Categories
Slow Lifestyle

My Easy Unplugged Morning and Evening Routine

Can I talk about staring out windows for a second?

I’m lucky to have a window over my desk where I can stare out at the woods and down at the little alcove of my yard I’m slowly transforming into a Japanese garden. I also get a decent view of the sky, considering I do live in the woods.

I spend a lot of time staring out this window when my mind is drifting away from my work. But the best time to stare out the window is in the morning, before my brain starts working or in the evening when it starts to coast. In fact, on an ideal day, staring out the window is part of my daily routine.

It beats staring at my phone.

A phone-free routine

But here’s the thing, if you want to create a screenless non-scrolling morning or evening routine for yourself, you have to replace the old habits with new habits. Maybe you find yourself too wound-up to stare out the window for very long. I get it. Not everybody can be that chilled-out every day. So, you’ve got to give yourself a list of things you need to do before you log on for the day and after you log off for the night.

It’s just a lot easier to not do what you’re trying not to do when you have something else to do instead. So, here’ how you might want to replace the morning and evening doom-scroll.

Evening

I’m starting with the evening routine because it’s always best to prep for a good morning the night before. Also, since I’m assuming you’re reading this post more or less during the day, while you’re still awake, you’ll be able to implement the evening routine sooner anyway.

Remember, everybody’s life and needs are different, so you’ll want to customize these ideas to fit your own.

Log off after supper

Or even when you sit down to supper. This is the beginning of your evening routine. From now on you’re saying no to social media commentary on current events, blue light and endless scrolling. You now get to be fully present for the final hours of the day.

Go outside after supper

 Take a walk around the neighborhood, play with your dog, work in your garden. Go for a jog or a bike ride if you’re one of those people. Get out and enjoy golden hour. Stick around for the sunset if it looks like it’s going to be a good show.

Read and or journal

Once you’re back inside for the night, settle in with your Sleepytime tea or whatever and do some reading. The Bible or your daily devotional are good options. Just make sure you don’t cram or try to play catch-up in the evenings if you’re behind on some reading plan. You could do mornings and evenings if you’re falling behind, just don’t read for hours when you’re supposed to be winding down. You might also want to journal or read some fiction if you like those things.

Make tomorrow’s to-do list

You know you’re going to start thinking of all the things you didn’t get done today anyway, so you might as well note down what you’d like to start on tomorrow. Remember, you’re probably only going to get half of it done, but that’s tomorrow’s business. Just write it down and we’ll deal with all that in the morning.

Brush teeth, wash face, go to bed

Notice I’m not advocating filling a tub with flower petals and bath bombs, lighting candles, putting on music and doing a face-mask every night. I know these super-extra self-care ‘routines’ are popular on Pinterest, but get real. You do not have the energy and time to do that every single night. And you probably shouldn’t be doing face-masks every day. And that’s a lot of bath-bombs.

Just give yourself time to do essential hygiene before bed. Take your make-up off. Brush and floss your teeth. You know what you need to do to make sure you go to bed feeling like you take care of yourself and wake up feeling refreshed. Just do that. You can do all that other stuff some nights, but it does not need to be part of your routine.

Morning

I hate mornings. Maybe that’s why I have a very strong routine for when I wake up compared to pretty much any other time of day. My brain is not working. It needs to be able to get through the first hour or so of the day on autopilot.

Maybe you’re a little more energetic, and once again, do this your way. If you can pop out of bed at five in the morning and go for a five-mile jog before breakfast, great. But here are my suggestions if you’d rather ease into the day a little slower.

Skincare

This really helps me wake up. My morning skincare if just cleansing and moisturizing, so it doesn’t take long, but the hot and cold water on my face really clears up the grogginess. I also wake up with a headache most of the time, and it somehow takes the edge off of that a bit too. A lot of people shower in the morning, which would probably be even better, but somehow I never got into showering at a particular time of day. It’s more just whenever I think I’m done sweating or digging in the mud for a while.

Tea or coffee

Immediately after my skincare routine, I’m staggering into the kitchen seeking hot black tea. Once it’s steeped, I usually take it to my desk and drink it slowly while staring out the window. Your morning tea or coffee time could also be a good time to touch base with whoever you live with and see what plans they have for the day. I often also review and revise my to-do list at this time.

Breakfast

Some people skip breakfast. Some make whole meal of it. I’m not going to tell you what’s best, I don’t know. It probably depends. Most of the time, it’s probably best to eat something to balance your blood sugar after waking up. It’s usually fairly light for me. Scrambled eggs. Cheerios. Berries.

Go outside

My favorite thing to do after breakfast, if I don’t have to go somewhere immediately is get outside. I like to get gardening and yardwork done in the morning. There’s nothing like outdoor air to finally get you ready to get things done for the day. And if you can do some actual physical work that makes a difference, it can be very invigorating. If you’re more contemplative in the morning, going for a walk or even sitting on your porch or balcony might serve you well enough.

Then You May Log On

And only then. Wait until you’ve gone through your whole morning routine before picking up your phone and checking anything. Keep your morning routine simple and natural. Make it something you can do without a lot of decision-making or working around obstacles. You won’t even be tempted to check your phone.

