Let's Make It Official

2012-02-09T15:48:00.000-08:00

just going to start blogging again. And not care who the heck reads it. I need an outlet again. And to catch up with myself.

So in all fairness, I've been doing exactly what my doctor told me to help clear my skin up: eating healthier, exercising 15-20 (supposed to be 30, she said, but in reality I try to dance it up after school when I get home) minutes every morning after seminary before I get ready....and I got this book that is supposed to help with managing stress, anxiety, depression, that kind of stuff. It's helping a lot, but lately, my body has been catching up with itself and now instead of completely blocking out all anxiety forever and always like it was in the beginning because it was like, "WHOA WHAT THE HECK IS THIS THING CALLED EXERCISE AND WHY DO I HAVE TO BE SO HEALTHY?!" but now it's like, "Yeahhh...burned about 90 calories in the morning. Typical. Hmm."

And now y anxiety is coming back a thousand times harder than before, and I almost passed out in health class during an eating disorder video that WASN'T EVEN DISGUSTING ANYWAY and could barely walk over to my teacher to ask to go to the nurse because there was blue fuzzy static everywhere and I could barely walk and I felt like I was going to pass out with nobody to find my body and all that. And my temperature was perfect, same with blood pressure, and the nurse (WHO'S AN RN. GO HER.) told me that it might have been my body anticipating a migraine but responding in a different way. I was shaking and clammy and super duper white pale and tingling, and she said that that was a nervous response to something. I don't know what. But I had a double throbbing headache that didn't feel quite as bad as the migraines that I had at the beginning of the semester last year, and even ibuprofen didn't kill it off completely.

But I did manage to find a ton of ways to fix headaches without medicine. Like reflexology and sitting up straight and stretching and clearing my mind. It worked about three times today, since I get headaches a ton.

And stress. Let's not forget I kept feeling like I was about to go off the edge and go into full blown panic attack mode all day LONG. And all I could keep thinking was, "this is EXACTLY what panic disorder is, which I almost 99.999% have for sure, and now I can't stop feeling/anticipating that I'm going to panic attack right here and now and nobody's going to care or find my body when I die..." and if it's not stress, its this terrible depression. The other day when I was alone, I almost felt suicidal. It really sucked.

Today was alright...except for the essay I just finished a while ago that my teacher gave us an extra day to finish even though I crammed to fit it all in last night in my notebook...and it was beautiful. But not as beautiful as the one I've got now. Took a theatre test, Health Science quiz over digestive system, and a geometry test that I SWEAR I ACED WITH FLYING COLORS. Going to go later on and spend some time with mom, get some more red hair color for me, and some LEGIT CANVASES AND PAINT BECAUSE HEY--I'M GONNA START TAKING UP PAINTING. AS A HOBBY. OR SOMETHING FUN TO DO. BECAUSE I'VE BEEN WATCHING SWITCHED AT BIRTH, AND GUESS WHO LIKES TO PAINT? BAY DOES.

And signing.

Oh man Deaf Chat Coffee was the worst and the best all at once.

I accidentally lied about my feeling to a deaf guy, and he called me a liar, and I've been beating myself up all week for not remembering the whole etiquette thing. You don't just say you're fine, you go into how you really feel. But I didn't want to just dump my nervousness/shyness/anxiety on him right then and there, because you know, even with deaf culture being really close and intimate and friendship-y, it was still overwhelming with my dumb sweating all day long that day and the deaf love of my life NOT SHOWING UP. EVEN WHEN I LEARNED TO SIGN SO THAT I COULD TALK TO HIM. AND SO THAT HE COULD LOVE ME BACK. I WAS SO MAD. AND I STILL AM SO DEPRESSED ABOUT IT.

But I met a hard of hearing person named Johnny who was SUPER nice...my goal then was to meet a hard of hearing person because EMMETT'S DAD ON SWITCHED AT BIRTH IS DATING THIS SUPER HOT AMAZING FANTASTICAL HARD OF HEARING CHIC THAT'S IN BETWEEN DEAF AND HEARING. They can speak but you have to sign to them to communicate. It's so cool. I'm going to turn up my music so loud one day that I go deaf, so that I can fully join their culture and be one of them and be able to technically be hard of hearing, since a ton of people lose their hearing from blaring music. And nobody blares music more than I do.

I still screwed up with Johnny because instead of saying "nice to meet you" like Izzy and Celeste did or just doing the sign for "same" which I already freaking KNOW because I PRACTICED EVERY SIGN KNOWN TO THE UNIVERSE BEFORE WE DROVE THERE, I just stood there dumbly with this stupid look on my face and signed "meet.". Just meet. And he looked at me like he was expecting more out of me, and then nothing happened. So he kept signing. BUT I UNDERSTOOD EVERY WORD THAT MS. BELL SIGNED WHEN SHE CAME OVER, AND GOING TO A DEAF COFFEE CHAT IS A HECK OF A LOT EASIER WHEN YOU ACTUALLY HAVE BEEN TEACHING YOURSELF SIGN LANGUAGE FOR THE PAST TWO AND A HALF MONTHS.

oh man.

Finished my essay for history...still don't know how the heck he wants us to have it. There's nothing to prove. But whatever. That's coach Lambchop for you.

I've been busy trying to write songs for my new challenge: FAWM. [x] Which is writing....28 1/2 songs total this month? And with the help of my new CAPO WHICH I GOT FOR MY BIRTHDAY....AHHHHH!!! life is a thousand times easier. I've already got a few comments on my lyrics...and people actually like them! I'm super into making and writing music...and playing guitar. Even though it screws up my beautiful nails. But who cares.

....checking my grade summary. And apparently made a 77 on that Geometry test....I'm sorry...it was EASY and I KNEW everything on it. She even HELPED ME YESTERDAY. How is this possible?

Gonna have to start pulling ideas to paint. What should I practice on? I'm going to start a theme of painting really good heads of people since that's all I can draw (probably same quality if I did it with my eyes shut) and sticking them like balloons onto strings. And Nohemi suggested having a headless body holding the string. I love it. It's going to be beautiful.

If only I could paint.

I don't think Photoshopping is the same...or Polyvore. Not even close.

I'm finally going to start on my second draft of my novel that I wrote back in November. I really want to work on this one, since it's the one I want to get published on. Anyway. Yeah.

that's what i was thinking

2012-01-30T18:42:00.000-08:00

2012-01-24T17:42:00.000-08:00

I like my wispy hair. Hand drawing skills have yet to kick back in.

business, both finished and yet to be

2012-01-18T16:32:00.000-08:00

My okay-ish drawing of Ginnifer Goodwin from OUAT....done forever ago back in late December after Christmas. It's been preserved with a napkin in my sketchbook for ages.

A more recent drawing of...myself! Doing more than just the stupid slumped shoulders pose, I actually tried to make fingers and stuff. Mm. Hands.

And during many hours of tablet usage, I managed to whip this out once I started trying to mold a character called Emma from this story I was working with...a couple days ago....and it was nice. Apparently the blur tool looks like real skin..o_O

And one of the first things I drew with my tablet...people that I liked...or kind of still like. This is not even close to being finished, but it's so adorable and pretty darn accurate that I had to show it on my blog. Left: that guy...argh...center: Chris. And then Nick on the right holding A PHONE. It kind of looks a little like a beer can, but I can't actually draw anything else but people, and even the dumb kid's sweater wouldn't cooperate...so there it is. And he's not that fat, either. I'm just not a proportionate artist.

And back to that Emma picture..I really gotta branch out from drawing hair that looks like mine or Chris'/Sonny Moore/Skrillex...hmm. Anyways, Emma was crying at one point in my daily dose of 750+ words in the morning story, so I decided--"Hey, why don't I make the same thing but with her makeup running...because she uses a lot...and it en't waterproof, either."

THAT NOSE!!! She looks so sad that it makes ME want to cry. I need to start drawing happy people since this exercising thing is actually making my depression-anxiety thing start to feel a little better. My creations need some feel good endorphins in their head...I'll just turn on the dance workout and pump them full of it.

2012-01-07T18:32:00.001-08:00

2012-01-05T17:30:00.000-08:00

In all my excitement, I guess I forgot to cross my t...so I guess I got a lablet.

2011-12-17T09:52:00.000-08:00

so I saw the new OUAT episode last night

2011-12-12T18:26:00.001-08:00

and REGINA. I WILL TEAR YOUR HEAD OFF. WHY?

Holy friggin crap why was that episode so intense?

facepalm

2011-12-07T15:33:00.001-08:00

...and then comes that time when you have to condense about 5,000-8,500 words of pure awesome into 2-3 double spaced pages for a quarter of your English final. Because no one wants to read 30 pages when all they want is 2.

2011-11-28T19:45:00.000-08:00

2011-11-23T11:25:00.000-08:00

Is there such thing as having too much fun on Photoshop? XD

deciding between two covers

2011-11-19T18:47:00.000-08:00

I can't decide which one I like more for the title header. I did the picture myself and experimented on Photoshop, and I'm debating between the two gray lines between the picture of the eye and the fonts. Which font is better? Lines or no lines? Either way I still totally dig it.

2011-11-18T19:31:00.000-08:00

More photoshops. Florence + the Machine is my muse.

2011-11-04T19:14:00.000-07:00

2011-10-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

(Or do you?)

2011-10-24T10:11:00.000-07:00

Experimentation.

finding.

2011-10-21T15:32:00.000-07:00

2011-10-10T18:06:00.000-07:00

In all fairness, I'm telling myself that I haven't had any time for this updating stuff. ;p

So. Today there was an announcement about step team, and my friend Sterling signed up for it...I've been thinking of doing something like step team before, but don't think that the only reason I want to do it is because Morgan Adams over at the other old school is the only white girl on step team. That could be me, too.

All the way.

ANYWAY, I'm in silent debate on it simply because it would be (from what Sterling said) on Wednesdays till like 5:30--but guess who doesn't have any Wednesday rehearsals for two more weeks after this coming one?--and I would have nothing to occupy my free time after this play is done on November 18th....but I don't know if I have enough swagger to make friends with more people. I would already know a few, but hey, white girl entails lots of swag if you're THAT good to be on step team. You don't have to audition or anything, you can just go see the counselor and sign a few papers and you're in....but on the other side, I don't want to have to...I don't know, I guess there is no down side.

I've been hoarding my CDs from the library (over 14/15+ just this past week) and am enjoying the beauty of having a library card. Stacks and stacks and STACKS of books....oh, it's like heaven but so much better. With my brain spent on reading and schoolwork, come November, my writing will be so boss. And I have about 10 more huge four-five-or-six-inch-thick books to pour through over the next couple of weeks.

I have decided fully that once I go for my associate's degree to be a Registered Nurse (did a fabulous poster on it for Health Science; thanks mom!), I will work for a litte bit before continuing my education (for free thanks to whomever my employer will be) and go for my Bachelor's/continue to study neonatology and learn how to deliver babies. SO excited that I'm researching all this stuff. With my future already planned out for the next couple of years, I will only have to pay about $2,000 for college. Total. That's for 2 years plus what my work will pay for my next two or so years. I'll be able to deliver babies and take care of the sick, premature, and even the healthy babies after they're born.

Loving rehearsals and all the time I got to pend with my friends. Especially at Talent Show; Bonnie, Britley, Mike from the higher school who was with us last year; and a few others joined us and had a huge fiesta cheering for Tristan and JP who WOOOOONNNNN the friggin' SHOW. Tristan, the big gentleman guy he is donated the $100 prize money to our theatre budget for the play....man, he's so adorable. :D I got to meet my awesome English teacher's daughter Miranda who, in Jake's words, is a "mini Liesenfelt". His face when he asked that..I will never forget...

I am feeling the love from the freshies at our table, since only a few months/weeks ago in the beginning of the year I didn't feel anything but SHUNNED. And now I'm ACCEPTED and Shelby think I'm so pretty...especially today, even though I'm ALWAYS pretty, but apparently especially today. It's the lipstick, I'm telling you.

Kevin, Ariana, Christian, and I did a song for theatre for audience etiquette, based off of the Campfire Song Song from Spongebob, and we got 100. Oh man it was so fun. The original Spongebob version can be seen HERE.

