ripped off a tattered shirt, eying me like a wolf disbelieving a baby fawn had kicked him in the jaw.

I kept my Push variant from spinning apart as he gave me the time to spin it up again.

He feinted.

I flinched, but crouched forward, bull-faced and glaring up. "I hurt you, didn't i?"

He lunged. I performed my miracle, eyes closed, accepting fate.

Hot bits of asphalt peppered my face and arms, and clattered on the road. Blinded again, ears ringing, I rolled right.

He kept running. I turned, even as I saw I'd blasted a crater in the road. In the moonlight, he ran like a deer, but I knew he'd stalk me later—

Or find another to savage! It focused my rage and outrage. I planted my stinging knees and hands, leaned forward, directing all the energy in my body, channeling my life into performing, targeting until... I bellowed, "Never. Hurt. Anyone. Again!"

A river of will flooded through me. The maths and visualization balanced and I performed a miracle. Flash. Thunder.

Force shoved back on the road, flattening me. Ears ringing loudly, I pushed wet hair from my eyes. but through falling rain, I saw a dissipating cylindrical cloud of steam swirling along the road. Something burned in a pile at its end despite the shower.

Perhaps the magic worked because it saved others from my fate. I huffed, mouth ticking, but, in steps, I began to grin. I'd done something miraculous.

What did I feel? I'd beat him. I'd won.

I'd fought back and...

Won. Tears burned. Rage drained out, leaving...

Pride. I felt...

Happy! I hurt, but no achievement came without sacrifice, right?

Right?

I started laughing.

I was finally free. I'd never be chattel again.

#WritingWonders #writing #writers #writingcommunity #SFF #fantasy #fiction

#BoostingIsSharing

#WritingWonders 3.21 — How descriptive is your writing? Share a snippet of a description.

There's a dichotomy between descriptive writing and a tract of description. That in mind, I'd say, "Fairly descriptive?" Enough to leave the reader with enough that they can visualize what's happening.

I rarely write long Dickensian tracts of description, preferring a more interactive style, but it happens. I learned from Poul Anderson that it was important to include at least one sense in every descriptive paragraph, and I try.

The following is adapted from another work to my new SF milieu, but again my people don't use the term "magic," but explaining what's really happening is beyond the scope of the rewrite.

#excerpt

Director Rainy Days wanted to find the high level magic user who had copied her magic and surprised her—or worse, a certain high-value runaway girl she'd been informed about. She hadn't sent her minions to look for the dozen winged tourists at the counter or the late lunch-going pair of burly men near me. Or the pair of old biddies I'd noticed sharing photos of their grandkids in the opposite corner. Or the ditsy waitress. The cook with the goofy torque blanche? Him, heating food with modulated demon fire? Considering the burnt cornbread I'd smelled, maybe?

I heard steps toward the back of the restaurant as I chewed my previous piece of lentil-bean cheeseburger and sliced another. The sound of shoes stopped half way to the kitchen. A cook, of course, wouldn't demonstrate high level magic.

Which left me.

Squelching the thought of mistakes in my performance that would leave my textbook, bread, burger, and silverware clattering to the table or floor, I magically separated the bun from the burger pulling out a string of melted cheese, unscrewed the top of the mustard jar I now floated, dipped my knife into brown paste while still holding the dancing fork aloft, then split my magic yet again and picked up the oat shake and aimed the straw into my mouth to wash down the burger I'd swallowed.

Ooo. The Flipping Burger used real strawberries!

I turned the page slowly, so as not to rip it, as steps came up behind me. Looking from the dexter to sinister sides of the parchment, back and forth, I suspended everything else with static targeting because I felt moisture bead at my hairline.

Discounting that, pretty impressive.I had used nothing I had just learned watching Director Rainy Days perform a miracle outside the window of the restaurant.

The directorate constable strolled by and turned to face me. "Hello," she said, cordially and with a friendly smile.

The blue-eyed blonde levitated beside her a custodian helmet with its shiny copper badge. Number 552. I understood why she used her magic and not her arm to carry it—the same reason I did: to have something defensive spun up.

I glanced at her. I put down the shake, slathered the spicy smelling horseradish mustard on the slice of burger and set it and the utensils down—including the knife that might have proved useful, before I realized it. I lowered the book.

Her eyes studied me. She was quite young, a few years older than me, but her gaze was penetrating and disconcerting. Bet they trained coppers to do that.

Her type could see flaws in people. Like a teen pretending to be a gender that wasn't her birth gender. Who wore culottes not britches.

"Did you just perform a miracle about a minute ago?" she asked.

Yes, but quibbles.

I shifted my book up and down, then lifted my fork, knife, shake, plate, the fries, and the quarter of burger together on individually targeted vectors, then plunked it down loud enough to make a point of control without making it seem like I'd dropped them. I am the highest level devil-girl here, I thought, laughing at myself as I knew well how far I had to go to catch up to the Director of Home. "You could say that."

I hoped the copper didn't see me sweat.

#fiction #fantasy #sf #sff #sciencefiction #fantasy #writing #writer #writers #author #writingcommunity

#BoostingIsSharing

#WritingWonders 3.26 —Interview question 26

After all the crying, proving I was actually human after all, they'd given me a copy of the interview questions. I tapped a finger on the print.

Cliftown said, "I thought you wanted to skip—"

I shook my head, one time. I knew the Director of Home had written these, and I'd ask her evil self what the deal was later, but I figured I could use this one to demonstrate my brain didn't function like most people's.

The interviewer swallowed visibly, having to ask this to the new second director of Home. "If you and the people you work with were on a deserted island, which one would resort to cannibalism first?"

I answered, "I wasn't going to answer this question, but I was walking in the city earlier today. I passed an alley where an old woman stood watching her daughter quarreling physically with a man I later realized she loved. I thought, maybe I should intervene but didn't in the end. The ancient woman had her reasons to watch with her arms crossed, and the two...

"The first time I met the man I'm promising to, we ended up each with a bloody nose and I got my torn ear.

"What was I walking into, if I intervened? I couldn't guess.

"There are no deserted places where nobody can rescue you. People live everywhere. On a disabled airship or a steamship gone off course, you'd die first. I realized long ago, hypotheticals are just that. Hypotheticals. While I suspect I could name a name, I won't, because until you are actually in a situation, you don't know how you will act. Nobody really does.

"I got trained to fight in the arena, to prepare for when someone tried to bloody me or knock me out. Yet, my trainer immediately made me spar with the man that lost the previous year championship by points. Neither opponent could land an affective punch on the other. I was supposed to be hurt, to see my own blood, and to go running home, crying."

After a moment of silence, Cliftown asked, "What happened?"

"I knocked Punch Drunk out."

"The guy that won the championship last year?"

"Yeah, it was me who handed him his championship belt. Neither of us knew what would happen until we fought.

"So, who would decide to resort to cannibalism on a deserted island? Until you land in such an unlikely situation, who knows?" I gave Cliftown my most feral grin, and the lens as a result. "You perhaps?"

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#WritingWonders 4.3 — The Wanted Poster by R.S.

Someone knocked with what proved to be a clipboard before coming into the conference room, and the various lieutenants' bodyguards stiffened. The thug still had a bandage over his eye and an arm in a sling as he walked in and discreetly handed the clipboard to me. I looked at the single page.

"Not a joke?" I whispered, my mouth wide open.

"No, Boss."

The poster had official diffraction stripes with rainbow lettering. It displayed two images, one snapped after I'd shoved the boss down on the seat of the brougham as we fled the summit, less than a minute before the carriage exploded. It showed me in a hooded cape with my chin mask up, unluckily glowering at the lens. The second was a bank image. The scale showed my above average height. This time my hood was down for visibility and my hair up in a gangland bouffant. The chin mask was intact. Despite soot from the riots on my face, you could see my flattened nose and brushed eyebrows, but not the most important part. I escorted the boss past on the sidewalk. Between the crash gate grate and her having just darted to my right, you couldn't see her wings or face.

You could identify the Old Harbors Post Office across the street by its century old architecture.

Fortunately, the image of me drenched in blood that evening, the one under the headline in the morning edition, wasn't included. The constables hadn't made that connection, except to the extent that the first line of the wanted poster read, "Detain for questioning by order of Rainy Days, Director of Home".

I shivered. The evil woman was too close to connecting the dots. I had to excise the Mustang elements that could take advantage of the chaos and to prevent the syndicate from spinning into internecine war. I was already responsible for too many deaths because I'd been too cowardly to do what I knew was right. This poster meant I had to disappear and leave the east coast sooner than later. It was if I watched my plausible deniability lining up at the window like a string of rats and, one by one, defenestrating itself.

It read further, "Wanted for questioning in regards to the Old Harbors Post Office and the Three Forks Bridge explosions. Suspected of transporting illegal goods and wanted persons, assault, racketeering, attempted murder, and terrorism. Goes by the name Gelding and other aliases. Aged between 15 and 35."

I muttered, "A two-decade range? I'm not even two decades old." I really worked on disguising myself, and it paid off.

"High-level thaumaturge without a limiter. If apprehended, shackle to a hard surface to prevent escape. Consider dangerous. Reward for information leading to arrest: 2 years basic."

I loved praise and grinned at being recognized as high-level, but added, "I'm not dangerous."

South Beach snorted, then sat there her chest bouncing as she struggled with a hand over her mouth to hold in her laughter. I looked around the room. The men and women smiled, getting the joke, but others looked serious. Feathers made rustling noises. They knew I had the kiss of death.

I grinned, handing the clipboard back to my thug secretary. "Burn that."

"Yes, Boss."

[Author retains copyright]

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#WritingWonders 4.4 — Interview question #5

"If you could teach one subject what would it be?" Cliftown asked. With a hopeful expression. Many of my answers so far had been traumatic for us both.

I smiled, relieved. Rainy Days wanted to trip me up with her questions, but I wasn't against people seeing the real me. I was evil because of circumstance made me want to act, not because I was somehow intrinsically that way. To the extent people understood and predicted what I would do, I could do the same for them. The people I need to work with would become less of a cypher.

"My first thought is I'd teach fighting, possibly athletics in general, but that's really training not teaching. I've coached teams of people before.

"My second thought is—" I chuckled. "Some people think I'm a higher-level thaumaturge than Rainy Days. In a few specifics, combined with fighting, barely so. She's more experienced, and there's much I don't know. Consider that I tried to help a friend for weeks who got stuck. I even bought a psych book to figure it out. Then I reconciled her with another student. The nerd solved the problem in minutes, and I still don't understand how. Teach Thaumaturgy? That'd fail."

I waved a hand toward a winged-shadow in the darkness beyond the lens. "Bolt. My bag."

The armored woman flew over. Her wonderous armor resembled parts of a human skeleton for a good reason, and it glowed red because she could make it do that (it was only for show). She was evil that way. Bolt momentarily grabbed all the attention as I pulled out the book I had carried with me from the day I'd run away from home.