You may now return to the frenzy of the online world on your own terms. You’ve set your own mood and pace for the day. You know what you need to get done. You’ve also proved to yourself you don’t need to pick up your phone every five minutes. You’re in control of your own time and ready for a great day.

Categories
Short Story

Short Story: Fly Again

Wordcount: 1,572

Synopsis: Three children discover a young man sitting under a tree sewing up a broken bird.

The wind dove down into the pastureland along the coast. It ripped its fast slender fingers through the ancient copses and stranded glacial boulders, surging and wailing in the billowing grasses, and then suddenly lifted up–straight up—and everything took flight. Foliage rolled back, baring the white knuckles of twiggy branches, clawing at the wind as the leaves broke free. Rain roared across the land, ragging like ghost-fire, blinding the sky. Amid the storm’s raucous symphony, a flare of screaming laughter burst the tingling sound-waves.

  Their canvas shoes found no traction in the streaming matted pasture. Rain dashed against their crumpled faces as they made for the trees. There were three children, out of nowhere, half-running, half-falling down the hill toward the woods. The smallest of the trio slipped when they reached the foot of the hill and dropped to the ground with a startled chirp. The oldest, in the lead, spun back while the third bounded on. “Come on, Leif.”

  “I am.” He scrambled to his feet and they went on wrestling the wind into the shelter of the trees. The first tree at the edge of the field was a burr oak two stories tall. The children raced, wild and breathless to the shelter of its canopy. And suddenly there was no storm.

  “Why did you want to go out when the sky was so dark?” asked the middle girl—about seven, and apparently intent on growing up to be a curly horse. She wiped the rain out of her eye and pulled back her springy blonde hair.

  “Ember said it wouldn’t rain,” said Leif.

  “I said it wouldn’t storm,” the oldest replied. “You and Persephone were all wet anyway. You went after the mudskippers.” There was nothing left of Ember’s braid at this point, so she slipped the band off the dripping ends of her wind-beaten flax hair and wrapped it around her boney wrist. 

  Leif seemed to have forgotten the mudskippers and stared at a point somewhere behind Ember and Persephone. He had a rather worried expression even when he was laughing and playing, but just now, he appeared to be truly perplexed by something. “What?” asked Persephone, as the sisters turned back to where his focus rested.

  Someone sat against the dark mossy tree-trunk. Persephone passed a questioning look to her older sister. “Let’s see,” said Ember. The three moved in toward the tree and the boy sitting on the roots.

  He didn’t look up when they approached. Apparently, he had discovered an ideally comfortable place between the huge gnarled roots, and had no desire to resettle. His back was against the trunk, and his dark tranquil eyes rested with equal ease and serenity on something cradled in his hand. But what was truly fantastic was his hair—incredible curling black masses of it flowing all over the tree bark down his back and over his shoulders—though mostly dry, was beaded with a million perfect silver orbs of rain, still and clear.

  As the children came closer, his right hand drew a silver needle smoothly up from what he held in his left. They could see, secured carefully between his thumb and index finger, a little black and yellow wing, spread like a tiny painted oriental fan. Leif moved in to see what it was. He cocked his head to the side a bit. “What do you have?” he asked.

  “A bird,” he said.

  “What kind of bird?” asked Persephone, leaning forward to see. He tipped his hand a bit and showed them the bird. It fit perfectly in the palm of his hand, lying on its back. It was mostly soft golden-gray with black and yellow wing-feathers and a black cap. Its cheeks were white and its face was deep scarlet. The eyes, with lids of fine gray velvet, were crumpled shut.

  “It’s a goldfinch,” said Ember.

  “What happened to it?” asked Leif.

  “It flew against the glass,” said the youth, pushing aside the down on its still breast with the tip of his finger. He inserted the needle into the broken flesh and drew it together like a curtain with a hair of thread. The children watched his progress for a few minutes while the storm raged over the pasturelands.

  “You have to be so careful,” Leif observed at length.

  “That’s true,” he said.

  “Did it break when it hit the glass?”

  “Yes. Inside.”

  “When did it happen?” asked Persephone.

  “This morning, just after the sun came up.”

  “How long have you been working?” asked Ember.

  “Since then.”

  “It’s hard?” Leif looked up at the boy’s face.

  “Yes.”

  There was another pause while the silver needle flashed in the rainy light and the wind moaned in the oaks. The girls came and leaned against the tree on either side of him, watching, silent. Leif licked his lips and leaned over the bird for a second when the young man paused in his stitching. His sad eyes combed the soft rumpled down. “Can I touch it?” he asked.

  “Be gentle.” He held it out to him. The wind lightly played with the tiny body, making the wings tremble with the memory of flight. Leif reached out, touching the delicate crown with one finger he could barely feel the soft feathers, but he could feel the hardness of the little skull, like a seashell.

  He lifted it to Persephone and then Ember to let them stroke it. They caressed the feathers, careful to avoid the threaded rift in the downy chest. The wind whistled in the high branches, like phantom birds calling back to the physical world. Now and then a heavy drop of accumulated rain fell through the dark canopy and burst on the mossy ground nearby. But the storm couldn’t come in. Under the tree was a tabernacle of calm.