What else...I'm having Brother Sundrud teach me piano....I can now play Mary Had A Little Lamb with both hands in two or three different variations....all in about five minutes of instruction. So along with my failing and gradually decreasingly active guitar lessons with myself and my desperately needed drum practice, I'll have four instruments covered...including my glorious voice. XD

My art is so much better than it was at the beginning of the summer, but all I can seem to draw is Nick. Ah, that kid is like liquid fire, he inspires me so....I'll compile my best works of him and just compare them. See how much I really love him. Next year/year 1/2 we are SO gonna be dating...not. If only I get past the awkward "he doesn't know me other than that redheaded sassmonster that hangs out with Jake and Zane only four feet away from us". Right now I'm gonna make him be my best friend. We are going to be so happy together....and he is going to LOVE ME.

Or not. A lot could happen in almost two years. And then I'll hate him forever and wonder why I was even into him in the first place.

love you only if you listen

2011-09-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

In retrospect, I should probably stop trying to fumble for support by holding on to Jake/Jake's hand/whomever happens to be walking by me whenever I see my love. Never again will that happen....argh.

"Calm yo'self, child."

This was fun. Jake, I'm so sorry for you having to put up with my uncontrollable emotional splurges. Best friends do that kind of stuff often.

When asked several times over the last month and a half what we Mormon girls should look for/want in a husband, of course I had to be blunt and go with the first answer that came to my head. Because you gotta be super hot to get some of this sassiness....or at least be able to make me laugh. Attractiveness and ability to make me laugh go hand in hand...and may be interchangeable.
Me and my perfect missionary husband. I think I named him Leigh....

I don't know what the wing obsession is about. I started it once about a day ago and ever since then it's been like a neon wing factory. But they're so pretty...how can you hate those?

Me and my alternate egos...or what it would be like if I had MPD. Sierra the....Sierra...?, the dreamer, the lover, and the fighter/writer who is so passionate and defiant that you wouldn't even recognize me going down the street.

Did I mention that I managed to weasel my way in (all by raising my hand and simply volunteering for it...surprise, surprise) to PUBLICIST for our play. Not only a student member, but guess who gets to make a bunch of important stuff happen for publicity and stuff...a-me.

Beginning of Chemistry and part of History. I think these two BELONG together. Maybe it's the girl's forlorn expression that gets me. I don't know.

Excited that I have friends now who want to be around me and include me in everything they possibly can. Celeste and I on Saturday doing some fun stuff...I don't know what yet, but alter then we will go and see a movie with a bunch of our other amazing church friends...and tomorrow will be an awesome night at my old school to watch a play for this six weeks. And talent show next Friday. I am so freaking excited.

"You can just FEEL the happiness emanating from me."

2011-09-26T17:35:00.001-07:00

I'm not failing English anymore, thanks to that amazing 90 gratefully bestowed upon me by my teacher. :D

I've cooled down from seeing the cast list, seeing as many of the other people I know who made it (Luke, who didn't show to callbacks because of a temple trip [which I will attend this Friday (!)], Shelby, partially Emma, Tristan, Mitchell....whywhywhywhy....) also don't necessarily have a ton of lines or even any for that matter as well.

I'm catching a ride with Tristan to our old school to see their play for this six weeks, and then going to talent show next Friday to support my best friends....

I'm dying my hair red again tonight so I should be nice and cherry for this week.

I have until October 20ish to raise $60 for show fees, and I already know several families who would need/want/accept babysitting, I just need to make it not so awkward when I tell them that I really need to go over to their house as soon as possible. So that adds up to about $1 or so per week, which means a few jobs a week. PLEASE. I need to do this myself, and I do NOT want to accept this kind of monetary assistance from my parents right now, and I kinda want to prove to them that I can earn it myself.

So to all those with small children whom I adore/will adore me, I beg you to let me over. Even though you can't really hear me.

I have barely enough time in the day to write, and when I do, nothing seems to be coming to me when I so need/require it. Last night I started going over my future NaNo story plot that came to me almost exactly three months ago, and began fixing little quirks and adding small details. I am SO excited about this one, simply because I tried it out for a test run with Jordan a while ago and he really like the cliffhanger ending and the whole idea of the incurable sickness which I now realise spawned from the curist in the first place. Oh. Tawny-haired, broad-shouldered spindly old man was right and was the one to blame all along.

In other words, I am so glad that I have something to fall back on. I still have to finish Eldest and go on to Brisingr before November 8th comes, and finish my first draft of both Xendrid and.....----, whatever I decide to call part/section/book two. Maybe Ceria? Visit? Shilo? Torah? People of the Water? It will come to me later. But still. So many things to do, too many things to finish and already another three books waiting for me on my list on the shelf in my room.

I need to collect my drawings and compile them. Dumb scanner that doesn't connect.

2011-09-23T16:18:00.000-07:00

As happy as I am to have actually made it, my dear Emma is an understudy, and this is the third play in a row that Caitlyn Black has stolen the role I desperately would do anything for.

And she isn't even that good.

new stuff...part two

2011-09-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

Callbacks were AMAZING. I read two monologues, the first of which I had a TON of fun messing around with Emma and playing off each other's character....she's a combination of Professor Trelawny from Harry Potter (we both got that inspiration. I think we may be sisters.) and a couple of other people...the drama teacher from High School Musical?

Anyway, she's way too into her Shakespeare and doesn't have a life besides. I love her.

So I was born to play that part. Either Mrs. Drew or Carly...the lead or the antagonist. Or I'll play a boy. ANYTHING. Just let me play.

Gaines liked my callback monologue, especially my Jessica one, and I think she was surprised by how much I'd improved since last time I auditioned...how long ago was that? Six months ago? I don't remember.

And even though I'm currently FAILING ENGLISH (this is the first time in my entire life that I've been able to say that...at all.) because apparently we're being challenged so our brains go so analytically that we get a chicken crossing the road out of "And this was how she wept". WHAT?

So I better have aced that essay on Asher Lev, otherwise I'll be swinging by the first six weeks with a clean 64.

Ouch.

I have a med term test tomorrow over prefixes even though we're on anatomy now, and planes of body, etc. So this one's over prefixes...so I just have to look over the placement of where things are: around; outside of (ex-, by the way); inside (infra-); etc. and then I'll be good to go. I might have to revierw the first set, though. There's about a million suffixes and prefixes and word roots stuck in my head all at once that I'm surprised at how quickly I could MEMORISE THEM IN A COUPLE OF MINUTES. WHEN DID I BECOME SO DANG GOOD AT REMEMBERING THINGS??!?!!?

This computer is busted. I don't know what dad did to it.

My geometry test was SUPER easy, it was a unit test over all we learned, so that was mostly doing shapes and lines and solving for x and y on angles...and stuff. Among other things.

What else can I say...as amazing as school is for me right now, I haven't found any time to really sit down and write. But with NaNoWriMo looming its eerie head over me in little more than a month, I better find some time to buckle down. And if I make it into the play Fourteen Lines, there goes when I would write after school. But 2k words a day? I'll go over and revise my prewritten plot that I made p months ago....and then I'll be ready. I'll write wherever I can. Even though I can't find my good sources of music and cannot carry them with me at all times....I have Silversun Pickups and about a thousand books but have no Breathe Electric, Pierce the Veil, Steven Tyler's biography, nor Placebo, Tegan and Sara (!), or Interpol. WHY?!?

Somebody better start looking for some babysitting from me real soon, because man, oh, MAN I need the money so bad.

And I really want that sexy yellow truck with "Sierra Grande" written on the side. That's hot.

Did I mention that I miss y'all in California? I want to see you guys so bad.....

But being in a position where schoolwork is killing you until seminary is the only sane place you can be in the mornings/every day/at any time you want to feel better about something kind of blocks out the longing. So I'll see you next summer, when I'll be even more beautiful, awesome, and a heck of a lot less stressed.

(As will you, Emily. That's right, I'm calling you out.)

2011-09-22T18:03:00.000-07:00

I love callbacks.

so, what have we done so far...

2011-09-20T17:17:00.000-07:00

As much as I'd love to relate to all the weird stuff that's happened to our family lately (ie my dad in a car accident plus a bunch of other stuff that I think is just in my head), I'd like to just gush about all the recent stuff I've moved on over.

So about the whole vegan thing. Yeah. I made it the entire week, even when CELESTE (I KNOW you're reading this, girlfriend) and Morgan kept waving around spoonfuls of cake and ice cream in front of me at our ward birthday party thing, and even when it felt like mum was making chicken or something other than what I could have that night. But I made it. It feels so dang good to say that. I considered being just straight vegetarian instead of beastly vegan (that was a pun, because vegans don't eat beasts...meat...geddit?), but after that week, the temptation to make an egg burrito with a pile of ham and cheese was just too tempting.

As my dad told me before, "There is nothing like a week of starvation to make you appreciate food more."

And for those of you who want to go vegan, I'd totally recommend trying it. Just for a week. But first, before you do it, don't make the mistake that I did and just come out and say it on Sunday when you still haven't thought of what you want to eat (don't go and find churro and brownie recieps for vegans online either, they won't help you and they defeat the point of the whole vegan-health kick thing) . PLAN AHEAD. Go shopping and make healthier choices, go ahead and indulge on a bunch of veggies and fruit and get some vanilla soy milk. It is SO good. And peanut butter toast.

I lived on about four pieces of that stuff every day. No protein....it makes your body crave strange things. Like peanut butter.

What else...I'm completely loving my health science/med tewrm classes, and I've already got over 98+ suffixes and 45+ prefixes memorised, and we're moving onto the word roots. Thorax, head, abdomen....every little thing that has its equivalent. As in, cephal/o=head. And we're also doing some anatomy and planes in med term, and I'm getting all of it since that's how I learned how to draw. So people DO stand like that sometimes. On occasion.

I decided that I want to be an RN; the only need an Associate's degree, which means I only have two years of college (a little less than that, probably with the credit I'm getting now) to take before I can get into the medical field. I can extend my resources to caring for patients, administering drugs, etc. all that fun stuff. I'm focusing on that now, and if I can extend my reach into childcare (I still really lie the idea of pediatrician. Caring for children? Yes please.) or special needs/disabilities and babies and other stuff...I can pick that later. I can end up delivering babies if I advance in my degree. Which doesn't seem all that bad now. It sounds kind of fun.

I'm learning how to play guitar. I can now read music as well as drum tabs (thank you so much, all those dumb lessons with myself) and my drumming intro book. I'm reading about 10 books, or will since they're all on my shelf waiting for me to read them....5 guitar books, one drum kit one...the rest are novels...one I've finished and it was retarded, and I'm almost done with a decent one now.

Tristan and JP made Talent Show without me. I'm still bringing people from my old school to see it, and I'm going to cheer them on. I'm saving myself for next year when I can play bass and guitar and drums AND sing like a boss.

I haven't been writing much except for in class. Which I got in trouble for since it's usually halfway between lectures. I've got three+ people who want to read something by me, but I have nothing to give them that is finished. I'm editing someone's story that is soooo much less than mine. I see now how friggin good I am. Oh yeah.

I asked for a good English teacher who will drive me up a wall and tell me no, that's not good enough and I got one. She drives me insane. And pushes me so far that I'm so glad to have her, if only we didn't have to read that dumb Asher Lev book. But we get to pick our new novels, and I'll have plenty to choose from since I practically ripped off the library.

I'm thinking about volunteering there, but with the curretnt car problem, I don't think that will happen.

I also wish I was older. I'm too young to get a real job, and I need to start saving money for the things I want to do. I have an AUDITION(!!!!!) tomorrow, and I have about a 1 out of 6/7 chance of making it, and if I do, I am still unsure as to whether or not I'll have to do the stupid tech/actor fee thing again. So where's that money coming from, Steve?

Somewhere that is nonexistent, that's where.

2011-09-13T15:50:00.000-07:00

2011-09-06T18:41:00.001-07:00

Alaina crept across the cool tiled floor, her bare feet padding against the surface. It was nighttime, and nobody else in the realm was awake except for her, and the moonlight bathed everything in the hallways and corridors a pale blue with streaks of white. A cool breeze filtered through the window that was cracked open an inch, and as she pressed on the wood of the end door to open it, her caramel-taffy colored hair fluttered as if it were made of millions of tiny feathers.

Inside there was a blank canvas of a space, an empty cave that echoed sounds as she moved on into the cool pool of water. It was fairly shallow at the front, coming up to her ankles at the rim but quickly dodging into the depths of higher numbers. Her shimmery blue nightgown billowed around her like a flower as it touched water, the gauzy shawl around her shoulders stretching and clinging to her arms. Soon she looked around her at the blank white light and pulled her head down, a single long breath filling her lungs with air.