I held the small leatherback tome by opposite corners. I said, "What I'm really good at is reading books. These days, with thau-holography, it's a lost art."

I ran my hand across the age-hardened cover, feeling the few cracks. I sniffed and loudly inhaled the library scent of the pages. "You can tell a lot from the outside, like how well liked it is by the wear... and the tooth marks." I grinned as I pointed where I must have nibbled in my sleep. "That it's so old, 500 years in this case, and carefully conserved tells you to expect good stuff."

Opening it, I pointed out the yellow color and uneven condition of the pages, then added, "Look, there's multiple forwards penned by generations of students and publishers. The table of contents looks well organized; just studying it actually gives you an idea of what you can study within. The index, I can vouch for, is designed to help you need only essential bookmarks."

I opened the book flat and displayed it, holding it splayed in one hand beside me for the lens.

Cliftown gasped. "You've written all over it? In multiple colors, too. Did you cross out original text!?"

"I did! Rarely, it's flat wrong. I own this text." I tapped my head. "I still refer to it almost daily. I can— No, I want to teach how to do this, and why you'd want to."

I snapped the book closed and placed it on my lap.

Cliftown said, "I get the idea that you love books more than people."

"Yeah. Maybe. I've just learned I can love people in the last two weeks. It still astounds me that both humans and books can provide you joy if you let them."

[Author retains copyright]

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"What is something you never leave home without?"

"You're hoping I'll say something fluffy like breath mints or my messenger bag, aren't you?"

Cliftown gulped, justifiably worried where I might take this.

"Well, I do have a tin of Spicy Jam's Gingermints; never know when you'll kiss someone." I grinned to show my teeth. I really didn't have the Kiss of Death. A total misconception I'd nurtured.

Cliftown hazarded a nervous smile, and pointed at the tome still on my lap from the last question.

I nodded, "That, too. Never pays to be bored. I've also used it in my bag to shield against a kick. Worked well, but I think I'll go with something else I aways carry. Bolt. My trophy."

Something bright flashed in the dark beyond the stage lights. I raised my hands and caught the thing that was wider than my hand with a clap. I triggered the bone-handled jackknife.

The mechanism sprung loudly.

The six-inch chromed-steel blade flashed and Cliftown jumped off her stool, stumbling back. She stuttered, "T-t-t-t—that's illegal." And razor sharp, too! From how the woman shook, I'd be willing to wager she'd been mugged once at knife point.

I levitated the knife, spinning it in the air above my palm.

"A woman gang member took exception that her guy wolf-whistled me, then tried to slit my throat when I hid in a dark alley. I took her toy away from her. Didn't get to mug anybody with it again."

Her eyes still locked on the knife, she asked, "W—what happened?"

"I tricked her into running face first into a wall. Since I now theoretically help make the laws, I'd argue it isn't illegal for me. I used it to save lives."

Still standing, my interviewer asked, "I may regret this, but how?"

I rotated my play toy to the horizontal, aligned to the space between a person's ribs—before pointing it away from anybody. I pantomimed throwing the knife with my hands, then with the heal of my hand, pushing it in. "I had to heal both the person I saved and my assassin, whom I stabbed. The whys and wherefores were complicated, let's leave it at that."

I clicked the knife closed. "Never leave home without it."

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#WritingWonders 4.11 — The real Cherry Cliftown, the Celeb Interviewer in the saintly porcelain flesh(!), stopped me outside the loo and asked, "Lady Bolt. What annoys you the most about—"

"—my friend?" I looked for a levitating lens, but this part of Studio Home looked like any other office corridor. Bare corrugated fabric brown walls, anemic spot lights, red exit sign. No lens. Still: "This ain't going over broadcast or somethin?"

"She is your friend, not just someone you're hired to guard? Right?" She frowned as she eyed my spiked hair and cheek piercings. Real gold, them.

Her lack of observational skill made me want to give her a cross-eyed stare of dismay, but I kept my jaw shut. I wore the centuries old antique armor worn by one of the most famous day angel grunts in all the history of Home! A certified hero. You know her name. I know her name Wearing it, I was all but stamped Di-rect-tor-ate-certified myself. Made entirely of relic-level remnants, it was. Rainy Days, who I nearly killed three weeks ago, had bribed me with the armor for a make-sure I'd train to become my friend's bodyguard. As if I wouldn't have, asked di-rectly; gotta negotiate, natch. Must'ave impressed her—nobody had almost succeeded in killing her in centuries.

I settled for chuckling into my wing, before saying, "Not gonna say we're besties, and we worked for the same scary dude for awhile, but she saved my life and I returned the favor when Rainy Days tried to incinerate her." I pointed at the many red and some still bandaged burns peppering my seat-side and back legs. "I wouldn't do that for any random devil-girl. Look, I'm okay with ya reporting that and so'd she be. We razz each other all the time."

Cliftown looked dubious, considering the meltdown and yelling that happened with those first questions before the break. That my friend had been using the street name Night Mare spoke volumes that she was some kinda scary. If ya didn't know her, to know it was mostly an act, someone pretending to be an adult really well.

I added, "Buuuut, you might wanna leave the Director's name out of it." I gave a toothy grin.

"I'm just trying to figure her out. In just a few weeks, she rose from a nobody to the second most important—"

I fluffed my feathers in front of her face, rustling them to get her attention. "Ah don't think she could ever uh been 'nobody.' Ya saw the list of crimes she got pardoned for? That doesn't count that she's done saved people. Lots of people, Home City's population being among them, which answers your question."

"How so?"

"What annoys me most is that devil-girl is completely clueless about things, pretty much like you Daisy... Um, Cherry."

The woman had taken out a quill to write on the back of her interview questions. She looked up, the point on her tongue, red bushy-brows sinking into a glare. Similarly pale reddish eyes flicked to the neck bones in the armor. They were real, very much so, and contained congealed magic. I could tell it was what they call a rebuttal when she said, "She's possibly the most focused person I've ever met."

"Focused." I blew air through my lips. "Yeah. So focused she sees da beetle on the redwood tree, but not the rotted log she's about to trip over! It's annoying that she goes out of the way to help little people like me, almost getting herself killed, but always risking and losing stuff, even herself. She's got a heart bigger than any one I've ever met, and once she's your friend she'll tell you the truth even if it hurts, then do a make-sure so you do your best. People follow her because they know she'll have their back."

I started gesticulating widely with my wings and arms, causing Cherry the Celeb Interviewer to stumble back. I was riled up.

"While she may have done criminal things, she also does the right thing or makes it right. She even faked a deadbeat's murder so she could take him somewhere to heal him so the boss wouldn't find out. 'I'm evil,' she says. 'Who'd want me as a friend,' she says. Flapping idiot! Yes, it annoys the flap out of me!" I shouted.

As I stomped by her in a mock huff, I heard papers drop. I looked back to see the interview questions slowly zig zag to the carpet, and grinned.

I'd give my life for that friend who saved me instead of saving herself. Next time Rainy Days, Director of Home or what the flap, tries to mess with my devil-girl, I ain't gonna miss!

[Author copyright retained]

[Poor, poor Cherry Cliftown, the comedy relief. —RS]

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#WritingWonders 4.14 — "...and you are about the marry the hunk! So, tell me, what qualities do you find attractive in him?" [Interview question 7 and #romanticWonders.]

Mated for life was the proper term, which discounted the political reasons for doing something rarely done and ideally so self-restricting, and hunks was plural not singular, but quibbles. I'd been attracted to both guys, the supposedly do-nothing diplomat related to Rainy Days and [spoilers]. For one, both proved to be extraordinary... but for entirely different reasons. Trainability is important!

Cliftown sang, "You're blush-ing!"

I touched the back of a hand to a cheek to hide my dismay. Indeed, warm. There were things I wouldn't share publicly. I could share the reasons, though.

I looked into the floating lens and said, "Confidence. Knowing what they are about, and knowing when they don't—and being willing to learn. I like that." It's what I'm pretending to be like every second I'm dealing with people. "And there's the knowing how to treat a woman. It's how she wants to be treated."

"What about that fist fight—"

"You mean the picture in broadsheets?" I chuckled, grinning. "I'd pretended to be someone I wasn't and he thought I was entrapping him, and," I scratched the nape of my neck, "I did try to trip him. Failed. I did learn that he's as good a fighter as I am, but with a longer reach. I think we started admiring each other after that."

Cliftown shook her head—our bloody noses. My torn ear. She obviously didn't understand physical sentimentality.

I added, "But once we got the preliminaries out of the way, each had a way of treating me that I liked. Listening, for one. Opening up about the pain in their past, and the good things. Hugs are good. Just being around... him, I learned I had the capacity to love, and that I could trust I was loved back."

"Each?" Cliftown asked. Um. Yep. I'd slipped. Wasn't going to answer that I found it especially attractive that the guys decided they could be buddies. Wasn't saying that aloud!

"Next question," I returned, blushing again.

[Author retains copyright.]

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#WritingWonders 4.17 — "What qualities do you find attractive in a person?" she asked me. [Secondary character speaking.]

After the interview, I got me some time off with a wink and a nudge from the lady Director who didn't want to attend the afterparty (probably worried she might punch someone whose name started with C). The team sat at other tables. I chatted up lady Cherry Blossom Cliftown, the Celeb Interviewer, cause she was fun to needle. I guess her manager and crew realized the interview had put her in a really bad mood and was happy someone else handled her, or I was her type. I didn't know which.

"Bolt, Bolt, Bolt," she said, and I grabbed the shot glass as she gestured so it sprayed the table, not my face. "Is it Captain Bolt, Lady Bolt, Girlfriend Bolt—?"

"Just friend. Captain of her guard once I'm trained up, but friend first." I nursed an apple juice. Very rare. There were a handful of places cold enough for apples. Wasn't going to fly drunk in any case later, or be a cheap date.

"Perfect. Girlfriend." She propped her chin with her hand and still wobbled. "Why friend? What attracted you to her?" Her emphasis stated unambiguously what she really thought!

"Well, you ain't gonna remember, so why not."

"Remember?" She patted a pocket but missed her purse, so didn't grab a notebook. She grinned. "Good memory," she tapped her head, almost missing.

I was inclined to fly her home so she woke in my bed, just to see if she'd remember and to witness her panic. I grinned. Might be worth cleaning up her puking. I lowered my voice and said, "For all me flaws, she decided I was worth knowing and protecting,"

"How sho?"

"You know we were pardoned for bunch of things, right?"

"Right. She wrote the list down in open court! Nine other people."

"I was one. We was haulin' us weeds and herbs when she told me she'd been blackmailed into working for the boss, but didn't understand why I was working for him. Told her I'd wanted to open a moving company back home, but I couldn't get a license because I hadn't started and nobody would hire me because they found out I wanted to compete with them. I am a strong flyer; can transverse levitate 'specially well. So I needed to raise money to buy me own equipment. The boss got me jobs—then him some real bad in criminating evidence."

"Tricked? En-trapped-ed?"