  The point of the needle slipped through again, and another quarter centimeter of the cold bloody opening vanished under the cloudy feathers. “Isn’t there a faster way?” asked Persephone. “Does it get too boring if you have to work so long?”

  “It’s alright.”

  “Why are you doing it?” asked Ember, at last.

  He smiled. “Birds like to fly. I like to hear them singing in the woods when the rain gets quiet. They need to sing and raise young and gather together to fly south when the winter comes. And besides, the sky is empty without them.”

  “But this is just one bird,” said Ember. “There are thousands of them.”

  He let his hand drop to his lap and looked down at the dead bird. “But…this is one of them.”

  For a minute they were quiet. The boy rearranged the goldfinch’s wing so one of the feathers that was being roughed by his palm would lie smooth. He lifted the needle again and pricked it through the pale gray flesh. The thread wove to-and-fro until, finally, the bird was whole.

  The youth knotted the thread and snipped it between his teeth. He drove the needle into the root of the oak and gently stroked the bird’s wings to fold them against its sides. Then he turned it over on its belly, straightening the limp neck so that the head faced outward. Covering it with his other hand, he got to his feet. “Let me show you something. Come out into the field. I can make it fly again.”

  So the children followed him out into the pastureland. The wind had died down, and the rain fell in straight chains on the ocean. They followed him across the sodden turf up to the top of the hill. The world radiated from that hill as if from the hub of a wheel. The dark blotchy sky looked on.

  The boy’s profuse black hair billowed over his shoulder as the wind rushed breathily against their backs. He lifted his hand, uncovering the bird in his palm. The children watched. It was still lifeless. The clawed feet curled weakly underneath, and all the joints slack. He stroked its back with two fingers, flicking shattered raindrops of the feathers. Then he looked out across the stormy world.

  “Can it fly in the rain?” asked Leif.

  “Of course it can,” said Persephone.

  “Will the stiches hurt when it flaps its wings?” asked Ember, looking from the dead bird to the young man’s face. “They won’t hurt, will they?”

  “It will never feel it.” And he blew across the bird’s back. In a flurry of life and bursting energy, the wings flashed out and the limp body went taught, leaping from his hand and out into the air—into the sky.

  A brilliant dash of painted feathers, the goldfinch snapped its wings open and shut, bounding across the pastureland, through the rain and dancing foliage. Away it went into the darkness of the woods. The children watched it out of sight.

  The three looked back to find they were alone in the rolling pastureland. High overhead, thunder warned that the storm wasn’t over. There was a flicker of lightning over the sea. Ember sighed. “We should go home.”

  The children melted into the shadows and whispers of the woodland, leaving the fields to the frolicking reckless wind, and the forest to the dying rain. As the next cell of the storm advanced in from the sea, there was a hush, and in the hush, dark thickets were still.

  And in the still, dripping thickets, a single goldfinch began to sing.  

Categories
announcements Art

The First Chapter of Dronefall is Now a Comic!

I’m a novelist—most of you guys know that. I’ve studied and practiced that particular mode of storytelling for around 15 years now. That creates a lot of habits and expectations when I sit down to work on a story.

But I’ve been thinking about branching out into comics for a long time. And it was while I was working on thinking up an idea for a newsletter freebie that I decided to finally commit to finishing a project. That project was “A Reason to Run: the comic.”

The idea was, I wanted to give my readers a view of my story they couldn’t get just from reading my books. I set my sights on the first chapter of the first book of the Dronefall Series. I wanted to adapt it to the comic medium. But I really had no idea how I was going to do that.

How Do You Adapt Novel Text To Comics?

Of course, this is what I asked Google—actually, I asked Pinterest first, because I typically do, but when I didn’t find what I needed there, I took it to Google. And guess what? I also didn’t find a lot there.

So, is this not something people do? Clearly, they do it—novels do occasionally get graphic novel adaptations, after all. But I was able to find very little guidance on how to do it online. And so, I realized I was going to have to log off and use my own brain.

That’s a good thing to do sometimes. Kids, you don’t need people on the internet to do all your thinking for you. God created you with a brain that can think on its own. Sometimes you have to step away from other voices and remember you can figure things out for yourself. It’s actually one of the best things you can do for your creativity.

But, having said all that, I thought it was too bad there were hardly any tips for how to do this on the internet. So, I’m going to share my insights with you. Read on.

My Process

Being an extremely visual writer who for some reason always knows exactly what compass-point everything in a given scene is facing, I had a lot of very strong imagery in my head already. This process would probably be a lot longer if you needed to make a lot of character and setting design decisions before you started. I dived straight in without writing out a script or anything. I just started story-boarding the whole thing shot-by-shot like a movie.

Don’t do it this way.

It was getting really long and tedious.  I was many pages into my thumbnailing when it occurred to me that comics are not films. So, that’s my first tip.

Tip #1 Comics are NOT Film Storyboards

Comics are their own medium. It’s possible to use way too many panels to show an action. It can actually make the action more confusing. I also didn’t want to make this a 30-page project. This was my first time trying to complete a comic for public consumption. I wanted it to be manageable.

So, I scrapped the thumbnails and started rethinking things. I needed to think about what parts on this first chapter of Dronefall One actually needed to be communicated. What could I make clear? What could I get a casual reader interested in without a lot of exposition?