Underneath the pool was something different.

Alaina sank to the bottom of the pool, her feet digging in the soft sand at its highest mound. It graduated and mixed with the water around her, kicking up small drifts of the tan granules and clouding parts of the water where she stood. She proceeded lower into the water, its coolness penetrating her very soul with an icy chill. A current faded along ahead of her, and swayed the tips of reaching green seaweed, its leaves outstretched and open as if they were arms longing for their bodies. Her ankles brushed with the weed for a moment, and then she slowly bent her knees and pushed off, swimming deeper into the pool.

A small coral reef filled with absent fish and creeping brains of coral in darker shades lay lower near the sand like a plague that refused to budge, and many other creatures floated by underneath her. Alaina swung her arms outward so she propelled forward, the sights of the invisible city only a distance away. Everything was either white or pale fish blue, spidery points at the top of each building as it riveted in the current, unmoving but subject to the illusion. The water grew warmer for a spell and then much cooler as she approached the nearest adjacent building, and edifice set up so it protruded with a gate-like wall in the corner, a straight rotating ledge crossed over the entry point. This was the way to get in, so she knew from previous experience in her adventures earlier. She kicked toward the open window in the sectioned off wall and stood up straight, her hair wild above her head.

"Ah, Alaina, so I see your gift has not left you," greeted the boy of perhaps fourteen or fifteen at the window. He looked human, but with ghastly white skin and smallish slits on either side of his cheeks and his hands; his feet were upturned into a curving half-tail, half-skin formation, a cross section of his ankles pinned together by some force. Alaina inclined her head respectfully and said nothing, only waited for the boy to life the gate. He waved her clearance and she swam past, not bothering to watch as the gate came down again once she was through.

Bubbles formed and burst from her motions in the water as she rushed across the makeshift coral gray street; a few people with similar features to that of the boy at the window swam around awkwardly yet with refined elegance and grace as if it came natural and was not special in any way. Alaina searched with her steel gray and blue eyes around the street until she found the corner, turned left, and continued on. Then her eyes picked through what seemed to be millions of faces in order to find the one she was looking for. When she found him, at once she raced as fast as her bearing feet could carry her, and collided with his absent body.

Leigh was beautiful, even for the standards of the swimming people here: his long raven hair flowed around his bone pasty face lined with heavy cheekbones and a drawn expression, angled brows and a pointed jaw line beneath a slender nose. His body was skinny and his arms were inhabited by defined muscles around his shoulders and forearm, tiny veins visible through the skin. He smiled as he saw who it was that approached him, and immediately clasped hands with Alaina. "I wasn't expecting you for some time, dear one!" He released his hold on her hands and took to her side. "How have you managed to come and see me so soon?"

She looked down at her bare feet, suspended in the water as she faintly shuffled them to keep from falling. "I waited until everyone fell asleep. Martyr Faden doesn't know that I know about this, and he thinks I'm away studying for the night at someone else's hall. He shouldn't be given any reason to be alarmed."

"Martyr Faden..." Leigh mused. "The one with demon eyes and white hair?"

"Or no hair, rather. He doesn't like to talk about it." Alaina squared her shoulders and then said, "So, what was it you wanted to show me before?"

"Right. Come with me." Leigh swam ahead, his hair a guiding dark light for her to follow. As they passed a staged building, she could hear the thud of blaring music beating from inside of a bar hall, where she could see some of the swimming people moving around together in flaring blue and white and purple lights, all slowing their steps to the rhythm of the song. She knew the song, for it was one she had often listened to as a child; although in this case, it had been redone so it rang hollow and echoing, whereas she knew the lullaby her mother had sang to her when she had trouble sleeping some nights. Silently she formed the words in her mouth, singing without saying anything. The music followed them as they wandered past the crowds of swimming people and into a dark cove filled with nothing but emptiness. "This," announced Leigh, holding out a hand for her to behold. "Is the Passage Hall, where you will meet the one who gave you your gift."

2011-09-06T17:44:00.001-07:00

This whole "Vegan for a Week" would be so much easier if I wasn't allergic to the stupid sagebrush blowing through the air right now.

We'll See Just How Well it Works.

2011-09-03T16:16:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try being vegan for a day. This should be no problem considering tomorrow is Fast Sunday and we're having roast for dinner, but if I can test it out for a day, I'm going to go all week. So the news is really that I'm going vegan for a week.

Hopefully we'll see just how good my self-motivation and control is, and see if my skin starts to clear up in a while....besides the whole skin thing, I'm still going to try it out regardless....this should be fun.

2011-08-29T17:07:00.001-07:00

Aerosmith is better than Led Zeppelin.

2011-08-29T16:55:00.000-07:00

It officially happened. The world is ending. I swear.

I've decided to NOT drop out of theatre and switch to art honors, simply because I've been enjoying too much of it. And I didn't expect it to be THIS awesome; plus, rehearsals for plays are AFTER school and not early in the morning during seminary/right after straight to school sort of thing. and if you don't have to do anything, you don't show up. Thank you, Gainsy, for leaving Miss Johnson behind and her stupid rules. Nobody ever loved her for them, but we love you for yours.

Once again, I'm now a--a WHAT? Yeah, that's right:

Sierra's bringing the swagger to the stage again.

the accumulation of all my time in less than some of yours.

2011-08-27T12:19:00.000-07:00

All my latest and greatest sketches. (Done in class, of course.) I've progressed already from drawing the oddly tilted face shape to the oval shaped, as an artist I particularly admire uses this sort of face style. My facial features will show again as I keep going. But as for now, you get the mystery of a blank canvas.

(PROPORTIONS!!!)

I feel better.

2011-08-25T15:29:00.000-07:00

Much.

The first day was so easy. The second day...a little better with some downs. Day three...suckish.

But now, it's taken care of. I submit my form for schedule changes tomorrow, and then I no longer go to theatre II with the freshies, but to Art Honors. With the hot messes. Oh man.

As far as making new friends, I met Rachel in theatre, who's on drill team and loves Justin Bieber, Josh Hutcherson, The Hunger Games, and her dad is an actor. I love her so much.

I've been spending more time with Tristan than usuual, or maybe it just feels that way because now we're like brother and sister. He thinks of me as a sister, and I'm glad to accept. No love, thank goodness, just best friends. And I see Jake all day, so he and Gregor have moved up on my list. Still a little wary of Greg, but English with both of them is turning out to be super fun. Even though I don't really pay attention. Or listen. Just talk. And laugh. A lot.

But I still get my stuff done, and when we start doing stories (NONFICTION, DANG IT), my teacher will be so blown away that she won't even know what hit her. Except a plate of gigantic schmexy awesomeness.

Which is failing to reach me now since I haven't actually written in about a week; or read, or really listened to my stuff on playlist. So it's been Owl City highs all the way.

I doodle in class now, and that's over EVERYTHING. Especially when we have blank spaces ALL OVER THE FREAKING GEOMETRY HOMEWORK and we're "supposed to use it to work out the patterns", I still sketch faces and doodle all around it. Current character designs: Stephanie, Magnus, and Robbie. Don't know where that came from, but I did a full sketch of Rob thinking of the other two together, and I'm working on Steph's stuff. Whatever. I'm practically in art anyways, now [ which is in E hall I think, where i have no idea....no, I think I do ] .

But I need to get back to that mindset of writing. November is coming faster than I can finish Eldest [and then Brisingr] and that means I won't finish in time to use Inheritance as a ref guideline for my new goal. And this one I'm so hopeful about that if it comes out crappy like my ref work of the Steph-retrieves-Magnus that I did a few minutes ago, I am so dead.

Muse. Come back to me.

He's probably gone off to hide out in his hibernation cave while I cram my busy day full with seminary (!!!!) and school. And after I'm too tired to write. As I am now.

I'll give it a few more rounds of Steven Tyler and Aerosmith and see what comes to me. Probably a lot. I can already feel my face grow hot and rush the heat through my body with anticipation for the inspiration. That man...he gives everything I think of to me, I swear.

Or at least he did until my body went out of whack. Con escuela.

pre-school jitters. let them pass.

2011-08-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

The problem with me is that I come on too strong.

"Hello, I'm so-and-so and I have this many things wrong with me, I might end up falling in love with your brother, or someone else in your family, and I'm bipolar from time to time and I can never make up my mind.

I'm really loud and don't have a filter, come with extra whack and can be incredibly shy and quiet when I don't know anyone. I flit from one thing to another and never think it's good enough, but I've changed my views on that now. I can be extremely self-centered and follow people, ignore or exclude, and often neglect things and people I shouldn't. But I don't mean to. That's just how I am. If you really knew me, you wouldn't be so offended that I called you lame and a loser, because I say that about everyone. I'm mean and often don't give it a second thought as to the reception of my negative energy. I don't know how to fix that, because I am sarcastic. I am trying to make sure that I feel comfortable first and once I do, I don't let go easily."

Would you really want to be friends with someone like that? I sure wouldn't.

As much as I have come to accept and love myself as I should, becoming more on terms with all the things I think are wrong with me, and everything else going on in my crazy life, I've been feeling a little nervous about this new school year. It isn't because of the fact that I've gotten on the wrong bus before or missed my stop, because now it's fixed and right down the street, etc.; it isn't because I feel like I'll forget where my classes are, because no matter what I'll always be anxious about that. [I still don't know where F hall is, dang it.]

It's because of the way I've changed over the summer, and through seminary. I'm THRILLED about going back to seminary, but as equally awesome as leaving back all my less-than-good friends at their IB classes/school thing. Sure, the only three or four people who aren't transferring over like the rest of us are the ones that I need to be away from and that I was excited earlier in the year to be with, but I'm so terrified.

I don't feel like I'll know anyone. I don't feel like I can represent myself like I do around people from church. Because I like that Sierra a lot better than the one who is left out from time to time and goes to things she wishes she didn't because she knows that hanging out with those kind of people will get me in the wrong position in life and that I'm better without them. I want the Sierra who is fun, and a leader, and everyone wants to be around her an doesn't mind all the extra baggage she imagines she carries in her mind. I want the Sierra who is accepted and has a wide group of friends from everyone at Jubilee to church and beyond. I hate public school. Just how different the values and views of the world are. They suck. I know that this will pass and I'll get through it, but right now, I'm in the slumps.

I can't fall asleep because I'm always so anxious. It was about 2:30 or 2:45 in the morning when I finally fell asleep, after reading Eldest (!!!) more than once, seven chapters later, mind you, drawing (which I did first, so I should have been asleep like THAT), and praying, praying, PRAYING that I could fall asleep and that I could calm down.

I couldn't do it.

So how do I represent someone whom I love, that Sierra who DOES come on too strong but is loved for it anyway instead of being shied away in the corner for being weird? I want to have friends who are like my church friends.

I am so scared of finding them. It's like the first day of middle school all over again, and I think I'm much more terrified this time than last.

How many people will I know at the new school? Almost everyone absent of three or four. But with them I was not the fun Sierra whom everyone loves, I was the hyperactive zealot who wouldn't quit pestering them. I don't know how to swerve around that. I want to make some new good ones and keep some of the old ones. Like Elizabeth. Oh please, be in my classes. At least one. PLEASE. And I think Melody's staying behind, too, which makes me really sad. Analee's going to be gone for the school year in Australia, so no solace confiding in her all the crap about what we both go through at the same time. She let me hang out with Melody and introduced me to her in the first place at her party six months ago; and at lunches during TAKS testing, I sat with her group of friends, and it was so amazing. Bonnie was two tables behind us and I felt weird talking to her while with them. She and Melody are still fighting over me, I think, or maybe not. I haven't been on Facebook since I lost it.

[By the way, when will I ever get that back, if I ever get that privilege again? Analee's gone, and I can't talk to her. Dang.]

I am so scared out of my mind right now. I don't know what to do. Well, I know it's going to be fine and I'll calm down as soon as I get in the system again, but for now, I can't help but worry about the future. It's going to be fine. I know. I'm just in panic mode for a while.