"Pretty much. But guess what? She just nodded. She says to me, 'We're the same.'"

Cherry reached for the shot glass, but I slid it out of reach and watched her pout.

"Not judgmental, she was. When the boss made me the patsy messenger for all sort of bad news to mess with her, she didn't get mad. She commiserated, never telling me she plotted to get even. In the shoot-out what happened, a goon splashed me with demon fire. After the coppers arrested the boss and were about to arrest me and her, she magic-jumped to me, frightened off the scuz copper holding me, then jumped us away onto the roof of building where we hid. She later healed my burns though it took a lot out of her—then gave me what the boss had paid her before the sting op went down! She told me to start my company,. With that and my savings, I could!"

"But you stayed?"

"Flapping stuff went down before dawn. Director Rainy Days wanted my lady for her current gig and had her coppers cordon off the city. She tried to escape and took me with her. Sadly, we failed to break free. In the fight after, I impressed Rainy Days, I did, fighting Her Highness to keep her from almost killing my lady, thus my current gig and my bling antique armor. Weren't easy, no way, but how can you not love a person who believes in you so much they risk themselves to save you? It's insanely attractive."

And, I thought, you'd better be blackout drunk, Cherry Blossom, 'cause that's secret, and you'd better not blab. I quickly poured her another shot from the expensive emerald green bottle.

On her second try, she found her mouth. After a cough, Cherry said, "She doesn't come across as nice in interviews."

"Yeah. She's a bit weird."

[Author copyright retained.]

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#WritingWonders 4.20 — What is your idea of a perfect day? [Culled interview question.]

Now I had a genuine smile—and Cliftown cringed. Was I really that bad an interview guest? I almost asked that as a retort, but kept my cool.

I said, "I wake up, take a morning run, and after breakfast I go to the library."

"The library? Really?"

"The World Magic Wing of the Home University Library has a rare books collection thorough enough to have the books referred to in any book you might read. Like this one, mine, that's 500 years old. They don't let you check them out—though probably I could do that now with my status change. The room is climate controlled with lights that follow and hover around you, comfy chairs, and good tables. I can easily spend the day there, though I will admit I've had a library assistant wake me up when I've fallen asleep."

"You fall asleep in a library?"

"A good book can have the same calming effect as good music. Don't worry, they take the book you're reading away so you never drool on it..."

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#WritingWonders 4.23 — The Masquerade Invitation

Bolt held her wings flared out, making the metallic bits in the feather vanes sparkle in the sun coming through the skylight. She was either excited or very pleased with herself, or both. She practically vibrated as she handed me the sculpted silver foil-surface card, made to look like angel feathers.

I looked. I blinked. I held it out at arms length, as if that would somehow bring into focus words that didn't quite make sense. To me. "You were invited to a masquerade ball back where you grew up?"

"Yes. I want you to be my plus-1."

I snorted and started laughing.

Her wings flagged a bit and I reached for her shoulder.

I grinned. "You're planning on causing trouble, aren't you?" I waggled a finger at her and she perked up.

We'd both been pardoned for our criminal past. Trouble for us had multiple meetings.

She held open the card with both hands and warped over a primary feather to point at names. "The city directorate and commerce are putting it on. Those featherbrains that blackballed me when I tried to get into long distance hauling will be there."

"You're planning of rubbing your status change in their face. You're going as Captain Stormchaser, I suppose?"

"The hero who helped Director Rainy Days establish the nation? I'm wearing Stormchaser's actual antique armor daily... So... Why not wear her uniform? I'm having one tailored for me."

"Who would I go as?"

"You'll go!? You'll be my plus-1?" Her eyes sparkled now.

"You saved my flank and got yours burnt up as a result. The least I could do is the small stuff from time to time. It's at an aerie, though." Her hometown was a day angel-predominate city with buildings you needed to fly up to, or within.

She grinned devilishly. "I was thinking you could go as Rainy Days."

I rubbed my chin. "She's a giant—with wings. I don't have any."

"Make them part of the costume. You can jump magically between platforms, something only she, you, and very few people can do."

"She'd fly."

"Yeah. Suppose."

"Her's is a pearl white complexion. You may have noticed mine is somewhat greenish."

"I've seen you wear washout skin dye plenty of times. Before you say it, I know you can paint on skin patterns. You did that for years, and I know you were good at it." Most people got theirs near puberty; I'd only got mine a few weeks ago. Rainy Days' patterns continually shifted visibly over minutes and I wasn't sure she actually had control over what presented. Nobody did, except me. If I thought about doing it, I could change my spots.

I said, "I have a better idea."

Bolt looked crestfallen.

"I get it. Rainy Days and Captain Stormchaser together would be awesome. But... I could go as my mother!"

"The singer Midnight?" Her eyes moved as she considered that.

I may not have inherited my mother's good looks, or coal black skin color, but I could sing and often practiced in the shower, as Bolt had learned. I sang a show tune: Don't Cry for Me, Equatorim. Her song helped me visualize the stately woman I'd seen on so many album covers, but of whom I had no personal pictures with me as a child. She died before I was five.

Bolt stepped back, watching as wavy black patterns slowly advanced across my arms and everywhere else. I was thinking sound waves, them vibrating, leaving wave traces behind, filling up every patch of skin.

"Wow. Amazing," Bolt said. "Nobody will recognize you—if you dye your hair black. Red won't do. I can carry you between levels."

"I'll reserve the jumping until I need to startle somebody."

Bolt started chuckling. I joined in. It wasn't maniacal laughing but, by the smile on Bolt's face, what we shared was close enough.

I'd have to wear contacts over my emeraline eyes but, with my hair up, I could wear a velvet black fedora to cover my horns (Midnight's spiraled). I'd need a flowing knee-length Diva M's black dress with lots of black lace and maybe a sequins collar. The black on black with black so appealed to my goth soul! Me singing would perfect the costume.

Of course, my voice couldn't compare to my mother's. Nobody's ever would. For this, it would be good enough.

However, she had also been a spy for the Directorate. The reason she'd died so young. Bolt wanting to cause mischief at the masquerade resonated with me pretending to be my mother. Not being recognized as myself presented lots of devious possibilities, especially once Bolt pointed out the people who had hurt her. I was a devil-girl, never forget that.

"This might actually be fun!"

[Author retains copyright]

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#WritingWonders 4.27 — She Has a Birthday in Autumn [Antagonist POV]

I have no birth anniversary because I was raised in a culture were women were chattel. My twin brother Harvest Days did, and when he got old enough I insisted he celebrate it with a raisin-nut loaf, the only sweet he'd eat without, "Not food!" I raised him after mother died, and I adored him. He was a very talented thaumaturge, so very much more so than I, probably because he was quite #autistic. I had to learn to read and write to teach him from books he had no patience for. When I worked to make his audition for a job with foreign thaus successful, too many people discovered I had a unique talent myself. When my mother had named me Rainy Days because I was born on a rainy autumn day in the high desert, maybe she had foreseen something.

But...

I was a woman.

That did not forestall men from coveting my talent. When I refused to marry the most ambitious, and my father backed me up, he ruined me to make me a slave. The foreigner thaus desperately needed me, but saving me didn't free me.

They had greedy masters.

The battles over what I could do eventually led me to destroy the civilization that so badly mistreated me because I was a woman, that mistreated my brother because they thought he was less than a man, and murdered my father because him being a hostage didn't control me. Later, I ensured the nation that freed me only to use me, fell.

Over time, I lost wars and founded nations. Things like calendars and histories were forgotten and created multiple times.

I do like to celebrate other people's birth anniversaries, however! If you invite me, know that I prefer glazed fruit tarts with caramel custard on a ginger-cinnamon crust. Raisin-nut loaf will make me cry.

[author retains copyright]

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#WritingWonders 5.4 — What is your occupation? Do you like your job? Why/why not?

[This doesn't fit with the interviews I wrote last month, but it does apply to the same unwritten, possibly not to be written, AU extension of the #sff story.]

I am a Troubleshooter, best I understand it.

Rainy Days trapped me into the job. She convinced me into taking it by what, in retrospect, seems like an overly dramatic end-of-the-world scenario. When I refused at first, saying I had no real power to fix things (and was evil and had been a criminal besides), she elevated me to what she said was a "crown prince" to her as a "king," essentially a spare ruler for Home should the "immortal" ruler die. She is immortal but not invulnerable, though killing her might be impossible. I fought her. Somehow I survived. I know. After she explained the terms "crown prince" and "king"—we're both female, btw—I fell for her con.

With in days of my elevation, Rainy Days left on a mission to prevent an armistice from blowing up into renewed war over what proved to be a pile of wood and forestry rights. Experience and intuition quickly convinced me that we were open to an attack instead nearby. It's what I'd do if I were that specific enemy and I wanted to take the initiative. (I usually do.) I foresaw a slash-and-burn incursion into the ag-land around the capital, one that if executed swiftly could easily have turned into a siege. I wanted to order airships and troops into the area to prevent stupid from happening. It proved impossible in any normal way to convince the captains of the army and navy because they saw a late-teen with no experience. They saw me as a pretty devil-girl figurehead. They did not know me or my history, and didn't care to learn when I had the temerity to summon them before breakfast.

That failure left me with a ticking clock, having to connive and prevaricate through "back-channels." I even got into a fist fight to convince the master of a museum piece frigate to humor me, to do what I asked, in order to be there in time to repel the invasion I worried might happen. That I'd precipitated another completely independent incursion that got countered at the same time is another story.

In any case, that I was right didn't convince many. Rainy Days has her own problems, which I also need to fix, and isn't helping clarify. I think she looked at it as a training opportunity for me. Worse, it looks like I'm getting married because of the job—and that is another story all together. Ugh!

Do I like my job? Do you really have to ask that? All I've ever wanted is to be left alone to read my books and practice magic. Will nobody listen?

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#WritingWonders 5.5 — What scents and sounds can be found in your MC's workplace?

She doesn't have a workplace, per se. I'm taking this opportunity to briefly show you one place she did "work."

#excerpt [at 2 AM, abandoned downtown, edited for this audience]

Feeling exposed in the empty intersection, I retreated to the furthest street corner where there was a lamp post and a red newspaper machine. A moth buzzed the light. I continued to prep Levitate and decided Illuminate might prove useful. I might need to grab or blind an opponent.

Neither thug seemed in any hurry to engage. The day angel fluttered up to the black awning over a doorway of a brick building: 17 Restaurant. Closed. He fluffed his feathers.

I swallowed hard.

This fight had no rules. I had to get that through my head. Coach's words came to me. "Attitude. If you don't have that, you lose."

I squared my shoulders. I glanced at my surroundings. As I had learned about most eastern cities, this one would not win any clean-and-neat prize. I saw gum wrappers crinkling in the breeze, a discarded cup I crushed with a pop, and a spilt half-empty juice bottle bobbing in the wet gutter. Someone had curbed their dog near by, recently from the fragrance.  