I ended up selecting two passages of text that would end up appearing on the pages. One was that iconic intro about the Blindworm and train-jumping. The other was the conversation my MC Halcyon and her friend Reveille have as Halcyon is making a run for it. Off of that, I could build my pages.

Tip #2 Draw your thumbnails—worry about page layout later

Now that I had the text to use as a framework, I started drawing new thumbnails. At first, they were just a string of rectangle panels. I didn’t bother thinking about layouts and different panel shapes or sizes until I knew what panels I actually needed to tell my story.

By rethinking my thumbnails in a much less play-by-play progression, I flew through the thumbnailing process and was ready to move on to page layouts. 

Tip #3 Decide how many pages you want to draw

I managed to condense the whole of chapter one into eight pages. I was able to guesstimate the number by knowing about how many panels I would probably be able to fit on a page, and then starting to mark out potential page-breaks in the thumbnail sketches.

Staying flexible at this stage is helpful. None of the panels were set in stone yet. A lot would shift around and evolve as I got into sketching my tentative layouts. I ended up dropping and combining a lot of panels. I wanted to stay sensitive to readability and composition in the sketching phase.

Tip #4 Stay noncommittal in the early stages

Comic art is more than just a string of pretty pictures. It’s about telling a story.

Once I was satisfied with the layouts, the scary part began. This was also the point where I realized I was going to do the whole comic in traditional media—also a scary decision. I went out and bought the biggest pad of Bristol board I could find. I don’t know a lot about comics, but I do know you’re supposed to work much larger than your print-size. And with all the pictures within pictures in the medium, I knew I would still be getting into some pretty small details if I wasn’t careful.

Tip #5 Work LARGE

The original pages of this comic are 17inx14in (43.18cm x 35.56cm) and I almost wished they were bigger. Still, working even on that scale has its challenges. If you’re not an artist, you might not realize how distorted a large page is when you’re sitting at a desk. I had to stand up and look straight down at it to keep it from getting too skewed. An easel or drawing-board might have been helpful.

Tip #6 Use a medium you’re comfortable with for your first comic

Kind of a bonus tip. Also, I didn’t do this.

I opted to use alcohol markers for this project. For the most part, I like how it turned out, but I felt a little panicky the whole time I was using them. They interacted strangely with graphite. (Which I used to sketch the pages out before inking with alcohol-based fine-liners.) They each blended a little differently. And boy, I sure used some of them up. We took a couple of emergency trips to Hobby Lobby to replenish them over the two weeks I was working on this.

I was using the store-brand ones, luckily. But you know they still weren’t cheap. That’s the thing about alcohol markers.

Anyway. Once I had inked and colored all eight pages and a cover, I photographed them with my phone, cropped and adjusted them, and popped them into Canva where I added the text. I could have hand-lettered the text on the physical pages, but I didn’t. Because I kinda forgot. I got in the zone.

Tip #7 Leave room for your text boxes/speech bubbles

Mine got a little crowded. This probably takes some practice to get right. But in the end, I think I ended up with a totally readable, and even kind of cool-looking comic that gives my readers an exciting taste of the world of Dronefall. That was my goal.

I hope you got something out of this behind-the-scenes look at my comic-making process. I’m obviously a complete newbie, but I wanted to share my experience with other complete newbies out there who might be just as lost as I was at the beginning of the process. If you have any questions for me, please drop them in the comments, and I’ll be sure to answer them as best I can.

Want to see the full comic?

Download it when you join my email list. I try to send entertaining, inspiring emails every other week. I want to make your inbox a better place, so if that sounds like something you would appreciate, welcome to my exclusive café.

Categories
announcements

Surprise Project Reveal!

Well, I’ve been working obsessively again. I got an idea a while back and have been refining it for a long time in my head, but finally, two weeks ago, I started working on actually creating it.

I wanted to make something cool for my future email subscribers. Since I don’t use social media, my email list has become a top priority. I wanted to give you something you couldn’t find anywhere else—something unique to me and my skillset as well as my story-world. So, I started scheming up what I think is a perfect gift for readers or potential readers of the Dronefall Series.

Has the pop-up interrupted me yet? Yep, that’s it. I created a comic adaptation for the first chapter of the first book in the Dronefall Series.

Read the Comic

I’ve got a dedicated landing page for it, too. If you check the menu and click on “Free Comic” it will take you there. The comic is 8 pages long (plus a cover and a bonus page at the end.) I drew the whole thing traditionally using alcohol markers in a manga-like grayscale. I’m still gun-shy about full-color. Alcohol markers are a new medium for me.

I’m going to do a post on my whole process for adapting and creating the comic, so you’ll get more details on that, shortly. In the meantime, I’m really excited to share this rather unusual teaser with you. I’m a visual person, and I’ve always had very strong imagery in my head while writing Dronefall. This is a chance for you to get a uniquely visual introduction to my story in a way few authors could replicate. My lifelong love of sequential art made me do it. You’re welcome. *rubs migraine-glitter out of eyes*

So, that was kind of intense. Especially coming right off finishing the Dronefall One rewrite. I finished that, by the way. I want to get it re-released toward the end of July. Another reason you need to subscribe to my newsletter is so you can know what’s going on with my crazy release schedule this summer. Book Five will be out soon as well. Six…hopefully early Fall.