I remember how much I changed from last year to this year: handwriting, oh man, attitude, willingness to do stuff outgoing and whatnot, WRITING style [that's a big one, since I'm on a halt in my writing from skipping Xendrid and doing my take on Alice in Wonderland. Anryosa, you are a brilliant children's story and I'm twenty-three or something pages into you, but NOT. NOW.] and everything else. Music tastes...I don't edit videos anymore, although I miss it a lot now that my hiatus has prolonged almost seven months or since January. I still can't befriend Mikey the way Bonnie did; most of their conversations ARE ALL EXCITED LIKE THIS!! XD while with us, she doesn't seem to like me that much, because guess what. I'm still her adoring fan. I need to jump that hurdle soon. I haven't talked to her all summer until the other day, and now she's working on a video for me. Thank the Cerian SKIES that I was able to connect with her somehow. Through Straylight Run. Oh MAN.

2011-08-18T11:17:00.000-07:00

That looks painful.

2011-08-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

Oh, how I love the newly found pen tool on Photoshop. It's not really any different looking than any of the other stuff I do on there, but here's no annoying black lines for an outline. Because you can delete all the pen marks afterwards--and otherwise they are pretty much invisible and you can color and draw over them. Man.

And I still can't draw faces and make them look pretty like I do on normal paper. Oh well. The hair looks ridiculous, too, but that's because I couldn't SEE WHAT I WAS DOING half the time. The air shading on the dress was good until I redid it a second time, and added...once again....BLACK. LINES. Soon to come art classes (after I switch them from Theatre 2 in F Hall [ where the frick is that, anyway] once school starts. Dang.) better make me better. I already draw funky with the mech pencils I just got...I like the lead-ish ones better.

My original idea were the lyrics:

I could watch you for a life time
you're my favourite movie
a thousand endings,
you mean everything to me
I never know what's coming
forever fascinating
but don't stop running to me
'cause I'll always be waiting.

But unfortunately, I resized crap so many times that it ended up looking better having just the chorus part. Even though the words are BEAUTIFUL. Thank you Skrillex.

A ha ha. This was my attempt at drawing DJ. The shading was okay, but this was before the pen tool. Like....last week. Note the annoying. BLACK. LINES. I had fun writing the caption, considering it looked like he was "holding raffle tickets" according to Jordan, and I thought it looked sorta gun-like. So with Camden's help and approval, I thought of the failing=death concept.

Hoping to do an Aerosmith-related sketch. I've been thinking of Love in an Elevator on paper, but I might end up not finishing it because it would be dang hilarious. I'll try something. I just need muses. Speaking of which...whoever has seen the Help will probably get my new posted sketch...I cried about it for about five minutes. It was pretty depressing.

Now if only I can find the camera.

2011-08-10T09:23:00.000-07:00

Bay and Daphne from Switched at Birth. I CANNOT get over that show. I caught up with it during the showing of the season finale when they played every one up to it, and it was. SO GOOD. Daphne was on the right layers, Bay wasn't, so what I thought was a mistake actually made Daphne (left) look very stupid. It's because of the angle, I know it. And the dress. Dang it.

Sorry that it looks like less effort was put into Daphne. Even though I think I like her more on the show anyway, since she can read lips. And she's deaf. So in the words of Emmeline, "Heh, BAM!"

Bay was the one who looked the most realistic. Look at those BOOTS! Holy crap.

2011-08-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

Camden says he likes it better with the red than just the black. I was happy to oblige.

2011-08-01T11:33:00.000-07:00

2011-07-30T14:49:00.000-07:00

2011-07-29T11:18:00.000-07:00

Here Ya Go.

2011-07-27T11:01:00.000-07:00

Of course when you ask me for one or two pictures of my hair, it becomes an immediate sprawl for the camera two days later and a series of posing, clicking, and editing. With lights. So instead of one or two, you get to see about five. And some of them (like one...) are in color.

What boy doesn't want a piece of THIS sassy cuteness?

Or this?

I swear I look Asian in this one. Do I look Asian? 'Cuz I feel Asian.

Bwahaha. Ahem.

And the back of it looks like this.

2011-07-26T10:01:00.000-07:00

I got really lazy on the trees. Last minute details look...last minute.

2011-07-23T18:46:00.000-07:00

I call her "Lelonia". The A is silent.

2011-07-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

Girl's Camp of 2011. Emmeline, Sierra, Analee, Celeste, Michaela, and Jessica.

2011-07-18T18:26:00.001-07:00

Leaving for YW girl's camp tomorrow morning.

2011-07-12T09:34:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I could do this. Or ever.

And suddenly eyes are the easiest thing to draw in the world. This is my second try.

2011-07-08T09:40:00.000-07:00

It still never fails that my boys (right) look like girls. Maybe it's the hips that make it like that? Anyway, this is my character and Brom. Because THAT, my friend, is HOT.

Speaking of characters, somebody finally found out how to draw anatomically correct hips and waists on chics. The result? I scribbled a dress over her, and she becomes the 1670's-1740's meets whenever the Eragon genre is, the one who gets to clean up in the *Underworld every day. Or just the girl that digs on Derza whenever she can--which will never happen, ha. I'll just call her Sarah.

*I was watching Hercules the other day. Come on.

2011-07-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

Cropped boy trousers paired with ribbons, ripped striped stockings, and clunky boots. Nothing says love like a pair 'o THOSE.

....and the classic "one shoe off, one shoe on" pairing.

The scarf is so magical that it even has its own wavelength of air. Brilliant.

I won't wait forever. Well said; very well said.

And since the arrival of my new apparently "signature" item, I have given every girl I draw her own dragonfly steampunk necklace. So now they can look JUST. LIKE. ME. Ha.

2011-07-01T09:47:00.001-07:00

Christopher Paolini. Marry me.

2011-06-27T09:05:00.000-07:00

Before Jubilee, after Jubilee. Note the nifty scarf I gained from one of our stake dance numbers.

Maybe it was because of what my parents said after I came home from Jubilee. Maybe it's because I actually went through Jubilee and experienced something wonderful. Or maybe it's because of the talks I heard on Sunday about Jubilee. Jubilee, Jubilee, Jubilee.

Because I realise now that I am getting older, and really fast. I only have two summer vacations left at home before I graduate. If that isn't really scary, then I don't know what is. I only have that much time to do everything I want to, and then it'll be like I'm a responsible adult. Which I am definitely not ready for. My dad was sort of freaking out about how I'll apparently be leaving after two years, even though I'll be still living with them while I'm at the community college that he wanted me to go to because it was much closer than Michigan State/cheaper. For two years. And then maybe I'll move out, but not super far away. According to him, if I met some boy and fall in love with him at eighteen, I'm allowed to move out or something. Which will never happen, because I want to be a nurse first and start working before I get married.

I know that I sort of grew over the weekend, that something inside of me changed. As much as I hated all of the controlling leaders "helping us" at the last minute, being rude, telling us to change the dances last-minute (literally: first performance, they changed the last number without telling ANYONE. It looked terrible.), and just killing a bunch of spiritual moments in the youth conferences--with the exception of one, which Aaron shared in his talk yesterday--I really did enjoy myself. I feel so changed; many of my friends found a man, yes, they all pretty much did, and I realised the kind of guy that I want to marry. I discovered a whole other side to my sister's brother, Colin Sundrud, and Spencer, and Eliza Matheney who is usually incredibly quiet. So many people have changed me. It could just be the fact that I'm alone a lot with time to myself, new music that really sinks in, new drawing style, the lack of public school (yeah.), and other outside friends. I've been hanging out with so many of my friends from church; first week of vacation and the second week was filled with swimming and going to my sister's/future family's house, and it was incredible.

I feel so empowered. It kind of feels a bit strange to feel like I've only got so much time before life starts coming at me fast, thinking that I only have that much more of school left to go. And this year, I'll be top of the chain again. Whoo. Sigh of relief right there, new school, much better friends, and just a better time than first year.

Emmeline better get not sick soon, or I'm going to start screaming. She was so sad, she was sick all of Jubilee and had to continue going home early. Man. Then I finally realised that I really, honestly, truly do love her like a sister. That I really have a connection with her. And a few of my other friends like Analee and Celeste, but her most especially. I'm drawing her a picture, and it's coming fantastic so far. I refound my muse at Jubilee. For writing, collaborating, and drawing. Thanks, girl in the front of the floor, whoever you were. You made my picture look beautiful.

I heard so many beautiful talks over the weekend. It really gave me a chance to set what I want in line and keep to those standards. I had so much fun, and I met so many incredible people that I would love to do this all again. I've grown closer with everyone I've met, and I don't mind the heat so much, anymore. Anyone who was there probably doesn't, either.

I miss Fresno. Lately I've been thinking about that. I miss seeing everyone else there, and seeing all my aunts. I miss Khristie, and Lizzy, and Julia ('cept you're in Arizona, which I really want to go back to as well), and I really, really want to meet you, Jessica. Maybe in time I'll get there. Sometime after I'm married and I have six kids to go and meet all of my fantastic family. I keep getting this odd feeling that I need to visit my Aunt Nedra. Even though she's not my aunt, she's my mother's great aunt, and my grandmother's real aunt. But she's Aunt Nedra to everyone. It's been a few months since I first really wanted to go back to her, and now whenever I think of big houses, I remember hers perfectly. It's always there.t's been a few months since I first really wanted to go back to her, and now whenever I htink of big houses, I remember hers perfectly. It's always there.

Speaking of fantastic family, I'm no longer embarrassed about Brendan. Whether we're at the store or the swimming pool or he's trying to kiss me in the middle of church in front of all my friends, I don't feel that awkwardness any longer. I don't know when that happened, but I feel really close to him. Especially when I heard how much he freaked out that I wasn't there on Friday. And how Jordan really missed me so he had to make due with bothering his brothers instead. Aw. I feel so connected to him, too, and I finally got him to sing in church yesterday. And I listened. It was amazing. But I also know now that Jordan is getting older, too, and that he's almost in middle school. But it feels like I was just in middle school, so that can't possibly be true. He gets zits now, even though they're not as bad as mine. (Which have cleared up for now. Mostly. I'm so happy about that!) It's funny, because he's at the same age that I was when all of that stuff with zits, etc. happened to me. So it's like looking into a backward mirror. But with my brother.

I feel so much closer to my family, now. And I think that my mom gave me her personality, because I grew into it this past few weeks/months. Brother Boyce called me "mini Rebecca". Which sucks, since I hate being compared to my mom ("you sound just like your mom", "that sounds like something Rebecca would say", "you look just like your mom", "I can tell whose daughter you are", etc.), but it makes me feel good. I never liked being told that I was my mom, because everyone likes her and that's all they ever knew me by. But I like being like her, since the personality thing passed down to me. (Maybe it's a Phillips thing, that gets passed down through girls?) And I can control it, being loud and obnoxious, talking when others are...sarcasm. I'm making friends because I'm me, and not because of who I'm related to. Even though my voice still cracks when I yell or switch octaves/emotions quickly.

I like singing. Maybe I will go for American Idol eventually. Only to see my Steven Tyler, though. But after hearing Xenia on The Voice, I'm much more confident that I will get better and just try it. Not as anything special, but just to see if I sound as good as I think I am. I can PROJECT MY VOICE, AND THAT IS SUCH AN ACCOMPLISHMENT. Three weeks of being alone and singing in the shower, and all of a sudden I know how to project and stay on key. Switch to an octave lower. Bam. Simple as that.

I'm done with theatre. When I get my schedule, I'm switching all of the "theatres" to art. And I will enjoy those three/four science classes that I take all at once so I can graduate with my basics in nursing. I am done with all of those early morning rehearsals that I can't go to because of seminary (and because waking up at four in the morning EVERY morning instead of 5:40 is too much for me. I have sleeping problems. Which have now gone away, but I'm too tired to stay awake in school if that stupid rehearsal thing happens again.), sick of all the stupid drama that goes on in TECH--TECH of all things. I'm NOT a techie. I don't care how many of my friends are. I do NOT belong in that mess. Bring on the art improving classes. And the Photoshop unit (thank you Elizabeth Eldridge for telling me about honors.).

I have now overcome a mountain. And I am ready for my miracle. Thank you so much everyone, especially my Heavenly Father, for blessing me such wonderful things, such a beautiful experience, and for everything you have done. I am so spiritually aware and enlightened now that I've gone through all of this. These experiences have only made my armor stronger and set my mind to what it needs to be. I might even try for memorising all the scripture mastery in seminary this year. Or seminary in excellence. How awesome would that be to say that I did that? I know. That's pretty high. But I will memorise the scripture mastery. Because it has helped me a lot this year, even without knowing all of them--thanks to Ginger and Analee; the 121 Simba is still by far my favourite.