I was dimly cognizant that the juice bottle looked like orange juice as I found a coin and inserted it into the newspaper machine. It clanked, unlatched. Keeping an eye on the two rival gangsters, I pulled out a Harbor Cities Sun and it banged closed. It echoed loudly. I pulled out the sports section, smelling the newsprint as I dropped the rest of the paper on top of the machine as courtesy dictated. The breeze rustled the pages.

They kept looking.

I picked up the orange juice bottle—Sunny Daze brand with a smiling sun graphic on the label.  I brought it to my lips to see their reaction.

The day angel flinched, a shoe sliding loudly on the canvas awning.

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#WritingWonders 5.9 — Dream Being Alive, of Laughter by R.S.

I had a weird dream where I was asked a question: "When was the last time you laughed? Why?" In the dream, I realized I was awake, but in someone's mind. I saw a void filled with memories of my life. Like flying through clouds.

People I knew or fought...

Places I'd run away from...

Me winning the mixed magical martial arts championship by making someone fly into a pole...

The first time I knocked someone unconscious: my butler's friend who had caught me running away. I stole his money and clothes, and escaped...

The time as a little girl, when I'd helped clean up after a hurricane and Director Rainy Days slept over at the manor house against my express orders—the first time I'd felt my agency as a person violated...

The time I'd been ambushed by a rival faction in the mob. But for a broken toy and the outraged scream of the little boy who owned it, I'd have had my skull cudgeled in.

I closed my eyes. Too much!

All this made me feel small, insignificant. Seeing the events of my life float by, I realized then that I was a figment of someone's imagination, a mere fabulation.

I didn't exist at all, nor was I even alive.

Yet, I knew this: I was special all the same.

I answered that question that I didn't really remember. I told the void that I knew if I let myself start laughing, I'd start crying instead. Opening my eyes again, I saw myself discovering daemon fire. As the cloud of memory drifted by, I saw the horror of the minutes before and the horror of me saving myself, of what I done to my assailant. Fire that could burn in a rainstorm, imagine that. I should have cried, screamed. I'd fault nobody who did. I didn't break. I'd laughed that day—but knew if I laughed now I would break.

I warned my fabulist... He, or she..? I chose she. I warned her that she didn't want to clean up that mess. I started to tell her that she didn't know all I'd seen—but, of course, more cloud memories gathered. She knew. She'd created me! I told her I'd rather stick with being happy with keeping people safe and preventing stupid from happening—and call it a win when if afterward she'd simply give me time alone to read.

I sensed a smile in the void as she said, "Every child grows up,"

My fabulist assured me that I'd soon break, but in a good way. She hinted that I'd soon learn to open up my heart to others, something really absurd, right? And, with that lesson well learned, with that knowledge, I find love, too.

Love?

Find love? Me?

Weird. Am I right? I can't even define love, let alone trust the concept of friendship!

I started laughing...

And woke from the nightmare in a sweat. My stars! What a horrible thought, existing only in somebody's mind. What if they got bored? Or distracted? Or died!? I hugged myself shivering, then rolled out of bed to make myself a pot of hot tea.

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#WritingWonders 5.10 — How much humor is there in your story? Share a funny snippet if you want!

The story in #revision is full of #humor, but is anything but a comedy. A #thriller action- #adventure #drama #romance novel, salted with a few grains of horror, needs humor as a counter balance. The humor is mostly dark commentary, given by a main character who is snide and cynical, and who'd never spare skewering even herself. This works well because the story is written in 1st person and she describes herself and her follies as well as those of the people around her. Of course, when she's with friends, she can be lighthearted.

#excerpt [edited, cute, current work]

"Director Rainy Days wants you to enlist, not necessarily in her praetorian guard."

Bolt smirked. "Of course she does! Of all the fighting we did yesterday, I was the only one who nearly killed her. Had the border stone fallen a couple inches to the right, I'd have smashed her head or broke her neck. Not sure why that doesn't gross me out, but then she tried to blast you to cinders." She shrugged. "Must'a ticked me off."

Bolt had struck me out of the path of Rainy Days' overpowered ball lightning, which is why she had plenty of healing burns on her rear and the back of her legs. Ticked off seemed a bit of an understatement. She was either very brave or very loyal. Her accuracy and timing proved she was in no way stupid. Well, other than that part about having worked for a crime boss and needing that pardon I got her. I'd worked for two crime bosses now, so I wasn't casting aspersions!

"I'm awesome brave," she said, grinning ear to ear. Had I said the "brave" part out loud?

"You're wearing a national treasure, Bolt."

"Ooooo," she said musically. She danced in a circle, admiring herself. [Bolt is wearing antique armor in the form of a human skeleton (remnants) with black dragon scales.]

"Do you know who Captain Stormchaser is?"

"The most awesome day angel ever? Helped Rainy Days found the nation centuries ago?" She shook her head, indigo eyes locked on me. "Never heard of da grunt."

"You're wearing her armor."

"No. Flapping. Way!" She shot into the air, swooping and performing barrel rolls, the wind whistling through her feathers. Her laughing resounded across the ground, the armor extending along the leading edge of her wings, never hindering her flight, covering her entire body in a faint blue protective sheen.

"Wow! I mean, wow! Director! Yay! No wonder I feel lighter and so agile. And strong!" She landed again with a ground-rattling thump. "Do I get to keep it? Huh? Huh? Pleeeease." She grinned.

"Depends on what you arrange with Rainy Days."

She looked down, sheepishly making a line in the dirt with the toe of her boot. She wanted the armor. "I suppose, a?"

#excerpt [edited, self-aware, prior work]

When Witchy persisted in going around yet another table, my eyes alighted on her sweat shirt. I'd seen a letter or two in the folds of the fabric as she sat. I had thought I'd seen a P, an N, and T. I'd assumed it read Primetown U.  

I read it all now.

Fight Night! It was the event name used to advertise the prize fight and tag team events.

"I'm Director Grim." If she were a fan, she'd know I'd won the championship a few months ago.

She coughed, bringing up a hand to her mouth before she started laughing. "You?"  She sobered.  "I refuse to teach liars, especially."

That froze me solid, my heart thumping so hard in my ears that my head shook with each beat. She was the only college tutor I'd seen capable of fixing my problems with battle magic, which I need to become a mob bodyguard.

A liar. Was I liar?

Of course I was a liar.  I ought advertise it as my speciality! I lied all the time. About who I was. About what I was. About my age. I'd even implied that Trigger had ridden me!

My Stars!  Did she have telepathy?  

Not that it existed. Of all the lies I'd told, being called out for the one truth wasn't fair!

It percolated down into my brain that I'd acted bratty. Like a whiny kid in a grocery causing all the other women to glare at my mother. Fixated. To the point of crying and screaming. Fixated. On candy.

I really liked my candy.

I stomped my foot. And I wasn't lying, either!

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#WritingWonders 5.13 — Shar[ing] a description of a secondary character from Reluctant Accomplice ( #sff WiP, working title) by R.S.

#Excerpt describing Citron.

Wringing the clothes, I switched to reviewing a revelation my fighting-arts coach had taught me while convincing me to fight in the arena.

"Scirocco!" I said, imagining a hot gust of desert wind creating a dust devil visualized in a field of vectors. I tossed the clothes and towel into my targeting zone. A burst of heat tightened the skin on my face; a rolling gust of hyacinth-scented steam hit the ceiling and spread out, jostling the sparkles aside. I juggled the hot dry fabric that dropped into my damp hands.

Mallow stood straight, staring at the steam cloud.

I smiled his direction, pleased I'd startled him.

A daemon stood outside the doorway.

He had ram horns that would make a ewe swoon. His were the same ruddy amber color as his skin and eyes. His curly black hair flowed like a breaking wave around his horns and tumbled over his shoulders. He wore the revealing black silk tights, black gloves, and black moccasins I had bought for him at Iris on Hillcrest for situations like this.

Citron had been my second before everything blew up in the gang war in Harbor Beach. I'd been Boss Nightingale's bodyguard and part-time "personnel" manager. My number one priority: jumping her out of danger. While I watched out for her, the daemon whose glinting uncanny eyes I met, had been in charge of keeping me safe when I couldn't pay attention to my own flank.

His concerned face floated like an illuminated paper lantern in darkness.

I moved my head slightly right then left.

Mallow noticed my glance and turned.

"Oh, sorry," a teenage voice said, but he'd stepped left out of the doorway, voice getting lower with distance. "My mistake! I'll use it later."

I dashed to the door, performing Push to keep Mallow from dashing out before me. Blocking the door, I looked down the street.

The nightshine to the west threw him into silhouette. He opened his hand and a silver coin flashed; he flipped himself over a fence and slipped amongst the trees. None of this made a sound.

I'd trained him well.

Mallow shouldered by me. "That was strange. Hey, where'd he go?"

I lied, "That blue-eyed rook made Sprinter look like a snail. Love to be that fast!" I had my clothes gripped in a fist. I looked at the limp blouse and olive never-needs-starch shorts, thinking furiously.

Citron had followed me against my orders. [...] My abbreviated head motion had kept him from flooding the bathroom with daemon fire. I'd indicated I wasn't in any danger I couldn't handle. The coin meant he wanted to talk.

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#WritingWonders 5.17 — Trust Issues by R.S.
"Do you trust the woman I've named as my heir?"

I instantly dropped to one knee, one hand flat on the red carpeted floor. I'd not expected Director Rainy Days to be waiting in the tiny back-alley tea shop. Building codes required tall ceilings and wide doorways to accommodate the immortal giantess. Floating in a gravity field anchored to the floor, she glowed with energies. Black patterns—the static tattoos on regular people of ropes, leaves, stars—swirled languidly across her exposed porcelain skin and face. Seeing the chimera in person left me feeling stunned.

The table held plates of fig tarts, scones, currant jam, fancy butter, and a rose-pattern tea pot.

"Sit, sit," she said, patting the chair beside her.

I gulped. "I—I almost killed you two weeks ago," I said because Her presence demanded honesty.

She snorted daintily. "Stormchaser's armor is a reward for your temerity. Had you not acted, had you not protected her from me killing her, she'd not have broken the 'enchantments' on me and humanity would be rushing toward extinction. In a sense you saved everyone, not just her." She patted the chair. "Still headed for extinction. Slower now that I have the help I need to combat it."

I shuddered, fluffed the feathers on my wings that refused to settle, and asked, "Got the right stuff, you're sayin'?" I tried to grin, to spin it in my favor.

"Gave you Captain Stormchaser's armor, so, yeah. Protecting her is better than starting a moving company. My opinion. Consider it an enlistment bonus."

The person beside me had the strength to splinter my bones. I glanced at the black armor I wore, a national treasure. "Gave?"

"As in 'not a loan'. An investment."

Crime bosses and absolute rulers spoke alike.

The antique was built of human remnants that protected me as thoroughly as a fortress, but instead of weighing me down it made me lighter and magnified my every movement. I sat in the chair. The Director of Home scooted my seat under the table with a wing, then rested it over my shoulders. Her pinions touched the floor. Static made my hair raise. She smelled of roses and lightening.