What about the blog?

Where does it come in in the middle of all this chaos? I’ve got a few older unreleased stories I want to serialize—two of which I guess aren’t really unreleased. I’m going to post the two stories that were formerly exclusive to the “Secret Library,” which I took down in favor of something more streamlined. There’s another one, too. That should keep the blog active until Dronefall One relaunches.

Anyway, thanks for waiting for me! I hope you enjoy the comic. And the subsequent newsletter. I’m putting a lot of effort into making my emails actually enjoyable to read. None of this sales-pitch after sales-pitch stuff a lot of email lists do. I’ll send you art and pictures and stuff. It will be worth it, I promise.

P.S. Some of you faithful readers might wonder what’s going to happen to my Dreamscape, IN serial here on the blog. Well, I realized it was developing more of a plot than I wanted it to have. I think that was because I was trying to make it a regular series on a regular posting schedule. It’s supposed to be all vibes with multiple diffuse plot-threads that break off and pick up and fade out again. So, I’m going to try dropping an episode whenever I feel like it without warning instead.

Anyway.

Categories
announcements

Is A. L. Buehrer Still Alive?

She left Instagram long ago, her email newsletter has dropped off, and her blog his been eerily quiet for months. Where is she? What happened? Is she actually gone this time?

I’m writing to answer those questions. If you’ve followed my blog, or have read certain posts from a while back, you know what happened to my social media presence. And, after all these months of hiatus, I can say now, more than ever, I’m never going back to social media. It’s…kind of a whitewashed sepulcher.

But anyway, I’m now going to vanish from the internet again, because I need to immerse myself fully in the task of rewriting Dronefall One.

The Dronefall Rewrite

If you didn’t get the memo, book one of the Dronefall series is being completely overhauled. I’m going to re-release it before I drop the final two books and finish the series. This has been a massive task already—brain-wracking, creativity-stretching, and sometimes discouraging. But this is what I do, and I want to give myself the space and quiet to do it. And hopefully enjoy it.

I want Dronefall to be a strong first book for the series. That fact that it was the weakest book by far had been bothering me for quite a while, crippling my confidence in the whole story. If people weren’t hooked by the end of book one, they probably wouldn’t read on. They would miss the best part.

At this point, I know for sure I can make Dronefall One a better book. A rewrite and relaunch could be a beautiful thing. It could light the fire to the fuse that could give me the energy to finish book six at last, knowing the whole series was locked and loaded. I’m working on chapter eight of seventeen right now. It’s going to happen.

But I need the breathing room. So, I’m going to vanish from Goodreads interactions (my last social media stronghold) and disappear into the wilderness of art and solitude until it’s done. Probably until the relaunch is quite imminent.

You’ll know when the eagles gather….

It’s Okay to be Alone

This is something almost no one in the writing community will admit, but there’s no right way to create. And that extends to whether you choose to work completely independently or not. Some need a whole community to motivate them to write and help them every step of the way. Others, like me, can be destroyed by too much input. No, it doesn’t necessarily take a village to raise a book. You can do it alone. I’ve found I like it much better that way.

So, bye for now. I’ll be back with a brand-new Dronefall.

Categories
Dreamscape IN series Uncategorized

Dreamscape, IN: Episode 4, Anywhere Else

Read the Prologue: here Wordcount: 384 Part: 5/ongoing

Anywhere Else

The soft flicker of my vanilla cinnamon pumpkin candle, the steady background of lo-fi music, and the continuous ticking of my little pomodoro timer should have been enough to keep my head in my books all evening. But maybe it was a bit much with my fluffy fleece blanket and Tigerlilly purring on my lap. Such a perfect setup to study. It must be my brain that has the problem.

Civil rights in the 60’s. Not the coziest subject, but definitely something that should hold my interest. I shuffled my little stack of index cards. Names, dates, events I was collecting. Each card would serve as a memory in the pastel fog of my mind. I would need paper to keep them for me tonight. Tomorrow I could refer to them and know I had actually been here.

I began reading a passage aloud to Tigerlily. She blinked up at me with her mystical eyes. She seemed a little board and eventually became a tiny loaf and fell asleep. My voice trailed off and I sighed, glancing at the timer. Thirteen minutes left in this session. I had to keep going.

Outside, the clouds were breaking up and beginning to glow softly. How big were those distant thunderheads? How far away? Were they over another city or just over the lake a few miles out of town? I was a poor judge of distance. Especially in the sky.  

“If you could leave Dreamscape, where would you go?” Mom had asked me yesterday evening. I hadn’t been talking about leaving Dreamscape. Funny how it keeps coming up.

“Isn’t the whole world a lot like Dreamscape?” I asked. And that was why I couldn’t leave. It wasn’t because the whole world was so much like Dreamscape. In truth, Dreamscape was much like the whole world. Everywhere else was just another view of the same sky. Why did it matter what changed on the ground?

“Someday, you might want to go somewhere else,” she said.

“But Dreamscape is okay.”

“Dreamscape isn’t real.”

“Would you and Dad come with me, if I ever left?”

“Of course, we would.”