2011-06-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

Even for waking up feeling terribly sick to my stomach, I healed pretty quickly. Three cups of ginger ale later, and I feel up to writing again. That and I can't stop thinking about Jubilee. Are you excited? 'Cuz I'm excited.

It's really like 40 billion.

2011-06-21T09:45:00.000-07:00

It's only two days away. Oh. My. GRAWD.

2011-06-21T09:41:00.000-07:00

2011-06-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

2011-06-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

What has been the main focus of my summer so far.

As well as much of this.
(Experimenting around with long ligaments and arms and legs with super inky pens.)

Fun with pens.

I don't know, DO you want to be?

Who wants to be listening in sacrament meeting when you could be drawing stuff like this?

And a random camera angle that sort of works but doesn't. I'm sorry--did you want to get a picture of just the feet that I keep drawing over and over? That's what I thought.

--

Half of these would have come out a million times better if my stupid camera had a good FOCUS. Which it DOESN'T.

(That was a hint, by the way. Go get a camera that has awesome focus and zoom. Preez?)

2011-05-31T15:06:00.000-07:00

Nothing beats watching a stupid old movie in English class more than sketching with an extra inky pen. Ahh.

Just want to point out that I'm working on the whole extended arm and long limbs sort of thing. Skeleton/outline was done, and I got them to look sort of like they're holding hands. Now THAT is some awesome right there.

And HOLY CRAP, this makes my face right here. Best drawing of the day; probably my outline of my newest anatomy sketch. I'm working on connecting body parts together to look actual decent. And I can finally draw arches of feet at different angles as well as noses. Who knew adding a single curve at the end would change so much?

2011-05-26T15:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Matthew Godwin,

Thank you so much for making laugh with your hysterical, awesomely drawn cartoons that I demand from you almost on a daily basis. I love you, so much. You make homeroom probably the BEST it could be with your air drumming and guitar picking and dorky little singing voice. Sorry that Pablo's Mexican Buffet broke up, and I hope you form another awesomesauce band again. That I can actually SEE play next time.

Sierra

But seriously, who could be doing a Spanish review in homeroom when the Night of the Flesh-Eating Giraffes is in our midst?

2011-05-20T16:48:00.000-07:00

Of course I'm doing my Spanish work in Spanish class. *shifty eyes*

Here we have (from left to right): Tristan begging Britley to love him, Britley being disgusted by Bonnie's feet, Sydney being the glitter fairy that she is, Bonnie trying to om nom on my feet, me flailing my arms uncontrollably from Bonnie om nomming on my feet like I usually do, Emmeline compelling my thoughts with her Sundrud power, and Melody being thwacked in the face while she tries to come up and talk to me. Sorry, Mel, I smacked you in the face and your glasses fell off, XD

And there's Matt at the end inhaling the entire population of my people like a Kirby.

I Find it Kind of Funny.

2011-05-06T15:12:00.000-07:00

That after months and months of waiting for forever to end as well as school that it's almost over and I actually have accomplished more than I hoped to. Not to mention that I know what friends I want to make and what I want to accomplish next year. I've learned from my mistakes and now know what to look for.

That after a while of even MORE waiting, my PSA is getting a chance to be seen. And I'm spamming everyone I know out with links and telling them to vote until their fingers bleed. I think mine have started.

That my writing has finally started to pick up and make sense.

That I've finally realised how OCD I actually am.

That after finally giving up a crush I had months ago (lasting half the year), he finally starts to notice me and give me a ton of attention now. Way to go, but you're just a little too late.

Inner dialogue: I can't love you, I've already moved on and found someone much better, someone who's actually Mormon and my RELIGION! You can't be just showing up now--don't run for the train, it's already left and pulled into a new station! Why are you manipulating my feelings and making me feel bad? Wait--I don't feel bad, I just feel AWESOME! Attention makes me feel AWESOME, like DANCING!

That I've learned how to let go of some of my insecurities and just, literally, dance. I don't care that I'm a complete embarrassing idiot who loves to be weird. That's how it should be.

That I can finally find solace in my old Ratchet and Clank PS2 games. And I've planned out a schedule of turns for the little bros and I, so fighting is eliminated.

For the most part.

I'm still going to beat the second game first, Camden, mark my words.

2011-05-06T15:00:00.000-07:00

Dear United Way Video Challenge voting box,

Go and die.

Sincerely, your forty-fifth+ time in a row (per day) Plano East voter,

Sierra.

Vote for Me, the Cool One.

2011-05-05T15:35:00.001-07:00

Remember around Spring Break when I went to film camp to make a PSA for United Way? Well, now the voting's already started, only a few more days left!

See if you can beat my record of voting for Plano East around 25 times a day HERE. Go on. I dare you.

Vote for us, we have squiggly hand motions!

Spontaneously Combust.

2011-05-05T14:59:00.000-07:00

'Nuff said.

2011-04-16T19:32:00.000-07:00

writer's block.

2011-04-01T18:44:00.000-07:00

After writing over 300 pages and finally getting to the part where the story actual starts talking about WHAT IT'S ABOUT, I decide and read a crappy book. Not one, but three. And I quit the first one, and have to put up with the others during school. So it's affecting my ability to write. So hopefully, Save the Cat and The Demon King can pick me right back up.

For now, all I can do is see if I'm ready to start my full-blown Spenta story that involves the attachment gloves that force you to dance with each other no matter what. (There's more to it than that, but that is a big thing. Especially when the whole thing is about not getting killed while you're tied by the hands to the guy who wants to kill you.)

I'm going to go with a NO.

It all happened in the blur of movement, of the cries and screams of the rushed, frightened people. But despite however many times the outsiders claimed to be helping them, to be saving them—not one person seemed to be listening. It was under the cover of early morning and past night that the city had been taken over, that the streets and houses were torn open and set fire to. The soldiers had heavy looking metal weapons in their arms, each with a strange sort of black mask over their pale faces that covered their coldhearted eyes, and some were searching through the frantic crowd for something. The people of the city were thrown out of their houses, some of them being shot upon being found hiding, most being beaten and tossed aside.

A nearby soldier held up his weapon and aimed it at the closest lean-to and fired. The building burst into sputtering flames of black and bright white, a phenomenon that had only been shown to the people in their nightmares. He raised the weapon again for a second shot, but lowered it upon seeing the young woman scrambling out of the house clutching hands with her mother and younger brother. There were tears streaming down her face as the soldier raced forward and seized her by her wrist, grip much too fierce and painful to break from, and she cried desperately out of her family as they watched her being pulled away from them. The young boy sobbed and reached out his hand, starting toward the soldier carrying his sister, but was stopped by his mother, who shook her head over and over, exchanging looks with her daughter. Seconds later, the two were shot and fell dead on the pavement right in front of the struggling girl.

“Save this one, take her back with us!” the soldier called out, handing the girl off to another more authoritative soldier with a glittering mask over his face. The girl was immediately shoved into the back of their strange vehicle that was as foreign to her as the metal weapons they were using.

Marlie had been lying on her back, unable to fall asleep for night in a row when the attack hit, shaking the entire house. She smelled the horrible toxic fumes of the fire before she saw it overwhelming the lean-tos beside her own, and her first instinct was to bolt out and run for the air, but it was not what happened. The second she was at the front door, it was kicked down from its frame, revealing masked soldiers with their metal instruments of destruction. Two or three went into the house and knocked things over, broke glass, and searched the few rooms while the last one standing in the front room examined her.

It was only a moment that he considered her, but it was a moment that Marlie hadn’t been able to breathe. The masked soldier gave something of a signal to the others and grabbed her, pulling her through the streets where people by the dozen were being shot and killed, dead bodies littering the floor like dirt. The silver motor vehicle they locked her in was cold and inescapable, but it was nothing compared to the darkness that followed at the stuff that filled her air after. Her lungs screamed and she collapsed, instantly unconscious from the sweet-tasting stuff.

I can't write, *headhang*.....

2011-03-21T16:45:00.000-07:00

You know you've got talent when you can take two lines from COMPLETELY different songs and make an entire story--plot, characters, and everything--in the course of five seconds.

I guess those Little Mermaid flashbacks I've been having today have something to show for themselves.

"It won't cost much--just your voice!"

Heck yes, please.

English CAPs are not all that nice

2011-03-07T14:52:00.001-08:00

...even with the ten-page extension just for me.

I hate Romeo and Juliet. *facedesk*

and to blend in we are surrounded by a white picket fence

2011-02-24T15:03:00.000-08:00

It's strange. I found out how my dream happened.

Yesterday, I had a conversation with my brother about how if a elementary school book has the nerve to put the word count of 2,600+ in the beginning, it better be dang good quality, and I fixed over ten mistakes in it within the first few pages. I also discussed with him how it is NOT acceptable for him to take my book and base a play on it without my permission; and later on I saw the trailer for Red Riding Hood since I saw it in theaters during Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I. And all of that suddenly came together in a dream I had last night.

It was something like Christmas, and everyone in my family got something like a present, except me, who got a 30 page long children's book with choppy, ugly sentence fragments and no plot, that was SUPPOSED to be MY story, published before it was even remotely finished or edited. And my mother had published and sold it, and everyone had already read it, and it was called "Red Riding Hood" when I looked on the cover, which I made sure I did before I woke up. I felt so horrible because everyone was telling me how good it was even when I told them it wasn't my work at all, that it only used the named Luechesie and Penn for the main characters, who were brother and sister, and when I woke up, I turned over to look at my clock just as my alarm went off for seminary.

It took me a while, but I pieced together those three things. I'm very possessive of my baby, and I was so sick with the idea of Xendrid being taken away from me (Jordan's idea of the play) that I wanted to kill myself. It was that bad. And the word count thing went with the length of the stupid "book", and you can see where the movie trailer came in.

I've been having dreams like this lately; dreams that pull main points from my day and make them turn against me.

So when I look on my computer to find Xendrid completely unharmed and it says that I have exactly 250 PAGES of the glorious stuff, it makes me want to go out and buy the December: It's Once More and I'm Free album by Lydia just to freaking celebrate. I'll eventually get December anyway, because what Lydia collection is complete without the first, very emotional, relatable album? I feel like someone rang my doorbell and announced that I got to eat chocolate for the rest of my life and never get fat or something else cool like

"Excuse me, do you think that you could skip school for the rest of the week and meet the man you're going to end up marrying in a matter of years?"

Uhm, yes, please.

But 250 pages? I don't even know what to say.

maybe photography is for me.

2011-02-22T15:33:00.000-08:00

Cutting the Repo! addiction and recycling some old stuff. Think they turned out pretty nicely.

I like this one better of the two:

didn't think you'd want to hear this.

2011-02-18T16:53:00.000-08:00

and maybe it en't that I'm getting ahead or behind everyone.

But something's wrong, and I need to find out what that something is.

~~I found out today not only that some of the friends I let go of at church are now into music that I was into when I was 10 or 11, and that some of my older friends have amazing tastes in music.~~ I also found out today that I am not as accepted as I truly thought I was.

I fought with my best friend today for the first time. And it was over nothing. Nothing more than embarrassment.

It all started back about a year ago when I thought this boy whom I met through our production of Wayside was really cute. I liked him for about a week, and that madness stopped when my best friend told me that it was silly and that I was being stupid. Well, suddenly, a year after that, EVERYONE thinks he's the best, and lo and behold, my best friend has somehow "fallen in love with him" and I "don't know how she feels or can even understand it". He broke up with his old girlfriend and went for my best friend.

And there's nothing wrong with that. I don't feel anything for him anyway, he's just a really cool guy to hang out with in theatre and run monologues with and stuff. I'm also cool with him walking my best friend to class, and being around us a lot more.

What I'm NOT okay with is, when it's already been entirely established that we get rights to poke a little fun at them now, when I get to tell one of my friends in Spanish class that she and her new boyfriend went off to the theatre hallway to make out. Which they didn't, but she totally knew that I was kidding. Because right after that, she is apparently insulted, and decides to counter it by threatening to tell something else about me that I'm entirely over. When she breaks out the "I'm mad at you because you embarrassed me this one time in front of one person even though I openly embarrass you EVERY SINGLE DAY and leave you out and make you feel unimportant," THAT'S when I'm ticked.