I swallowed, both comforted and weirded-out. "You know I'm a—"

"Were a crime boss' runner?"

"For eight years."

"And three months. Your boss admitted a lot when I walked in angry; a constable peed himself seeing me! You were good at your job. You could be charged with drug trafficking and implicated as a conspirator in two murders. That's why I pardoned you."

"Okay, then." My heart beat fast. "Thank you."

The tea pot glided through the air to fill my cup, then hers, with fragrant red liquid. "Honey? I know it's hard to trust me. Up to you, but you astonished me, supporting her when you should have run in terror. Normal people do. Which circles back to my question."

"Why I trust her...? Yes, honey, please."

She nodded. Golden teardrops plunked into my cup. A scone with melting butter on top slid into my plate.

I thought about it. "Astonishment describes it. She'd knew me as runner, but we co-mis-mer-ated 'bout our mistakes, us bein' blackmailed, me wanting a moving company; forgave me always bearin' bad news. When her sting operation nabbing the boss came down, I got burnt bad and a constable pinned me. She could've escaped the detective who betrayed her, but no. She fought the constable pinning me, then jumped us blocks away. She healed me and gave me the gold the boss had paid her saying it was an investment in my moving company! Had you not tried to nab us the next morning, who knows?, but I was alive and free 'cause of her. I had to fight for her! Save fer her craziness, I'd've been arrested, life ruined. When Boss hired her, we thought her a stuck up snob of a muscle nerd, but she ain't. She's maxy cool."

I sat breathing hard, still in disbelief of what I'd done thanks to hero worship, staring at the scone as the butter dripped down. Dates and caramel almonds. I bit into it. "Wow!" I sputtered crumbs.

"So you trust her?"

I'd spied on her for the boss. She'd faked a deadbeat's murder to spirit him to a hospital. Weird sense of right and wrong, that devil-girl, but she was consistent in her ethics; a mob enforcer not hurting people more than necessary, usually scaring them into paying—attending the Directorate Thaumaturgical Academy by day.

That devil-girl thought me worth saving.

Why she'd done it? Her words: "I'd hate myself if I hadn't."

"Huh?" asked the director. (Must have said that aloud!)

I blinked away tears, and this day angel don't cry. I nodded, saying, "I trust her," feeling more and more in awe, and not because of my teatime bud. No. I craned my neck up, suddenly brave enough to look her in her pale blue eyes, adding, "Actions speak louder than words."

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#WritingWonders 5.18 — Do many people find your MC attractive?
CW: Spoilers. [If you follow me under another persona, these #sff versions of my original characters are very close. You know who you are. You may wish to skip this one if you haven't read the stories.]

Author: A lot of characters had opinions about this question. I've included some of them, but I have more! If you comment and ask, I'll add more as replies! #CommentingIsCool

Night Mare aka Gelding aka ... (the main character): I'm not particularly physically attractive, certainly not plump enough, and too muscular to be pretty. My internally snide and clueless personality makes me less attractive, and that's fine. I don't need people. I find books, especially "magic" books, attractive.

Trigger: The boss told me to get cozy with a girl fitting her description. I wolf-whistled her and she verbally handed me my testicles on a platter. She made up the name Gelding on the spot. Later, she knocked out my girlfriend who stupidly got jealous and got physical with her. Stole her jackknife, too. The woman proved endearingly immature yet dangerous after I had to manage training her to become a transporter and a bodyguard for the syndicate, but she learned fast and proved unerringly better than anyone. Less than a year later, she took over the syndicate when the boss suddenly died. I figured I was dead meat, but no. She saved my flank, made me her executive secretary, and our team kept everything from collapsing. I think it's her quiet confidence and competence that makes her immensely attractive. A natural leader.

Broom Wielder (aka Witchy): I got sent by the boss, like Trigger, to recruit her into the syndicate. It floored me when I learned she was the prizefighter who'd just won the championship. She looked different without the costume and the dye job. I'm a super fights fan, but I was supposed to play hard to get magic tutor she really wanted. It was hard not to fangrrl all over her. She didn't act celeb, though, but like the vulnerable teenager she was underneath all the façades. She even shared the secret of who she really was. I kept that secret—even though the boss would have paid dearly for the information. I ended up working under her as part of the bodyguard team for the boss, but we became her family whom she fiercely protected. I prefer men, but if she asks...

Citron: I'm young, but no kid. I can set anything on fire, including cement. Yeah, I like to see things burn, but not people. She's the first that treated me like a man, and she taught me the ropes. Made me professional, calling me her "personal pyro-peep." Made me want to exceed expectations, which is why the boss included me in her bodyguard team with her. I didn't realize I had a crush on her at first. I mean, we all thought she was a guy for the first half-dozen or so jobs, and it started before I knew the truth. I never acted upon it, though, because when around her I felt driven to be professional. She's the woman I think of at night. No woman since has come close...

The Schoomate: She could fight, answer any question in class, and was the only one in school never cowed by my act. One day, she tried to sell me a drug I wanted to try, but I should have known she'd been hypnotized or drugged herself into doing it. She burnt up the taste when she realized. I never told her we'd ridden each other before she came to her senses, especially when I learned later she preferred men. We ended up living together (she lost her job), but I insisted she share my bed. Never got intimate, but she did hold me while I slept and I never slept better. When I learned she formulated an amazing but unethical research project, I figured out how steal it and make it legit, making her do the work but taking the credit so I could show it to my teacher, Director Rainy Days, as my work. Rather than beating me bloody (which I later learned had been her job as a mob enforcer), she was deliriously happy. She would have gleefully let me ride her that moment in the kitchen had I asked (I didn't). All she wanted were the results of the research, and I'd promised her the funding to realize them sooner. She even promised she'd fight Director Rainy Days for me with the new "magic" to make me the next director. (I thought that ridiculous, but she did end up battling my adopted mother.) Despite me being rotten and conniving, she accepted me and eventually saved me from my addictions. She's my first love...

Well, there you have it. A consensus. People find her attractive for reasons beyond her looks.

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The guard shook my shoulder and I blinked awake. The blue day angel with jangling silver earrings, gold piercings in her cheeks, and spiked indigo hair looked worried. I noticed the bone-like armor with a glowing aurora-like crest and knew the woman was one of her new personal guard.

"Bolt," she said in a surprisingly girly voice, hand reaching down to pull me up.

"Witchy," I said, stretched, and took it. I'd lain on padded green carpet in a plush jail. I remembered the high security prison for special delicate captives; it was a hotel with steel bars, but a cellblock nonetheless. An alien diplomat larger than Rainy Days stood in an adjacent cell eying us with horizontally slit eyes and crossed arms. The creature's deer-musk scent would have telegraphed her presence, had I not looked.

I also smelled iron, which also smelled like blood.

I'd been—

Leaning against the wall to my left lay a cell door. Steel reinforced, with bars but otherwise resembling a door to a vault, with rods to sink into cement. I'd pulled it out of its frame, powdering cement, bending metal so badly that flecks and chips of grey metal lay sintered across the floor. A rainbow sheen of mostly blue and purple discolored the previously shiny material. The cell number sign had melted.

I'd channeled that much energy! No wonder I'd passed out. My grin turned into a smirk.

I could perform just one miracle. As a kid, I'd been teased I was stupid. But. I could perform its every permutation well. I recalled having thrown that lorry (albeit a little one) at the goons that had ambushed us last year and thought it my high water mark.

A bent rod went plink as it cooled. "Wow."

"Why'd you do it?"

"For her." I looked at Bolt. "She wanted to be with him. I know love when I see it." [The MC] had broken into a prison to free a man falsely imprisoned, her orders protecting him overridden by Director Rainy Days herself. "Wait? What happened?"

"You slept through it all. Love won in the end, not that she'll trust what anyone says on the subject." On the punked-out day angel, her grin looked feral.

"Uh, why?"

Bolt waved a hand. "Long story. It ended well. The door? Why'd you do it? You know she was going to grab the key from the guard. Right?"

Why'd I do it? I'd been moved by her intensity? Some gratitude there, maybe? She protected her own and I wanted to live up to the ideal?

She'd proved I didn't murder that guy, that somebody had pushed him. Which cleared my conscious so I could work on her team, which was why she arguably did the other thing...

"'Love can't wait,'" I said, "and I could see she needed him. She did that for me, once. I had an spousal exclusivity contract [a matrilocal marriage] with my guy, but he didn't understand the exclusivity part. We'd gotten it because we loved each other fiercely, but after awhile I thought maybe it was just me. [The MC] realized our problem got in the way of work, so she fixed it."

Bolt laughed. "Like her to insert herself in the middle of things, not caring what other people would think."

"She told me I could only change myself, not him, then asked if I loved him or the image I held in my head. When I answered, 'Him,' she said 'Love can't wait' and jumped into his house and scared away his current riding partner."

"I bet she loved that part best."

"She did break out in giggles for a few hours."

"That's her, alright."

"We then spent two days talking it out, her arbitrating, not letting either of us leave. He got a bloody nose trying." I giggled at how his pride got in the way and he thought he could fight her.

"Sounds like her. You two still together?"

"I figured out I had to work a bit harder to keep his attention. Discovered he has a romantic notion about pirates."

Bolt covered her mouth, but snorted.

I grinned. "Feel free laugh when you meet him; please, don't tell him why."

"No, no. Absolutely not." She waved a hand.

"We redefined our exclusivity to an ideal. [The MC] pointed out we were only human. Of course, to make her point, she later shoved me into an empty locker room with [a boxer] who I'd been fangrrling over for years. He had a case of nerves." I felt my face heating up and I whispered the rest. "I take partial credit for him winning the championship that night..."

I'd proved myself human, and giggled.

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#WritingWonders 5.28 — What was the worst thing the MC has done to you? Friends Amongst Thieves, story by R.S.

[Bolt, day angel, secondary character:] I didn't want to do this! You don't learn why you don't want to join gangs until you're too deep in, and they're too deep, and you can't just walk away because there's comrades and debt—and evidence they hold over you. Crabs in a bucket; none climb out; they hold each other back.

This is my life.

A few crimes was an easy way to my dreams, right? Yeah, I'd gotten gold stashed, but they don't call them a crime boss because they'll compassionately say, "Okay. I unnerstan. Ya don't haven'ta do that."

No, they poke you in the chest, saying, "Deliver it. Get it done before midday. Or a stone might hit your wing while flying. Understand?"

And. You. Sweat.

I sweat.

I couldn't just fly away. In my seven years working, I'd learned enough to know the boss had mob connections in other cities. "Friends." If you could call them that. When the boss found Night Mare and recruited her, he knew about her. Not innocent, that devil-girl. Not ordinary, despite her ordinary looks.

Special. Time did tell.

Yet. Last week. She told me to tell the boss, "I quit."