The timer was going off. I shook myself. Where had I been? Asleep? I had been thinking about a conversation I had recently had with Mom…or was that a dream?

Categories
Echoland Uncategorized

Echoland Part 9(Finale!): The Echo

Link to part one: here Wordcount: 843 Part: 9/9

Synopsis: The finale!

The storm was dead. It had dissolved long ago, though I couldn’t say when. The voices of the bells had returned. Or was that really what the sound was? I had forgotten how the bells actually sounded. I had forgotten a lot of things. From a distance, I observed that my mind was falling apart. It had started when I got here. Piece by piece my mental faculties drifted away into the expanse. I didn’t know how far I was from where I started, or when I started. I’d forgotten where I was, and how long I had been there.

  But this hardly bothered me, because now, all I knew for certain was I was searching for something and I couldn’t remember what.

  And then there was nothing but the glass prairie, and the marbled black sky, and the music. It would have been a terrifying moment…if I had been there.

  An enormous blast of light and heat surged through me. I knew this feeling. My body threw itself and the light went out. I couldn’t breathe. I was lying under shallow water, but I couldn’t remember how to move. My face burst above the surface and my head whipped from side to side. Thunder exclaimed through the atmosphere and lightning beat at the foggy rain. I was in the bell grove again. How had I gotten there?

  I staggered to my feet and squinted through the rain. Had I really been struck by lightning? Apparently I was alright, which didn’t seem likely. I mopped my hair out of my eyes and took in a breath. Tormaigh was there, loitering between two shorter bell-trees. He didn’t act like he knew I was there.

  For a minute, I watched him weaving around the trees. Suddenly, he sprung into a low branch and reached out to a pair of young bells. He barely touched the before they started to ring through the storm. There was a pause, and then I strode to his tree. “I found out something,” I called up to him.

  For a few seconds he sat there with his eyes closed listening to the bells. He opened them–pools of silky darkness–and slowly looked down at me. Then he jumped out of the tree, hood falling back on his shoulders. The feathered ear-crests flicked up from the fluttering mass of mane-feathers. “What did you find out?”

  For a second, I couldn’t talk. Then the questions came. “What do you mean only the thunderbird could do it? Why did you make me go after it when you were right there? What’s the cloak for? Why did you pretend you couldn’t talk?”

  “You understand now. I knew you would.”

  He smiled and the fangs showed. For some time, we stood there in the stormy bell grove. I had no idea what he thought I understood. He didn’t answer any questions. He didn’t say anything more. Lightning flashed and I felt a huge wing sweep over me. I breathed in a gasp of bright electricity, stumbled, and fell backward on the cold wet grass. I blinked in the clear light of early morning.

  I got to my feet and wiped my grassy palms on my thighs. My clothes were dry and the fog was gone. So was the hum of the bells, or the storm, or the music, whatever it was. “Well, huh,” I said.

  I don’t see Tormaigh anymore. Whoever or whatever he was, seems to be more or less confined to Echoland. I still don’t think I had been there before that morning. I don’t remember it. Why wouldn’t I remember if I had? You don’t just have these kinds of experiences and forget all about them once they’re over. At least I haven’t forgotten this last time, not yet.

  I do see the thunderbird sometimes. He’s quiet when he comes here. No thunderbolt-hurling and tearing up the sky. Usually he’s just sitting in some treetop, pretending not to watch me. I think he’s just making sure I don’t forget him.

  Last Friday I was driving back from the studio—driving, because it looked like rain. It was around six at night, and getting quite dark for the time of year. When I turned east, I could see why. A rolling mountain of storm clouds was moving in over the dark green fields and shadowy woodland. Lightning flickered in the haze of distant rain and I could hear the melodious rumble of approaching thunder.

  When I got home, I stepped out of the car and slung the strap of my gym bag over my shoulder, staring up at the storm engulfing the sky. I half expected to see the bird flying in the middle of it, and I don’t think it was my imagination when I heard him singing—not really.

  I smiled and started toward the house. But my first step faltered, and I wasn’t sure the ground was solid. I’ll be alright, I know I will. It’s just that I thought, for a minute, that I was back in Echoland.

THE END

Author’s Note: Thanks so much to everyone who read Echoland all the way to the end. This is the first serialized short story I have ever released on this blog–the first of many to come!

If you ever feel like sending me a couple of dollars for encouragement, my Ko-fi link is at the bottom of ever fiction post. You have no idea how inspiring your support is to me!

Categories
Echoland Uncategorized

Echoland Part 8: Alone Again

Link to part one: here Wordcount: 1,024 Part: 8/9

Synopsis: The thunderbird takes off again, leaving Jasmine alone, exhausted, and hopeless.

I didn’t feel the fatigue when it set in. I didn’t feel it for hours. I didn’t realize that the storm around us was a slow-turning carousel of stifling wind and blinding rain. None of it was real to me. There was only the dance in its impossible logic and grace. I don’t know how long it would have gone on, if he hadn’t flown away.

  The sky burst, and glass shards spun across the ground. Light devastated everything and shocked my mind into darkness. I don’t remember falling. I don’t remember hitting the ground. When I opened my eyes the storm was dead, the bird was gone, and the music had been jarred from my memory.