That no matter WHAT I say, apparently isn't enough for her. And I've put up with her controlling my life and making decisions for me and making me follow her around pretty much against my will. I'm sick of being around people whom I don't necessarily want to be around because I feel too awkward to do anything or leave. Because there's no alternative for me halfway through the day. My sister's perfectly fine to be with, but not my best friend, who chose this moment to let me know that maybe I'm done with being her friend. I've known her for almost 3 years now, and in all that time, she's embarrassed me countless times without giving a second thought to it. Sierra's the happiest person on earth, why on earth would I spare her feelings when I could say this and make it funny? She's totally fine with it, she doesn't care because she never feels passion for anything so she can't tell me that she's been through this crap before.

I have. I've been there before. I've liked plenty of boys, and this one is no different for her. I'm sick of people telling me that I don't understand things that I really DO. I'm tired of my English teacher talking to me like I'm a 5 year old who doesn't know anything above colors and shapes. I've already grammar-Nazied her plenty of times, and to tell you the truth, I don't like school anymore. Not that I ever really did.

I've felt empty ever since I got my patriarchal blessing, even before that wen I got over a crush that lasted for about six or seven months. There's nothing inside of me; no nervousness, no excitement, no nothing. The nervous part's fine, because I hate feeling nervous, but the not being able to feel any other emotion besides empty, blank despair freaking sucks. And now that I've moved up, all my younger friends who thought I was amazing before still think that, though I'm with people who don't take me seriously now. And to tell you the truth, I hate it.

There's no escape for me. And I hate it.

I HATE it.

I hate having to put up my walls of defense every time I meet a new person or having to act strange and skitzo-OCD and hyper just to feel included. That's not who I am. I'm a very sensitive, nice, passionate person who likes to write, sometimes draw, and read. I sometimes like people I shouldn't, but that comes with who I am. I think that may just be another attention-seeker as well. I feel ignored and like nobody cares, so I have to be weird for people to look at me. I hate attention and people looking at me so that they DO, because it ATTRACTS ATTENTION.

Heather's gone and her life sounds like it sucks. I've got a TERRIBLE MESSY CASE OF WRITER'S BLOCK that won't go away, and it's the one little hole in my story I didn't see before. I can't finish it if this part isn't written. It connects the beginning to the real part of the story. My mp3 player died and when I returned and replaced it, I only got a little of my songs back. I went from about 500 to maybe 90. My laptop Adam died months ago and I've been coping with the loss of it since November. Mikey's birthday is tomorrow and I still need to get her something; maybe post this AMV that's been sitting in Emily for forever. I still need to apologise to her for being a demanding jerk to her the first couple months I knew her. It's almost been a year and my jerkiness stopped maybe a month or two ago.

I can't do plays anymore because of seminary; I have to finish an entire book for English over the weekend PLUS write a love sonnet for that stupid class, I have to practice learning how to read sheet music for my drums, I need to beat Kingdom Hearts II and Re:Chain of Memories after I successfully killed Vexen a first time on maybe my fourth try in weeks (finally), I have to get 3 references or a head shot for my audition on Tuesday, I'm going to Celeste's house tomorrow for some makeup thing, I'm going to a play tomorrow at 7:00 for school, I have to, and I may not be able to go to the dance that night because it starts at like 8:30 or something and that's what time the play ends. I'm probably going to fail second semester Spanish because my teacher made it known to me that she hates me as much as I hate her, I can't seem to feel pretty or even good about myself no matter what, and I can't draw very well, not even people or animals. And here's my best friend, criticizing and yelling at me and embarrassing me all the time, making it a thousand times worse than it has to be. I have no other outlet, so I guess I'll start blogging more often, and this time I'm dead serious.

Today was a horrible, no good, terrible, awful, bad day.

happy valentine's day and such

2011-02-14T16:07:00.000-08:00

It en't much, but Zehleeuh and Hades are sure looking pretty good, even if I made his neck too long. Eh, we're working on being proportionate for the most part.

I can't NOT quote my stuff

2011-02-07T16:52:00.000-08:00

I just like my character's voice too much. Probably because she uses the word "en't" like Lyra.

[ Luechesie automatically entered and sat on the edge of the bed, whipping her sketchbook open to the working page and holding her charcoal poised for aptitude. And then a sudden thought came to her, just as the tall man exited the small space.

“Hang on,” she said after him, and Daniel caught himself on the doorframe, looking at her. “You say that you knew me before, right? So that must mean that you’re…”

“…part of the Council, yes,” he said.

“Then why is it you aren’t with Leven? En’t that with the rest of them are?”

“Besides Deerhæn, there were only four other members of the Council in the castle at the time of the fire, but I don’t think you know who that is, anyway. Most of the Council has their own houses, they live life up to the usual, too, you know. Anything else?”

She shook her head and returned to her drawing while Daniel smiled and closed the door behind him. The girl slowly finished underlying the last few petals of her gloomy-looking flower, coloring them a dreary grey before she sighed and sunk back into her bed, head resting against the pillow. She pushed the book and ink belongings to the side, unable to draw anything else. Her thoughts wouldn’t collect, just kept raining down images of Penn, the destroyed castle, and the words Leven had said to her. ]

It May Be All the Extra Attention

2011-02-07T16:27:00.000-08:00

...but probably not.

So lately, I've managed to nab two brilliantly priced things from amazon.com, namely Kingdom Hearts II (not that I'm addicted and play for nine hours at a time on Sunday mornings or anything) and a practice book for me to learn how to read music and learn how to play drums, and suddenly, it's like I have too much stuff to do.

I have to memorise ANOTHER monologue by Thursday, I have to hurry and look at the dead attractive guys in Kingdom Hearts, read my book and learn how to read/play music (whoever made sheet music is really down on my list of people I like, you know) finish a library book as well as Sweeney Todd and Edgar Allen Poe collective works AND The Golden Compass trilogy (thanks for all of that, Bonnie!).

And on top of all that, guess who's inspiration suddenly ricocheted out of the sky and smacked her in the face? It's funny, because now suddenly EVERYONE is interested, what with my over 250 page mark and not being close to halfway done with the story or even gotten to the point/what it's even about, and now I'm letting my sister read it. And then Britley, and then my Asian beast, Reshma.

But what's happening during all of this? I'm battling character syndrome, like Luechesie suddenly realising what she wanted to do, and FINALLY giving her the daemon/Snowdonia she always wanted ever since I gave Penn one (she's been kind of jealous, and I've spoiled her too much for my own good). Except, being the massive puppet master I am, she doesn't get it until eleven years later AFTER she's in a mother freaking COMA, and she's already found the adorable little ermine-stoat in Sarah's makeshift house and she HATES him. Ha ha. But she'll learn to like him after he starts looking out for her and she sees what he actually is; right now, Enroe's more of a distracting hindrance for her that keeps making too much noise and getting her caught. But I love him anyway.

And now school is terrible, save the four-six day vacation we got from snow days. I hated staying home except for the beasting up Kingdom Hearts II and writing like a freaking BOSS, and I've been really bored, lately. Besides that, I've been spurring up a massive collection of art (not that I would go that far as to call it that) and drawings like nobody's business and taking pictures of them--because I can't find or hook up the scanner and I'm too lazy to do so--to scan/put on DeviantArt.

---This is the part where everyone goes, "What? Sierra/Chessie has a DeviantArt?" Erhm, as of two days before my birthday, yes I do. And I fail.---

But the snow days were filled with screaming brothers, sleeping in, and stupid snow. I don't know why I want to live in Michigan. Not going to rant about AMV making or editing to you right now, but it would have been a heck of a good use of my time if I had indeed been editing. Or downloading music, since there's a bunch of albums I need to get besides the ones I got back from my EHD. But once I went to school again, I realised how much I hated it and wanted to go home again. Ugh. Not that two Ibuprofen and a lack of melatonin or sleep medicine have any effect over me.

(I haven't been sleeping very well recently, and I can't shut down fast enough. It's usually past 2 am and after a series of praying that I can fall asleep and NOT be tired the next morning that I finally find solace in a book which puts me out, but other than that, I can't go to sleep. There's something wrong with me. I need knock out drugs, please.)

And I figured out what Mori might end up settling as. He's been forming into a stoat lately, since that's my favorite animal in the entire world ever since I saw a picture in my brother's animal book, but he's probably going to settle as a red panda, which are pretty g themselves. I think I know because daemons usually settle after you figure out who you are/what your purpose is in life/what you are going to do in life, and guess who gets to find most of that stuff out tomorrow?

Not that I'm ever going to outwardly share mine, or even just plain share mine at ALL, but patriarchal blessings rock. Just saying.

doing things a little differently

2011-02-03T09:47:00.000-08:00

Does this girl look familiar to anyone? Hmm?

And while I'm at it, isn't it a shocker that I'm actually posting pictures on my blog? Whoa.

But who doesn't love a good set of love-penguins?

so I've been reading through some of my old stuff

2011-02-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

...and I think I'll go back and make some adjustments. It needs mass amounts of editing badly, and though the ideas are fabulous, the choppy little sentences gotta go.

Meanwhile, happy birthday to me, I'll start writing my Children of the Flames story, which fell into my head after watching The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Which was slightly better than the Disney version that I saw on Fantasia.

Luechesie needs some time to figure out where she is now before I finish up her next few parts, anyway.

i love mikey. just throwing that out there.

2011-01-15T16:25:00.001-08:00

because thanks to her, I have about a hundred more subscribers. All because she credited me in her somewhat crappy/okay-ish Hospital by Lydia video inspired by mine. I love her so much, she freaking made my day. And everyone loves mine, which makes me feel really good about myself.

except I can't make any more Vegas vids since, you know, I can only edit at my sister's house. I can live with that. I've got my story, anyway. And my drums. *squee*

And I'm just improving in both everyday. lol

it's what you're good at

2011-01-15T16:08:00.000-08:00

January 15th, 2011: the day I freaking finished part two of my book. I am so happy, because this actually throws the events that the story was supposed to be about, anyway.

A girl who's parents were not married and had a horrible life together both before and after she came along, her mother is the energy source for the entirety of the land, and her father is the leader of the rebellion against the kingdom her mother fell heir to. Her mother fell in love with her best friend, the son of the king, and eventually had to have his help to get through life later on. The girl now has to figure out everything about the mysterious legend of the outside lands, where there is supposedly nothing, though she knows better after someone comes from the outside lands to Exodus and becomes her friend, and shows her the true ways of the world.

It was months before that I spent a full night trying to write every idea of my inspiration that suddenly hit me when I was trying to fall asleep on whatever remaining notebook paper I had. (Which wasn't a lot; that became my inspiration notebook later on when I did the same thing three nights ago, though I probably won't ever write that story.) I couldn't go to sleep because for three hours, I scribbled away every detail of what was to happen, and it came out in more than half of my notebook, front and back sides of the paper, meaning that for the past two and a half months, I was trying to write what happened in the first couple (two) sentences in my story outline. So there's a lot more to be freaking written. I am so excited, even though part one weighed out to be almost 30,000 words and this one that I just finished is only about 20,000. But that is a number I can live with, since the next one is going to be soooo much longer. And maybe I'll even change my mind and have the next little bit included in part two. Because I can do that.

49,275 words, or a whole 197 pages of my book. I love it.

And I've broken Chessie's Stockholm Syndrome. Even though she isn't as close with me as she used to be when she was younger, I can live with that because I need her to be moldable. And M? Screw him; I've got Tonin. Who I modeled after Cloud from Kingdom Hearts/Final Fantasy. I love that game so much....I'm replaying it again on Expert because I didn't want it to end.

aughhhhhhfjiks grg

sleep away december

2011-01-07T16:37:00.000-08:00

After much consideration and thought, I came up with these for names of characters, people, whatever.

Lora - taken from Lauren, who was originally Chessie and M's daughter that grew up living as a Hunter
Tora - the base clerk with black hair with a strip of grey running through it from my paragraph collaboration whom Shymtree has a collosal fondness for
Phoenus and Junae - both head white pixies in an alternate universe that Aspen forced Chessie into when M invaded their castle and followed her into
Shymtree, Shemthry, Shymthy, Shymthee, Shemthre - the first one is the one i liked best; the main character who lives in the commanding base and has to help gather food for the entire organization
Nyra, Neeri, Neri, Neery, Nerie - Nyra is Shymtree's best friend

Braunthyx
Ryen, Rien
Cardyinne, Cardinne, Cardynne
Sool
Snow, Snoh, Snowe
Tonin
Trae
Drynian
Marislynn
Leign, Leighn, Layn, Layne, Lane
Retra
Ehrae
Retralyce - pronounced reh-TRA-liss or reh-tralice, like the name Alice

and finally, the name that I fell in love with today: Noel Cherrynn, which sounds like Sharon, but you say it sha-RINN. I think it's so pretty.