Even cleaned up (and I wasn't), I couldn't enter, let alone fly over, the residence compounds. Or the university because research went on there. Night Mare did attend school: The Home Academy, and it might be the only reason she remained in the city. Thaumaturgy, beyond the few tricks that paid like lighting up buildings, required rare skill. Most became accountants or computers. It paid better.

Attending school. Tuition. Both Night Mare's weaknesses, which the boss exploited.

And, now, so did I.

She walked out the south residence block. She'd have been camouflaged against the lawns but for her bronze hair. She walked to the Academy, which was outside the walls, levitating an open book as she chomped on a cinnamon roll.

It felt like I had a bone in my throat, recognizing her. Hair in pigtails, she looked too young, but when we'd first met, she'd convinced me she was thirty and dangerous. Half a year later, I'd been in the other room when she exploded a deadbeat for the boss, only to state cheerfully that she didn't think thaumaturgy could do that.

The boss had insisted I dress with all my piercings and chains, with my hair spiked up, visibly disreputable; wrong for downtown. I'd thought of Night Mare as a friend even before she had told me not to believe everything I saw, referring to the murder as she quit. Before and after, she'd insisted in frightening or only minimally roughing up folk in her enforcer role.

Having dreams destroyed by becoming a blackmailed criminal is something you can bond over. I wanted to start a moving company. She had been offered a medical scholarship.

Now I wondered if the boss wanted her to kill me.

I signaled my buddy across the street and swooped down as she entered the school grounds. She'd pause before involving other teenagers? Right?

I braked, blowing the downwash from my wings in her face.

She swatted at me with her book, emerald eyes on fire.

I fluttered back, keeping aloft. "Hey! Hey! No shooting the messenger, Nighty!"

She kept heading onto the quad, not stopping even if I might hit her with my wings (and I tried), even as every student peered at us.

"Get out of my way!" she yelled back, shoving the book in her messenger bag.

"I'll follow ya inside. See if'n I don't."

"Not in this lifetime you won't!" Energies whirled around her head.

Somehow, not quavering, I asked, "Ya gonna shoot me? Stop! Please!"

Her halo snapped and the nebula dissipated.

"Nighty! He's forcing me, honest. Please?"

"Fine."

I heard rapid-fire boot falls. I glanced. A constable ran toward us, copper badge gleaming.

"Quickly," she hissed.

I held out a blue folded paper. "Boss said give this to you." I pinched the paper when she tugged. Instead, I said, "Look right."

She did.

My metal camera gleamed from across the avenue. Unmistakable. Boss' proof captured. I let go of the note, saying, "Boss don't trust me neither."

Night Mare slapped me—hard enough that my feet touched the ground.

Hand on my burning cheek, I streaked into the air, the constable's whistle following me aloft as I pumped my wings. It was the worst thing she'd ever done to me. No understanding of me or my burdens. Were we ever friends, now, nevermore.

###

Later, after I'd developed the celluloid in my aerie loft above the News Building, I saw her expression: Neutral. In control. Calculating. Me: sweating like rain, out of my mind. Oblivious.

My hand shot to my cheek, which dripped with sudden tears.

The slap?

Intentional.

She'd saved me from being caught by the constable by shocking me into the sky.

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#WritingWonders 6.4 — "When was the last time you traveled?"

Title: Sharp Tool a'Traveling

I looked down at the rucksack I'd thrown on the silver satin bedspread, then the few flimsy pieces of under-clothing I'd pulled from a drawer. Anyone could see how worn the travel bag was, especially where the sleeping pad had rubbed against the canvas. Bolt was into her chains, piercings, and hardware, and for what it was worth, lots of complimentary (read: punk) clothing, not to mention cosmetics.

Unlike me.

I wore clothing only to the extent it was functional. I was a minimalist. Minimalism made it easier to run away. It took me a moment to interpret the day angel's expression.

I said, "Yeah, below my station. I don't give a flapping—"

"That's your luggage? Where did you go?"

I shoved in some light green shorts and a form-fitting top, made of technical fabric that could handle the humidity of our destination: Her home town, where the masquerade would take place. [The Masquerade Invitation: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/110250683189485013] Of course, everyone knew my past and I'd been pardoned of my crimes. Still...

"Well," I started, "I decided I wanted to see more of the country. When I discussed it with a guy, he gave me a map through the costal forests to the southern route to Home City. [Wild Encounter: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/109842477740039509] I had quit my job in Harbor City, and wanted to take some time off."

Bolt lifted the rucksack, eying it suspiciously, then drew her face back after sniffing it. "You walked all that way?"

"Yeah, I did."

"That had to take, what, two months?"

"Four; should've taken six." I answered. Bolt spotted something, then held the bag and looked ready to scratch it off with a fingernail. "Don't," I added, and she jerked her hand back.

"That looks like blood."

"It is. Citron's."

She dropped the rucksack. "Strange souvenir. Begs a question. Why? Why the trip? Why such a long one?"

I drew a few worn magic books from my bookshelf, and my notebook, and shoved them in with a quill. I shrugged. "I wanted to disappear long enough that people would assume somebody had killed me: gave me cement shoes and thrown me in the bay."

Bolt looked at the blood stain. "You assumed wrong?"

"People don't think you could accidentally go from a nobody to a championship prizefighter to running a crime syndicate in barely three years. You have to be competent. Worse, they don't think someone obviously so competent would suddenly disappear after running the organization for a few weeks. I had. All that. Accidentally.

"I don't think the boss thought I'd really let her die.

"I ghosted the organization—after fixing it so it wouldn't implode after the gang war. Running it was a complete, stupid-headed, diversion from my goal of learning magic. I was totally incompetent to run it. I wasn't bloody-minded enough. I knew factions didn't like the changes I made, and would soon try to kill me, unless I did something about it. What I did was choose to leave." [The Wanted Poster: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/110136451462609798]

"They went after you?"

"Dunno. Maybe? Probably? Maybe the boss' plans within plans followed after her death? Turns out that Director Rainy Days had been watching me all along. She had thought of my misadventures as training. Of course something happened. Why not? My luck. Who's fault? Them? Her Highness? I dunno. I got tangled up in one of their schemes, and, well, um... I resolved it in the Director's favor. Afterward, she had the temerity to criticize me for wimping out with the syndicate! For not following my vision of wanting to make the organization more legit!"

"Wait? She wanted you to kill— to let people die..." Bolt swallowed visibly. "To fix things?"

"That's Rainy Days for you. That's why you should never trust an absolute ruler."

"And she made you her heir?"

I pulled my ivory-handled jackknife from my messenger bag; popped it open with a click. The razor flashed and gleamed as if it were alive, preening for us. I was being used, by the Director, pretty much as I'd used this very blade, sticking it into someone's chest—oddly enough, to save them. I closed it with the palm of my hand, and dropped the sharp tool into my rucksack.

A sharp tool had to be used improperly to be made evil. Would I use it on this trip? Was I being used? Misused?

I already knew I was evil.

I said, "Yeah. Go figure. She's immortal. You wonder why I don't trust her?"

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#WritingWonders 6.24 — Antagonist POV: What do you think about the MC? Ms. George and the...

[Sorry. Better late than never. 😇 Brand, the POV here, is the primary antagonist in the SF story I am writing now, so I thought, why not get a feel for his thoughts, since they never show in a 1st person story? Most of the WW prompts I've answered take place half a year after this incident.]

Long bronze-red hair tumbled wetly down. The devil-girl looked at me from over my shoulder with expectant green eyes. She was perched on my back. Were I an average human, she'd be the size of a toddler compared to me.

"It's really okay?" she asked, brightly.

I lay with my face turned to my right, cheek on my arm, but managed a nod. "Yeah. Sure."

She grinned like a child. She might have faintly squealed in glee, but I was sure that was my imagination. She crawled to my hips and began massaging my shoulder. The steamy alcove dripped with water. Vines grew over rocks and water cascaded down as dappled green light flicked and darted with shadows. It looked like a jungle hot spring, but was in a gravity bubble. Her kneading fingers felt strong, but she was a worker of miracles so I knew her strength came from more than muscle.

She'd invented a new revelation on the spot for the job—doubtless. Then again, I wasn't a "devil-girl" as she called herself. Who knew what she really knew, or invented.

Was it really okay? Was I really okay with this? Beyond her cheeky insistence on physical contact?

I needed her to help me save my world from her world. Lives depended on it. I'd spent twelve decades balancing intuition against careful decision. You didn't grow to my size or win my position without breaking egos, and breaking heads.

Yet.

Not half an hour ago...

I'd been walking with my hand on her shoulder. My weight could drill her into the ground. Conversationally, she'd been pointing through a window at our newly arrived companions. In doing so, she'd turned me around twice, managing to stretch me out—and she over balanced me.

She ducked, moving explosively. When I reached, she rolled forcing me to hop as she came around, bouncing to her feet, and bounding out of reach.

I did not miss her darting, evaluating eyes.

My body still in motion, she came up in a three-point stance as I reached reflexively (not smartly) her direction. A blue-green misty gravity shield bloomed between us, crackling and spitting sparks, smelling of ozone and humming. She anchored her miraculous wonder into the gravity-glass floor; I piled into it, like a sack of meat. The shield grated against the floor as I pushed it and her back, but not far. She'd properly gauged my aged lack of flexibility and had tricked me into twisting to reach. Inertia slid me shoulder first onto the floor with thump.

Considering how little I'd pushed her back, I judged she could easily levitate my weight with what force she'd deigned to demonstrate.

I understood I was lucky to be alive.

Her eye movements—and how her predator eyes watched me grind to a stop—told me she could have swept my legs with gravity differentials coming down, meaning I'd have thrown myself into a wall face first. She would have had had plenty of time for an axe-strike to my groin. As I'd have keeled over uncontrollably, I would have exposed my belly.

(I'd been sold on her when I'd learned she could perform the Impossible Revelation; she had a limiter around her neck, but the device only prevented her from appearing in bank vaults and such places.)

Falling on my back, even with her average human weight, she could have finished by stomping my wing joints. I'd have balled up in pain, or passed out cold.

She could have slayed me.

I might have rolled over on her, though. My pride insisted that much, anyway.

Capable. I had purchased her services last year from the mobster who'd claimed she owned her. Her sharp tool. I knew the devil-girl was capable.

Pricey, but capable.

The mobster had died, and I knew for a fact that I was the first dragon the devil-girl had ever met.

We had a common enemy, though, so she'd consented to remain my prisoner, for the time being.

Intuition told me to kill her, while she acted like a little girl, playing at massaging her big guy doll. Catch her off guard, intuition demanded. Crush her against the rock wall. Turn her into a red splash.

But—

She. Could. Work. Miracles. A world, my world, depended on her doing so.

I said, "A little to the right."

My worker of miracles, my sharp tool with a blade for a hilt, said, "Yes, boss!" and giggled as her feet dug in and she shifted over.

[Author retains copyright(c) 2023 by R.S.]

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#PennedPossibilities 13 — MC POV: Tell us a quick love story. CW: The story must end badly.