  Stunned, I pushed my limp body upright with the heels of my hands. Pain sparked down my back and through my arms. I felt like I had been beaten with a crowbar. My muscles could hardly contract. Blackness swarmed over my vision once I was on my feet again and I couldn’t breathe for a second. I could almost swear my heart had stopped.

  My mind returned like a bolt of thunder. My vision flew to the empty sky, the empty land, the melted craters all around me. What had I done wrong? Why had he flown away?

  “Tormaigh!” I hardly had the breath to yell, but I channeled all the miserable remains of my energy through my voice. “Tormaigh, I did it. I did everything you said. You told me to talk to him. You told me to find the bells. You told me to dance with him. He’s gone.”

  The air rang silent around me. Even the hum of the bells and the wind was gone. There was nothing but miles of glass prairie and black sky. The grove of bell trees had disappeared. My eyes widened against the darkness. “Tormaigh?” Nothing. “Tormaigh?”

  No. He wasn’t going to appear this time. He had no answer. I started to walk. Every step sent waves of searing pain through my muscles. There was nowhere to go, but I didn’t stop. There was always the horizon.

  It wasn’t much later that I collapsed. I couldn’t walk anymore. My strength had run out. My will had run out. I had to lie down on the cold glass ground and stare, unseeing at the towering sky, a bottomless abyss of cloud and air lurking in the obsidian shadow of the world. Was there a sun in Echoland? Was there anything outside the sky, beyond the glass? Or did it all roll on forever, trapping me in infinity, alone? The weight of the sky lay heavily on my chest. I shut my eyes. I couldn’t stand the distance anymore.

  “You could go after him.”

  I opened my eyes and turned. Tormaigh sat on the ground a few yards away. I sat up. “No, I couldn’t.”He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “I can’t chase him anymore. I’ll die before I can get him to listen. He can’t understand me.”

  “Yes, he can.”

  “No.” I got up and came over to him. “Listen to me. I need to get back home. The bird isn’t going to take me. You have to do something. You know everything about this world. You probably know how to get me home as much as the bird does.”

  “I know,” he said, almost under his breath, “but I can’t take you there. Only the bird can take you there.” He looked up at me. “You have to find him.”

  “All I could possibly do at this point is sit here and wait for him. I’m too exhausted to walk. I couldn’t possibly dance if he wanted me to do that again. I would still be willing to talk to him, but he doesn’t listen, all he does is sings at me.” Lightheadedness swept over me and I sat down, hugging my knees.

  “When you find him, he will take you home. But you have to go after him. I promise he will take you home.”

  “But how do I know I can trust you?”

  “There’s no one else.”

  And he was gone.

  The wind wafted against my face and I stared into the infinite landscape. Lightning flickered maybe a five-day walk from where I sat. I saw the greenish light bounce off the glassy ground and into the clouds again. Shutting my eyes, I breathed in a long breath. I had acquired a taste for ozone. I couldn’t remember what rain smelled like when it soaked an organic world of living green and soft black earth. Thunder crackled. I had to walk. I knew I did. I pulled myself to my feet, and the wind rippled around my numb body. Maybe the storm in the distance was coming my way and we would meet by morning.

Or maybe it was going the other way.

  I placed my bare foot on a seam in the glass. If I had nothing else, there were the cracks. The cracks were paths to the horizon. At least with them I would know I was headed in a single direction. So I walked, and I didn’t stop for miles and miles of monotonous glass prairie.

  There was no way to know how far I had gone. There was no time as long as the sun was down, and there was no space without landmarks. For this reason, there was no way to choose when to stop. I tried to count strides, only to discover, to my subdued horror, I had completely lost the ability to count in a straight line.

  I didn’t know it, but the night was circling around. Time was passing. The change was too slow to appreciate, but the east was, in fact, paling. After a while, I was able to see the difference between the green fabric and the gray lining of my jacket. I could see the contrast between my dark brown hair and the midnight slate of the glass. But I couldn’t see any difference between where I was now, and the place I had been when I started.

  Then, for no reason, I stopped.

Categories
Dreamscape IN series

Dreamscape, IN: Episode 3 The Cub

Read the Prologue: here Wordcount: 431 Part: 4/ongoing

The Cub

It had been too cold to leave the window open last night, but I still didn’t shut it. The chill awakened me before my alarm and I lay quiet and still for a while, staring at the pale sky. I sighed and pushed my comforter back, stretching and combing my hands through my tangled hair. I liked to give myself an hour and fifteen minutes to get ready for school in the morning. Well, at least in September, I did.

I brewed a cup of chai and mellowed it with milk. The creamy white clouds roiled up in the amber darkness and swirled to fill my cup with the soft color of autumn. For a while I sat and stared out the steamy kitchen window watching black squirrels race up and down the trees in the backyard.

This would be the year I became an all-A’s student, I told myself. I told myself that every year, but a couple of B’s always found their way in. Did it really matter? School? I don’t know. But maybe I had better pretend it does for one more year.

I finished my tea, washed my face, combed my hair, put on the outfit I had laid out the night before. And when I went back out into the living-room, a little tiger kitten was sitting on the outside windowsill looking in.

It was gray and white with soft downy fur that caught the early morning light in a halo around its little figure. The eyes were still dark and blueish, not yellow yet. When I opened the window, it came right in.