There you go, Liz. Noel Cherrynn Pollock. There's your girl name for you.

2011-01-07T16:30:00.000-08:00

*mrrrooww. Getting my drums today. I am so excited.

which is funny, since I'm writing another book

2011-01-06T15:43:00.001-08:00

Found this today:

Boisterous Jupiter is still within range of its conjunction with your key planet Uranus, provoking you to forget about your long-term goals and to take immediate action to get fast results. However, the problem is that you're working on something big that may need more time yet to reach fruition. Don't hurry the process. Let things unfold naturally.

2010 Booklist...ehrm...

2010-12-31T15:47:00.000-08:00

Like some people I know, I also do not keep a record of all the books I read. I wish I did, because it's super cool. I don't remember what I read two days ago, let alone the whole year. So maybe I'll do that this year. But for now, I can list off all the BANDS I found this year. Somehow I remember those much more than books. Oh, the irony.

(This has nothing to do with anything, but I felt like I needed to blog about SOMETHING.)

This year was a good music year for me, though. A lot better than last year, where I listened to My Chemical Romance the entire time. I thought I was so cool, C:

Bands/Artists found this year:

Red
Chevelle
Decyfer Down
Incubus
We The Kings
Kings of Leon
Placebo
Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton
Escape the Fate
Minus the Bear
Circa Survive
Stripmall Architecture
Eminem
Owl City
Rihanna
Katy Perry
3OH!3
Ke$ha
Hayley Williams
Far East Movement
BREAKING BENJAMIN - ohmahexodus I love these guys.
Linkin Park
Potugal. The Man
Alive in Wild Paint
Copeland
Anthony Green
innerpartysystem
Metro Station
Hollywood Undead
Beck
Usher
Brand New
Klaxons
Big Time Rush
Tides of Man
Enrique Iglesias
The Medic Droid
The Anix
30 Seconds to Mars
Hadouken!
Dear and the Headlights
The Ready Set
Manchester Orchestra
Pendulum
Breathe Carolina
Adam Lambert
She Wants Revenge
Safetysuit
Doubting Paris
The Main Drag
Madina Lake
Korn!
Doubting Paris
Sugarcult
Blur

...........[there's more, but I'll edit this later if I think of any. ;3; ]

.....and Lydia. Oh man, I love them with every freaking cell in my body. Thank you ~~mum~~ Santa, for making my life.

for lizzy

2010-12-29T14:05:00.001-08:00

All right, here's your list of girl names that I can think of at the moment. Yeah, a lot of them are kind of...off. And they don't all go with your last name, they're just names that I know/use.

Anna
Annabel
Alison, Allison
Autumn
Beatrice
Jasmine
Chess
Luechesie
Lucy
Susan
Mikey
Bonnie
Helen
Christine
Hayley
Emberlynn
Amber
Kimberly
Lydia
Lacey
Millie
Junae
Bailey
Marlene
Katherine
Katy
Katie
La-ia
Lafawndah (Lafawndah Pollock? That's pretty awesome)
Polly
Pauline
Madeline
Lauren
Aspen
Aerilynn
Marilyn
Corinne
Courtney
May, Mae
Amy, Amie
Jocelyn
Jo
Josephine
Haylehn
Miranda
Melissa
Marianne
Alice
Sydney
Brooklyn
Caroline, Carolina
Catalina
Mindy
Leigh
Jacqueline
Tyler
Rema
Renee
Candra
Jenna
Heather
Hystrix
Chrysanthemum
Drew, Dreux
Nicole
Lyra
Maegan, Megan
Riley
Kairi
Kayley, Kaleigh, Kaylie
Nyra
Shymtree
Serena
Elizabeth
Ellie
Nell
Sandra
Emery
Ebony
Carly, Carlie
Laura
Leah
Layla
Dianne

...I'll let you know if I find any other ones, but for now, there they are. C:

just let me go

2010-12-29T13:54:00.000-08:00

finally back on Sony Vegas. This is for my sister Bonnie's Alejandro MEP. Turned out okay-ish...

not that there isn't more than enough exciting things happening right now

2010-12-27T07:53:00.000-08:00

considering my grandma's here for the rest of the week, I'm going to see Tron soon, I got Inception for Christmas (which is getting fixed so I can actually WATCH it edited) as well as seeing The Golden Compass twice in a row, and getting

the Illuminate album by Lydia.

Oh my Exodus, they are so good. I've listen to the CD itself at least six times in a row already as well as listening to the whole thing on my music player about a million times. I love them so much.

And yesterday, /someone/ got her computer back. Anthony/Adam is back in my arms, and though we have to wait for the installation disc to show up magically here, I still have my documents (though not Sony Vegas, so I may need to redownload it once we get the disc. Which better be SOON, because I ned to work on a MEP part badly...)

But anyway, that means that I got all nine pages of my story back. On a CD. And it flows absolutely PERFECTLY into where I started writing on my mother's computer.

How amazing is that?

Penn fought his way out of a closely knit crowd, struggling through the tight spaces with as much difficulty as air had getting between each person. Every face blended together in a frozen white mush, hoods of every coat drawn up to the same frostbitten skin, covering violent flushed cheeks and eyelashes flitted with drops of falling snow. He was looking for one person, and one person only; the one who would stand out from the rest even with the same clothes hiding her like a mask. His mother, his one and only travelling companion. Her face was not amongst the strangers that surrounded him, the people he fled from.

He pressed his gloved hands together, rubbing friction into them to create heat, and he pulled them to his face to blow his warm breath through the widening holes in the black material. The rest of his clothes resembled closely the state of his gloves, all very secondhand and worn out, holes dotting the faux leather of his coat and jacket, the soles of his boots falling apart at the seams. He was cold, but he could bear it. He was used to living with less than ordinary, and losing his mother made no difference. But it wasn’t so much the cold of the bitter winter that Penn minded so much as the internal cold that ran through him, a chill that went racing through his blood. Not only was Penn cold, but he was alone, and that was what scared him the most.

Dodging his way out of the inquisitive looks and insults, Penn turned into the alleyway of a snow covered neighborhood, sitting down to rest next to an icicle-filled rain gutter. A deep sigh punched the air with a vivid cloud as Penn closed his eyes and buried his hands in his pockets. It had been a whole two days since he had seen his mother, held her frigid hand in his and strode alongside her. Two whole days without anyone to help him with directions, someone to tell him where he was supposed to go and what he was supposed to do when he got there. There was no longer anyone beside him to entertain and captivate him with stories of his father, who lived far off away in the Forbidden Lands, where not even the bravest of explorers dared to venture or even discuss for very long. Penn had never met his father before, and imagined him to be a very loyal, sincere handsome man, for anyone who had married his mother, who was very beautiful in any eye, surely had to be wonderful. His mother Rahlaura had already retold how Penn’s father Leven was chosen to be the ruler of the Forbidden Lands after some great family scandal that involved choosing an heir out of three children. Leven had been the one they had picked, and had been an authoritative figure ever since for almost fifteen years, even longer than Penn had been alive for.

So many stories he had heard, from the time his father had to place a band of rebels into exile to the time where the enemy had invaded and nearly killed half the men in the city. With every new piece of information that Penn collected, his curiosity and admiration for his father swelled, and soon, all he wanted to do was meet him, to finally put a face to the image in his head. But now, Penn was alone, bitter, cold, and alone and without his mother to help him through it. He was lost without a guiding hand, and he had no way of knowing if he was really going in the right direction or not. How was he supposed to get to the Forbidden Lands and see his father when he couldn’t even manage to find his mother? Where could she be? And what should he do?

A faint mewing caught his attention, and Penn lifted his head out of his hands to see a large, ruffled cat with mottled brown fur brush against the side of his foot, purring softly while it rubbed its head, looking for attention. Penn reached out his fingers to stroke the matted fur, and the cat welcomed the contact with another rumble from its throat that reverberated through its thin body. It pushed past him and crawled into his lap, twirling in a circle before leaning in to be caressed, warming the boy with its layer of fur and body heat.

“What do you want with me?” asked Penn, and he was surprised at how small his voice sounded, as if the cold air was sending him into nothing more than a distant whisper. The cat looked up at him with shaking auburn eyes that revealed no answer.

“Okay, then.”

He sat there next to an old fire escape, petting the animal faintly while he tried again to clear his head. What was he supposed to do? Should he continue to search for his mother before deciding to ask for directions to the Forbidden Lands, or simply carry on all by himself? And if he did manage to get there on his own, how would he find his father? He had no way of knowing what he looked like or where he was, and he certainly would be just as lost there as he was here. But suppose he never found Rahlaura, would he have to spend the rest of his days wandering the streets begging for food? What was he going to do without someone to help him? It was nearing his eleventh birthday soon, and this outside world was no place for a skinny, underdressed, caramel-eyed boy out on his own.

Penn shoved the cat out of his lap, and it gave him a look of contempt while it began to lick its front paws, both with snowy white ends.

“All right, unless you can tell me how to get to the Forbidden Lands from here, you need to go and bother someone else, okay?” he said. The cat said nothing, but acted as if he hadn’t heard anything, and switched to cleaning its other paw.

“I mean it; I don’t need anything more to worry about at this point. I’m trying to get somewhere and I sort of have to get help in order to arrive there. So, unless you have some means of taking me there, I suggest you leave, thank you.”

The cat stood up and began walking away. Penn sighed and folded his arms, letting out a huge sigh. He heard another mew and looked up to watch as the furry creature motioned with its head for Penn to follow. Penn stood up, doubting what was happening but staying the slightest bit hopeful as he turned down another alleyway and ducked under a low-topped wall. The atmosphere was quiet, and soon the boy heard no sound at all, no murmuring of people or shuffling of feet other than his own.

They had been moving for almost fifteen minutes when the stray cat flicked a tail through the air and came to a stop beside a rundown structure that was no smaller than a house. The door was halfway off its hinges and the paint was faded and peeling everywhere he looked, but the cat looked at him triumphantly, as if it were some great palace instead of an old shop. Penn could hear noise: discussion, the flipping of pages, and laughter, all from inside of the strange place, and immediately his eyes jerked to a barely visible sign hanging by the window. The cat had taken him to some sort of inn!

He reached down to thank his escort, but his fingers merely brushed air; the animal had already gone and was no longer near.

Penn took his last breath of the cold winter night and stepped through the door and into the inn, fiery currents of hot air rushing to embrace him the moment he entered. Nobody seemed to notice his arrival, so Penn moved into the corner, relishing the warmth and shelter from the fierce falling snow outside, taking the opportunity to observe the people in the room. Several of the men were talking loudly to one another and drinking out of large mugs, some of them eying the few women scattered about. One girl not too much older than Penn was sitting next to the blazing fireplace, a thick, leather-bound book in her hands, nose practically buried between the words of the story. She turned a page in the novel, and her eyes flickered up before Penn had the time to look away, and a moment later, she bent her finger in a gesture for him to cross the room.

“What’s that you’re reading?” asked Penn, raising his voice a little above a whisper.

“The Odyssey,” said the girl, “it’s about the Trojan War and it has loads of mythological gods and goddesses through it—very complicated business. But what I’m reading isn’t that important at the moment. You look like you could use some help, so what’s your name?”

“My name is Penn, and yours?”

“I’m Rachael. What are you doing here? You look awful.”

“Well, it’s sort of a long story, really. You see, me and my mum were traveling to go and see my father, who I have never seen before in my life. This was my first time that we finally got to meet him together, except it didn’t entirely work out. Two days ago, Mum and I were just walking, and she was telling me this story about how her and my father met, when all of a sudden, a million people rush through us. She lets go of my hand, and I lose sight of her, and I stand there, trying not to get too far from where I was, but when all the people clear up, my mum wasn’t there. I stood there by myself. And ever since then, I’ve been trying to find her, but I haven’t had the slightest bit of luck until now, when I followed a cat that took me here. But now I don’t know what to do.”