How do you describe a guy you knew before you remember? The same but different from a brother? Close as family? Someone you know deep inside will be a part of you for the rest of your life? My earliest memory of Feldspar was us bathing in a warm tub, splashing suds, laughing, and making our wooden ducks glow and spin. His family took care of me when my mother was on the road (I thought she sang for a living), and Feldspar and I often slept together in the same bed.

More than a friend?

The other half that made a whole?

Workings fascinated us, even before we understood the miracles I could perform were more special than most adults could do. He was nowhere as good at performing them as I, but he figured out stuff I was incapable of. I was his instrument. His cello. He learned to read and write to make it happen, then taught me to my mother's delight before I entered school, just so we could puzzle out the big dusty thaumaturgy books that multiplied alarmingly in my library.

It alarmed us that we couldn't read them as fast as we wanted!

When my mother and mori were killed in the service of the nation, and declared heroes by the woman who ran it all, only Feldspar held and comforted me. The woman, who claimed to be mother's friend, never thought to hug me and tell me it would be alright. She gave me two gold medals.

I never slept over at his place again. My studies became more intense, and I didn't realize that I was so very young for that, but I insisted Feldspar could help. I also insisted we could play in the park, swim in the pool, and not be hounded by responsibilities my station mounted on me by the week—at least for an hour or two each day.

He discovered a centuries old working, a child's miracle: we could work a pair of coins and separate them, then talk the night away in our beds in our own homes. My guardian wondered why I sometimes fell asleep in my oatmeal, but he never found out. It was through the coins Feldspar said to me, "Aurora so bright / What glowing light do I see to-night / With her nose oh so rosy red / and her halo all aglow?"

I recognized poetry, not stupid. I recognized what it meant when a guy said it! I was almost 9; a girl understood these things, and why a boy became quiet, chuckly, and wouldn't repeat it having said it.

That was the night before.

The next day, I climbed one of the dozen standing flimsy bookcases added to my extension library and former entry hall. Servants, not trained as librarians, re-shelved things randomly. We made a game out of finding titles, but you shouldn't shelve the heavy grimoires, tomes, and tablets on top shelves a girl might climb. The unit tipped. A ton of books rained down as I fell, each shelf a blunt axe, each book a cudgel.

I screamed, closing my eyes.

I never struck the ground.

I fell and fell... tumbling, my stomach insisted, down shifting around me, making me dizzy, even as metal-encased books clattered against stone tablets, pages fluttering. Things whooshed around.

I looked.

I floated suspended as Feldspar's miracle warped gravity around me. The bookcase creaked as it righted. Books thunked as they shelved themselves. Down became earthly down, setting me on the tapestry carpet.

"Feldspar?" I asked, but as I turned around, I saw him.

His halo expanded to encase his body. He got a beatific expression as the scope of the miracle he'd performed sunk in and changed his body. This time I hadn't worked the miracle—he had, and he had warped gravity to move a hundred things individually. Extraordinary. I could move a place setting or lift a chair. Him? Revelation. Realization rose through his body like vines and tendrils until he nodded. The glow faded.

He looked out the door. It was open to the street as the day was hot. He walked, then ran.

"Feldspar?"

Gone. I heard him outside. I heard voices. Laughter.

He'd found his revelation, a miracle beyond the pale. Something he'd never need me for.

I waited. A minute? Ten? I walked to the door and slammed it.

I jumped in shock when my guardian asked, "Will the young sir be returning for tea?"

I stalked toward my room, saying, "I don't want to see him. I don't need him," and slammed that door, too.

Feldspar had shelved everything in standard librarian order.

Two days later, I missed Feldspar. He wasn't at school. The teacher told me the national academy had learned of his feat and offered him a seat, and he'd gone.

Like that. Used. Abandoned. Not needed. Discarded. /Betrayed./

Friends always leave you in the end. I accepted the tutors my guardian wanted for me and never attended school again.

[Author retains copyright. I will likely use this tract in a novel, so it may prove spoilery.]

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[This prompt struck me with an idea for an tale, so I "wove words" to start it. —RS]

I did not miss when the monster twitched in my hammock. I had my knife instantly in hand.

The last thing I'd expected to find in that days-old battlefield had been someone alive. A pall of smoke veiled the land. Cities had burned as war mania spread, consuming reason and millions of lives. Living isolated most of the year in the Cliftown mountains had saved me, but I was a professional scavenger. I'd had to fly to investigate when I'd seen explosions light the night sky days ago. Certain pyrotechnics required embedded miracles. Dead people didn't need their devices, meaning I could take them, study them; I did.

She moved a hoof, though her new leg was more of a puma's rear leg with the claws grown-together, thick and bulky.

Trees had lain bowled over, meadows burnt, road top heaved into rubble as I'd flown over it. Despite scarves, the stench and smoke turned my stomach. My scavenged wonder projected a quarter gravity arc ahead of me, sufficient to ward projectiles. I'd found it despite being a night angel because... well, that's a long story. Suffice it I sensed military treasures all around like embers in the night. It was a nearby blaze that drew my gaze.

Her.

In a battlefield.

Had the silent and broken-apart thousands died trying to kill the daemon? Or trying to protect her? A blue glow radiated from her crumpled body, protecting her. Dogs rushed away as I swooped down; crows raised a chorus of complaints as their dark cloud rose skyward.

It took a single relic to create my shield. Within her I sensed hundreds, like the thunderous buzz of a hive of bees. Gravity-armor of darkened bones snaked over her spine, over her shoulders, her head, and elsewhere. That wonder was the least of what I sensed. Her body hid a reliquary, its wonders having taken over after the life had been struck from her.

It rebuilt her. Probably.

A piece from this person. A piece from that person...

That a wonder could perform miracles intelligently was astounding and unheard of. That undoubtedly explained why I'd brought her to my hammock, stretched high in a tree growing from the valley wall. The opportunity to study it was too seductive. I expected the mechanisms to wind down like all clockworks did.

Human scavengers might arrive soon, too.

A folded silver-blue wing jerked open.

Her newly acquired twitchy day angel wings lacked flight feathers. I assumed her head determined who she was; the rest served as parts. Raven tresses framed her pale face. Much had been burnt off in the cataclysm. Down had begun growing. Her skin had pigment—beige-white, like aged bone—and was covered by fine black hairs.

I'd given her water. Reflex aided her to the extent it cost me a dozen refilled canteens—and turned me into an invalid's nurse as she fouled herself.

I persisted to learn how she could exist, why she was made. I wasn't able to feed her unless she woke, so I expected my wait wouldn't be long, one way or another.

The swelling and bruising incrementally subsided. Cuts healed and disappeared, leaving no scars. Her face, with me cleaning away blood and scabs, went from gaunt to pretty. Her expression relaxed into a kind faint smile. She had white daemon horns centered on her forehead; smooth, they would have circled her head like a two finger-width wreath. The left had been struck off by a blow. A thorn of a horn had regrown thus far.

Despite her being part daemon, day angel, and horseman, the chimera looked human. I judged her half my age, short of 25. So young to be wearing that priceless armor that stubbornly clung to her skin! How could she be a warrior general? How could she possess the wonders her body unconsciously wielded?

Her lips turned rosy. I began to hope I'd not have to end the monster's life with my knife. In actuality, I'd been too stupid and too curious to end her when she was vulnerable.

Cooling breezes rustled the leaves. Dappled light moved. Maybe it was enough to see my shadow where I perched beside her.

An arm shot out. She caught my wrist.

I tottered on my perch, snapping open my wings, flapping for balance. Her strength steadied me, causing the hammock to sway.

Crystal blue eyes caught mine, electrifying me. Her irises pulsed. She blinked as she struggled to focus on me.

I heard, "Who?"

Breathy. Like the wind. Pleasant, like a lover's voice.

Caught surprised, I wondered if she meant my name, then thought, of course she did. My name got caught on the tip of my tongue—

She clarified. "Who? Who am I?"

[She's Rainy Days. Always wanted to write an amnesiac romance. Author retains copyright(c)2023 by R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 10.1 — Introduce your MC from the perspective of the antagonist. CW: Spoilers for a certain set of readers.

[I will let my antagonist speak for herself. This is in antagonist POV:]

"Director! Your Highness! Are you hurt?"

My vision swam, filled with blue and purple phosphenes; my head pounded as if it were split open. Maybe it was. I looked up, seeing armor, feeling a hand on my shoulder where I lay having slid into the gutter, trying to focus on a concerned expression on the praetorian's face. The implosion pop of an out-jump echoed in my ears, or was it in my short term memory?

"I said—" I shouted, regretting it instantly with a groan. "I said no guards helping me! This daemon is my quarry, mine alone!"

The crimson-feathered day angel fluttered back, causing the crowd on the street to retreat at the same time.

I barely levered myself up, gingerly touching my head. The back of my hand came back spotted with blood. Not only had I been struck with my crown, I'd been thrown head over heals by a combination of thaumaturgy and brute strength. This teenager, like most of my people, was half my height and a fifth my mass... but then I'd had my fingers in seeing her trained and educated, given titles and responsibility to match the potential her mother had brought to my attention.

She'd run away from it all.

I'd found her hiding under my nose, enrolled in my academy and sleeping with my adopted daughter, as her roommate. A roommate whom she'd rescued yesterday from blackmail and addiction by coordinating a sting operation to capture a crime boss. I'd not discovered her but for an act of friendship and courage.

I couldn't be more proud her training had stuck.

Yet, this student, a self-taught worker of impossible miracles accomplished beyond my greatest expectation, was not interested in further training. Why? She'd deduced my secret, and spat in my face. So shocked was I, I'd let her escape.

I'd locked down the city. Found her. I had needed to convince her.

So, what did she have the temerity to say when I cornered her on the street?

/"What don't you understand? I couldn't have been clearer! 'No' means no!"/

Then attacked. Nobody ever thought of attacking me, even when not surrounded by guards. Calculated to stun and flee, she threw me. That sent my crown flying. She'd caught it in a gravity bubble and looped it around at my skull. She ensured I'd temporarily be unable to read the vectors of her out jump from her halo. Like that, /bang!/. Gone.

I reached for the heavy gold circlet that lay in a noisome puddle. She had to be within a two block radius. As my vision cleared, I sensed something uncommonly miraculous...

I triangulated, turned. My eyes lifted to the News Building. That way. So wonderful to be young, powerful, and lacking experience. But not stupid. She knew if she jumped again, I'd follow. She'd deduced how long I'd be stunned.

Magnificent! She was magnificent. I smiled despite my pain, despite the awe projected by the muttering crowd who had seen a fight that would be all over the papers, perhaps talked about for years.

Of all my many students, I might yet have found someone who could save the world before I was driven to destroy it.

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#Writever 10.31 — After Birth written for Bat Man, 10.9 — Bat Mobile

[Slice of life, part of same story as 10.2 Nuit.]