“Do you think we can keep it?” I asked Mom after we fed it some scrambled eggs and before I went out to catch the bus.

“We’ll see if anyone else knows where it came from, but I doubt your Dad cares. It could be nice to have a cat.”

She was still at the house when I got back from school that afternoon, and she followed me inside as if it was our little habit to come home at the same time. We called her Tigerlily, and every time she heard her name, her soft oversized ears lifted, and her eyes grew round. It was like someone had called her that before. I’m convinced it’s not the only word she understands.

Strange thing about the kitten: No one we asked had ever seen her before, and there aren’t many strays or drop-offs in our neighborhood. She was too young to have traveled far by herself.

Maybe she fell from the sky.

Categories
Echoland

Echoland Part 7: The Thunderbird Wants to Dance

Link to part one: here Wordcount: 905 Part: 7/9

Synopsis: Jasmine and the thunderbird find their common ground at last.

The thunderbird dove into the clouds and was gone. I spun to face the emptiness of the bell grove around me. “He’s gone again. He flew away. Tormaigh, where are you?”

  Thunder rolled and the wind blew against the multitude of bells. The musical drone rose in pitch and volume, notes against the rhythm of the storm. I searched the trees for Tormaigh. I knew he must be nearby. He didn’t wander far from me. Lightning pulsed from the approaching cloudbank. I scowled at it. Maybe the bird liked bells, but clearly, his real problem was storms. How was I supposed to get anywhere when he was always flying off to jockey lightning bolts around the sky? Where was Tormaigh?

  “Well, follow him,” he said, standing at my elbow. “Aren’t you going to go after him?”

  I faced Tormaigh. “I can’t. He flies so much faster than I can run, and when he gets above the clouds, I completely lose him. Besides, I can’t get him to listen when he’s thundering.”

  “You might be surprised.” He crooked an eyebrow. “He’s always been listening to you.”

  I shook my head. “What’s the use? I can’t find him now.”

  “Try.”

  I sighed and turned toward the darkness. Light burst inside the towering cumulonimbus clouds. For a few minutes, I watched for the bird, but he didn’t appear. Tormaigh had gone. All that was left to do was start walking.

  My hands dropped into my pockets and I trudged through the dark navy water to the glass shore. I was glad I hadn’t bothered with shoes that morning when I tiptoed out onto the dewy lawn. I would definitely be getting blisters by now. For about twenty minutes I walked against the wind. The sound of the storm grew.

  Then, he dropped out of the clouds, blazing with electricity, feathers combing upward through the wind. Lightning burst everywhere, spreading to the edges of the sky. The mammoth bird dove, wings spreading, crests fanning to an enormous frill that spread out all around its head. It called, drowning the thunder for an instant. I drew in a breath and ducked. There was another flash and he pulled in his wings.

  A shockwave broke through the atmosphere and I fell on my hands, jarring my wrists. I spun back around and looked up. The bird was standing there blinking at me intently waiting for me to get back up. I got to my feet and he jumped backward a good seven or eight feet. He landed bending one knee and stretching his other leg gracefully straight out behind him. He swept his arms back and made eye contact with me.

  I couldn’t respond. Dancing? He jumped, spinning around in mid-air and landed a few feet in front of me, emitting a brilliant ringing call. His ears flared and flicked down. He jumped backward and repeated his bowing routine. Again, his eyes focused on me. “You want me to dance?” I asked. Before I could finish the question, he trilled and sprung toward me again spreading his arms toward the flickering sky. I couldn’t help but smile. “I can’t dance like you.”

  The bird ignored my objections and circled around behind me. The sound of the bells and the wind was changing. I could almost hear a full chord emerging out of the ambience. I’m sure what happened next must have been my imagination. When the bird circled back in front of me and spread his arms skyward, I cleared the lingering frustration from my mind and mirrored him. For a second he held the position, and I let my thoughts settle into dance mode. I could do this.

  From there I followed his every move. Every step was clear and smooth, a natural transition from the one before. He started slow, the solid black eyes absorbing the rhythm of my dance. The wind picked up and thunder sounded overhead. We were moving faster now. We sprung sideways to the left and took sweeping steps backward away from each other, in perfect sync. Soon, I realized I couldn’t tell if I was following him or if he was following me. I found myself anticipating the moves as if I were formulating them myself. The delay between his movement and mine had been erased.

  We closed the space between us and lightning swept over the glass prairie. The bird trilled and I smoothly pivoted so that I faced away from him. We now faced the same direction, yet the difficulty never entered my mind. I struck out into an arabesque and leapt back onto my trailing foot. He must have jumped at exactly the same time. Electricity pulsed through my veins. There must have been something to that—the charge that raced over my skin when we passed within inches of each other. He was generating some kind of an electrical field.

  Lightning spread over the sky, forking off in every direction. I spread my arms back and upward. Feathers brushed against my wrist. I spun back to face him, and thunder ripped through Echoland. I couldn’t see the wings, but I knew they were there. He stepped back from me, and for an instant, his face changed. For an instant, he was human, he could understand me. But I couldn’t shake myself from the spell. I jumped back toward him, and the dance picked up like the storm that circled us.

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