What I liked when my night angel wore clothing, he had to keep his wings free, which meant I could reach (as I did) to his upper chest and brush my hand all the way down past his waist without running into cloth. It wrapped around his shoulders and groin. His wing membranes stretched all the way to his ankles, so typical human clothing didn't work. Little observations like this confirmed in my mind that his kind were a chimera of human and bat. That and cuspids that were unmistakably fangs. And a vaguely cleft lip, again like on a bat.

That he was a beautiful black man, thus his name Raven, made the bat connection even more obvious to my (apparently well-educated) eye. I enjoyed the feel of his skin and fine body hair under my palm, which considering how poorly I felt, was a good thing. I ached. I felt stretched past tissue giving way, and really tired. My hand dropped further.

"Hey! Hey there, my little chimera mom." He gently trapped and put my hand to my side where I lay. "It's a little early for you thinking about next time. We're going to be busy for awhile with other things."

He was so sexy!

My daughter, /our daughter/, was looking a lot less like an oversized red wrinkled raisin. She'd plumped a little. I'd so distracted myself, I'd not realized she'd stopped feeding and dozed off. I heard her faint breathing whistle; Raven who'd bent down to look closer, turned to me and smiled. Her birth had been rapid, uncomplicated. The baby catcher had said I'd been fortunate. Though I still didn't remember much from my previous life, before Raven found me barely alive on the battlefield, this amnesiac remembered enough to know second and subsequent births went significantly easier than the first. Speed was indicative. As was knowing to push, and how to hold a baby and feed it without thinking. I looked mid-twenties, but I was certain I'd had previous children. Something deep inside said many, which begged the question that when the world went crazy and war ravaged the cities, how many children had I lost?

"Sunny?"

I was stroking my daughter absently. So warm. So alive as her little chest filled and emptied. My heart opened and I warmed inside, dispelling the darkness a little, my constant companion. We'd made this. But...

It was hot in our tree home, as it was everywhere outside. And muggy. Homes were built for ventilation, but, with the temperature hovering at blood temperature, I thought about my piss-poor thaumaturgic skills. So skimpy for a possible former captain of armies. I could light homes at night, and I made coin doing so, but I /knew/—infuriating bits of a former life I couldn't remember learning, like being able to speak more eloquently than the locals—that daemons worked /cooling miracles./

For a price, of course.

Children weren't named until three. Heat killed so many before that age, thus the tradition of little children only being called "Child." I felt so... lacking, so inadequate. /Useless./ Maybe none of my infants had lived to their naming day.

I blinked tears as Raven moved my hand. I was too exhausted to fight. I would sleep with my little one as instinct demanded, but even a mother's heat could kill. He put her in a special hammock in the home's updraft breeze after rubbing her back and getting a groggy grehps. She flexed against the silken netting, flexing tiny hands, before feeling swaddled and dozing off again. The cradle was hung strategically to prevent her fouling her attendants or furniture.

I looked up.

A new mobile hung there. It might be days before her tiny eyes opened enough to notice the little bats that twirled and rotated on strings. I squinted; no, they were little night angels. I was right when I told the village elder she'd be daemon or angel, not the weird chimera of human kinds I was. We'd never explain it was really "chimera of human kinds I'd /become./" People in war time were suspicious of impossible miracles.

Child had no wings, not even white-feathered avian ones like mine. A single stubby horn; a monoceros. Living in trees and cliff homes, she'd have to learn to climb quickly.

Unless she could work miracles early. Climbing. Another reason she might not live to three.

The bat mobile twirled lazily. Maybe more than the breeze should have made it. Babies were miracles, but baby miracles were even more miraculous.

Her mother could hope.

[Writing time, 2 hours with edits. Author retains copyright.]

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The waiter reached for the coin on the plate. I smiled because he was well muscled, lean, hips attractively lit in the incipient dawn; everything my body desired. Laying my hand over his, I asked, "Any plans for after your shift?"

"I'm attached," he said demurely and walked inside.

I sniffed at my shoulder. I'd chosen bread over a bath. I could smell the road on me and shrugged, standing. It didn't help that despite looking pretty, I looked odd.

A greyhair exited the same door, wearing a reflective apron. I spotted the flame brand on his right wrist, then the seagrass idioglyph that climbed up from his right ankle, down his arm, twining around his fingers. He fueled stoves using a dangerous government-controlled miracle.

Blue eyes blinked at me as he changed course. Not too old, if not repelled by my exotic looks; I valued vigor and competence over youth. His eyes took in my feline legs, their hooves, then flicked to the ibex horns that encircled my head like a laurel wreath. He looked like he'd walk past, but stopped to regard my back. He was still handsome.

He asked, "Is there a village with humans like you? You remind me of my mother."

No. My legs, my back: entirely unique somatic changes.

Had I lived here once? I circle the table the opposite way, asking, "Where's the bath house?"

"I'll show you," he said, not taking the hint.

His cart of wrenches, hammers, and oven parts rattled as I asked, "How young—?"

"94." Longevity from working miracles his entire life? I felt eyes on my back. I lacked a horse tail to go with the hooves, so I couldn't run fast. It wasn't what held his attention.

I pointed as we walked east. In this hot region, most buildings were adobe domes with ramadas. The other dozen-floor chimney-like buildings were where the day angels, flying and hauling items through the sky, lived. Scattered shade trees didn't hide the horizon. I smelled the iron smell of a sweaty metalworker as he passed, following my finger.

He didn't see as a miraculous glow surrounded me, before the horizon brightened.

I felt the heat as I looked away, but it wouldn't go above -3º blood temperature, like everywhere I traveled. "The baths?"

"Go left. It's shift-end and—"

"I'll treat." Unbalance, then distract. "Any news in town?"

"We're getting a railroad spur. Little Star is officially becoming Star Junction..."

Little Star sounded familiar.

A spring fed a series of roofed-over pools. He fixed the owner's heat pump, so I saved my coppers, while I chose the busy baths for the "unattached" as I had passionate plans. When he showed up with a towel around his hips, meaning "not hunting," I told him to scrub my back, hopefully answering his question or cluing him into leaving.

While I sat, shampooing, he grabbed a soap bar and sponge. Ohhh! He knew how to preen feathers.

It was a manly skill, though.

"Mother had a large blue wing and a smaller red one—" He knew to not over-soap, and to zip them together with a dot of oil. "—like you."

I glanced back, having to blink away suds. His skin had the same chalky-white pigment as mine. Two small ibex daemon horns above his temple twined together like trees. I shivered. "You remember her?"

"She left her business and my sisters to raise me when I was 4. Yeah."

"Two sisters?"

He nodded. "A red day angel..."

Like her father.

"Another, raven-haired, with—"

"—horns like ours." I dumped the water bucket over my head. His stool skidded back on the tile as I recalled settling for 19 years, having gotten pregnant. Star looked modern now, had more trees, but was smaller. That this bath hadn't existed didn't make it less likely he was my son. I still looked 24.

Always would. Thus his question.

"Nieces and nephews?"

After a pause: "33, over four generations in the registry." Not counting the ones he and other male children had fathered in other women's registries. The genetic math meant I was closely related to many my apparent age, many I'd consider spending time with. It didn't help that, at my age, I shared genes with everyone alive. Except, probably, dragons.

I flashed on a crying little blond toddler whose horns were erupting—dotting me with blood—strangling my leg, refusing to let go. So adorable, with his big sis manically flapping red wings to tug him off.

My hair dripped, which helped—and I had the excuse of suds. A head only held so much space for memories, not ones I worked hard to forget lest I be haunted by generations who'd lived, loved, and left.

I turned and hugged him, sobbing. He patted me after a time. Later I stayed at my daughter's former home, enduring, never admitting any relation to a great-great parent who'd left no pictures of herself.

[Author retains copyright.]

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#PennedPossibilities 324 — SC POV: If you could relive one day of your life without changing anything that happened, which day would you choose? Tootfic: Reframing the Experience

[When my SC says armor, it's really a weightless magical exoskeleton that melds with her body. It looks like blackened bones, because it is. —R.S.]

Oh, there's plenty of days I'd relive unchanged. Like the day I fledged, when I first flew on my own. Or the day learned the thrill of hauling things through the sky. Both good events in a rather dull and awful childhood that turned to cinders when my parents disapproved of the way I wanted to live my life. Said I aimed for the dirt not the sky. Maybe they weren't so dumb—I ended up badly, flying messages for a crime boss over a dozen years. But, then, there was that day last week...

I've told you a few times how I ended up with the armor and a new job training as a pretorian, you know, having faced down the greatest thaumaturge who ever lived, having nearly killed her. Impressed her.

I thought.

Well, my drill instructor was training me that dawn. I wore the armor. The thaumaturge dove at me, full speed. She's a monster flier, taller, more massive, immortal. I jumped into the sky. Fled.

She followed.

Though the armor let me fly like a sparrow, change direction in a heartbeat, and take a thumping only slightly changing my course, it had been her armor once. She kept appearing before me, striking at my face or heart, sending me into spins toward the ground, stalling me out, almost panicking me into flying into trees or buildings. For all her mass and the inertia that implies, I barely avoided her, half the time with her cackling at my barrel rolls or dives that sent down feathers flying. She had muscle; I tired despite the armor until I thought my heart would burst from my chest, at which point a flyby pitched me into the ground.

I skid across the running track on my belly right up to my instructor. I don't know how I didn't break a wing or my neck. Ok, I do: The Armor.

She landed beside me with a loud thump. She wasn't even winded! She told him, "She lacks stamina. Train her harder."

She leaned down until her face was in my face. I smelled maple syrup on her breath. She said, "You need to use the magic in the armor. There's a class at first bell in the Ivory building, room B7. Shower and be there ON TIME."

I have wings.

I don't do magic.

I showered though, once my legs stopped shaking. I slunk into the class still half-frightened out of my wits. My new friend was there, the curse breaker, a former prizefighter, the one I'd fought beside against Her, that ended up with me getting the armor. It was some sort of advanced special Ed class for mages. I suddenly felt totally inadequate and I cried. Me. At the age of 27, I cried telling her my story, pointing to my purpling bruises, complaining that had She gotten in a good strike She would have caved in my rib cage.

My friend was having none of it. She said, "You're a day angel who just went ten minutes fighting Her. Somehow, you're still alive."

I hadn't thought about it that way. I later learned the word, "Reframing."

The instructor came in with a truckload of tomes and grimoires. She had prepared him for me. He gave me a magic primer. I knew it was a primer because it had PICTURES of youngsters playing. Despite the stares of the other students, I read the book.

Half hour later, I got the armor to glow dull red, like iron out of a forge. Truly. Awesome. Didn't know what it did except look intimidating, but still...

Awesome.

I felt my heart grow large in my chest, and it struck me. Someone (okay, the ruler of the nation) wanted me for who I was and who I could become, and because I was capable. She wanted me to aim for the sky. My new friend supported me and pushed me forward. I liked this, who I was, what I was finding I could be, could become.

And.

Oddly.

I realized, for what it was worth, my parents would approve. (And flap them if they didn't!)

Best. Day. Ever.

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]

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