“Oh, you poor thing! I’m dreadfully sorry about the stupid remark on the book, I didn’t mean to be rude,” said Rachael, sliding a ribbon between the pages of the novel to mark her place. She took his hands in hers, and Penn felt a foreign sensation trickle through his chest. “Why don’t you go up and ask that man over there for something hot to drink? Here’s some money, you get whatever you like.”

Rachael pressed a few coins into the palm of his hand and gave him a smile that made him notice how pretty she actually was. Penn glanced down at the money and offered her a confused look, and the girl rolled her eyes.

“Take it, you need it more than I do, I promise you that. Now, go on.”

She dismissed him with a slight nod of the head and watched him stumble over to the counter before pulling her bookmark out and returning to her story.

Penn ordered a large mug of hot chocolate and sipped it slowly, letting the hot liquid wash out every inch of cold in his body. Some of the cream from the drink remained on his lip, and he wiped it away with the side of his glove, looking behind him to see if Rachael was still monitoring him. She wasn’t.

He was watching the steam rise from the top of his mug when he heard the two words being said by a gentleman wearing all black two seats beside him.

“And nobody expects any of this to be true? There’s not some obvious sign that shows where it is?”

“No,” said the gentleman. “Hardly anyone even wants to attempt the journey to the Forbidden Lands, thus making the crossroads of these two places the perfect hiding spot for her. And I haven’t heard about anyone trying to find her, either; not since she was presumed dead a matter of years ago.”

“And you’re to travel there when, exactly? In the morning?”

The gentleman with the black cloak had been talking to a less if not equally serious man with a wide brimmed hat and velvet red coat the color of blood, who seemed to be very interested in what the first man had to say. The man wearing all black adjusted one of the many dark rings on his fingers before he spoke again.

“Tonight, actually.”

“Tonight? M, do you know how nearly impossible that is?”

The gentleman cleared his throat in warning, as if his companion had said something wrong. “Mister Haines, if you would please reconsider what you have just asked me.”

The second man seemed to stiffen and recollect himself, catching his mistake.

“I’m sorry, Mister Ensley, sir. But the journey to the Forbidden Lands has long since been rumored to be impossible,” he said.

“Perhaps you have forgotten who you are talking to, and what my purpose there is. I leave for the place we previously discussed after we are done here, and I implore you not to speak of it again,” said Ensley in tone that suggested authority.

Penn felt his heart speed up. The man was going for the Forbidden Lands tonight? He could easily watch for when he left and follow behind, and then he would have made it! If his mother was truly looking for him as much as he had been searching for her, then they might even meet up on the way, and then everything would be made right again! But what had the two men been talking about? Something that was stuck in the middle of where he was and the Forbidden Lands, something that the man called Ensley was going to find, or check up on. But the rumors were correct in saying that the journey was utterly impossible, though that had not struck Penn when he had been with his mother, and he couldn’t feel entirely safe with following a complete stranger. Going there with nobody but a stranger leading the way was not much different than travelling alone, considering if he was found out, he may not be able to make it at all. But it was the only chance that he had, and he was going to take it.

Penn took another sip of the frothy mixture in front of him and tuned the rest of the conversation out while he shifted his thoughts to Rachael, who had become lost in her book once more.

Nearly the entire room had emptied as the ticking clock on the wall chimed ten, and Penn woke with a start to see the two men exchanging farewells. Rachael admitted a yawn before she closed her book and moved towards the stairs to her room, and after glancing toward Ensley, Penn quickly rushed to the stairs.

“Rachael,” he said, stopping her where she was. “I’m leaving, but I wanted to thank you for the money and say goodbye.”

“You’re leaving right now?”

“Yes, but I’m sort of in a hurry, so thank you for everything.”

Penn looked over his shoulder to see Mister Ensley donning another heavy black cloak before pushing the front door open. Snow swiftly flew into the room and onto the floor, swirling the air with a cold wind, and the young boy had to keep from crying out after the man. He was going to miss his chance!

“Oh, Penn, it was honestly nothing,” said Rachael, following her friend’s gaze. “Is that someone you know?”

“You could say that. Anyway, I have to leave right this moment, so thank you, and goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

And Penn was out the door a moment later, pulling his raggedy coat around him tightly as snow collected in his thick eyelashes. It was so much colder than he remembered it being before, and he watched his breath go out like a puff of smoke as he hurried after the man who had called himself Ensley. Ensley was already a distance away, black cloak whipping out behind him in the zephyr of winter, and Penn watched as he approached a small carriage with a thick, muscular horse tied in front. How he had not noticed the horse and carriage before was beyond him, but as the man boarded on, Penn had to run as fast as he could to catch up. Penn was barely in the back of the carriage when Ensley clicked his boots against the horse and pulled forward.

As they drove further and further away, Penn caught sight of the ruffled cat that had brought him to where he was now, the animal padding along in the snow to jump straight into Penn’s arms. The cat purred loudly when he stroked it behind the ears, and the boy put his finger to his lips in a shushing motion.

“We have to be ever-so-quiet, or we’ll both be caught, all right? But thank you,” he said, voice just above a whisper. The cat blinked once, as if understanding the question, and nuzzled against the small boy’s chest as the carriage drew past a series of debris and unfinished walls. The various points of structure were permanently blocking the view of the small inn that seemed so far away to Penn now that he could really close his eyes while he rested against the cat, whose fur seemed so soft and warm…

“Wake up.”

Penn stirred in his sleep, trying to return his focus to his wonderful dream. He was talking to his father in the Forbidden Lands, finally in the place kept secret for so long with both of his parents. His mother had been patiently waiting for him to find his way to her, and had embraced him when they had seen each other for the first time in days. His father, Leven, brushed the hair out of his son’s face to look into one of the many features he shared with Penn; the caramel colored eyes that his mother had told him were precisely the same shade as her husband’s. Penn resembled his father greatly, the same eyes, the same shaped nose, even the same brightly pale skin that compared to the falling snow tickling Penn’s face…

“Boy, get up!”

The ten year old boy was startled by a clear, strong voice outside of his dream, and he was on his feet in an instant, looking up at the tall, dark cloaked man that he had stolen away with. The cat was gone, no longer at Penn’s side, but tucked away in the front pocket of his coat, shrinking away from the intimidating man before them.

“What in Hell were you doing back there?” he demanded.

“I was…sir; I heard you were going to the Forbidden Lands and I –” choked Penn, but he was cut off.

“And you what? Decided that it would be nice to stow away in the back of my carriage and follow me all the way there? Do you even know how many forms of punishment I can think of right now?”

“No, honestly, please don’t! I was looking for my mother, we were separated a few days ago, you see…”

Penn was backing up as the menacing dark man advanced on him, his feet pushing into the snow deeper and deeper with every step.

“Well, she’s not in the back of my carriage, that’s for sure! How did you find out where I was going?” said Ensley.

“At the inn, you were at the counter talking to someone, and I heard you say something about the Forbidden Lands, but that’s where I need to be, that’s where I have to find my father –”

The man’s frightening face softened into one of curiosity at the mention of Penn’s father, and his tone of voice lowered into understanding. Penn stopped abruptly, his back hitting against the thick trunk of a tree covered in a thick sheet of snow, his fragile, shaking hands that were pressed protectively in front of his face lowering silently.

“Your father? Your father lives in the Forbidden Lands? What is your name?” he asked.

“Penn.”

Something seemed to silently click in the man’s head, though Penn could not see or tell what it was. But all of a sudden, Ensley stopped demanding information from him, and Penn didn’t know whether to relax or be more cautiously aware. He had dealt with this kind of behavior before, and it was usually around people who wanted more than they cared to show, sort of like the man was doing now.

“Sorry for going off on you like that, it’s just that you can never be too careful about these things. I’ve had people follow me before to get what they want, and it was always for bad intent. Do you know what I’m after, or shall I tell you? Here,” said the man, gesturing for Penn to join him in the driver’s seat before he shifted his horse forward again. “Now, how much do you know?”

“Very little,” said Penn, feeling the cat squirm around in his pocket. He reached in and placed it on his lap, gently petting it when it hissed at the man. “Actually, all I heard was that you were going to the Forbidden Lands because of some hiding place. What were you talking about, Mister…?”

“Ensley. Well, it’s sort of a secret, though seeing as we are now traveling companions for the next few hours, I feel you have the right to know.”

“The next few hours?” Penn repeated. “That soon? How long have I been sleeping for?”

“If you’ve been sleeping since you got on at the inn, then all last night and most of today. I expect you must have been tired after looking for your mother for all this time. Anyway, the hiding place that I am going to holds a very tremendous secret, and nobody except for me and Mister Haines know about it. So you must swear never to tell another soul once you know, all right, then?”

Penn nodded, his curiosity taking over him.

“Some years ago, in the Forbidden Lands, where I am from, believe it or not, which is the only reason that I know how to get there and back as quickly as possible, there was something of a war. There were two sides, the king’s side, who wanted everything to be a certain way and have nothing corrupt their way of life, and the side of the rebels, who were not entirely happy with the way things were being run. The leader of the rebel cause was very vocal about his opinions and had his own castle to mock the rightful king, even, and made the idea that he should launch his own army of anti-laws, who were really called Hunters back then, against the king.”

“And did they win?” the young boy asked.

“I’m not yet quite finished. The leader was preparing to send his finest Hunters out, when he had a sudden idea. Instead of casting men aside to do his work, why not do it himself? The next night, he was able to slip into the king’s castle and slit the throats of both him and his queen. Their daughter was trapped into a tiny fragment of reality where nobody could find her, where she was caught amongst a flock of white pixies that froze time and space around her, keeping her an absent-minded prisoner forever. She was eight years old at the time, though the incident that made her an orphan occurred that long ago, and to this day, she remains the same, completely unchanged.

“And this is why I must travel to the Forbidden Lands, for between this side and that is where the small hole into her prison rests, and only I can find it, for I have been sent to look in on her. But nobody must know of this action, for if the girl is exposed, it will surely cause some sort of uprising. You see, the current two people that stepped in for the previous king and queen do not know where to find their goddaughter, and it is best to keep it that way.”

The man let his words hang in the air for a moment before they fell into mere nothingness, and Penn stared forward as his eyes defocused, the story replaying in his head quickly before images of a bitter rebel leader formed in his mind. An eight year old girl, fallen prey to the legendary white pixies that reversed all time and space and bent it to their liking, usually stopping it altogether. He had heard about the mysterious pixies and how they looked like nothing more than a puff of smoke when in a set, dangerous to anyone that accidentally listened to their earsplitting tones, but had always been told that they were nothing more than pretend, fake. Nonexistent.

But Penn had also heard of many impossible things, just as the journey to the mysterious Forbidden Lands had been long since sought after once it had been claimed unreal, though he and his mother had taken the road there nevertheless. And now this man was going there, to that impossible place, to find yet another impossible thing in a strange new reality that somehow existed between two unlikely places. He was learning to believe that most things said to be unreal and impossible were not as unfeasible as they seemed to be, and after a few minutes, he broke the incomprehensible silence.

“Ensley?”

2010-12-23T12:30:00.000-08:00

Still no news of Anthony, yet. I'm beginning to fear that I won't get him back before Christmas. And even if I do, he'll probably be so wiped out and unrecognizable that I won't like him anymore. Or everyone will swarm over him and I won't get a chance to reunite with him fully. What if I can't get my chapter out of him, and I have to rewrite what I never can? What if I can't finish my sister's MEP part in time? I should have sent Anthony away weeks ago. Maybe then I would be able to hold him again.

[ if you need me to disambiguate, Anthony is my baby computer. ]

two and a half hours, and this is all I have to show for it

2010-12-21T19:57:00.000-08:00

so after having computer time for about two and a half hours stright, I spent it tracking the PERFECT music for my chapter, meaning, after listening to the "ambient" tag station for a long, long time, this is what I got.

I call it, my "it" chapter; "the" chapter, etc. Raw emotion went into this, and it's not as far as I'd like to have gotten, but with Anthony in the shop as I write this, I hope that I'll get more M and Chessie time.

And Heather, if you hate on M one more time, I swear....

[ small note; this chapter is FAR from being done. Not even halfway done. Chessie just wanted to show you how she's been doing, and since this is probably the sweetest thing I've ever written, I totally agree. ] [ I also know that nobody except me reads these, since I post stuff just for my own benefit, but I hope that people stop ignoring them. Eurgh. ]

--

Luechesie sat with her back to a thick tree covered with spots of fading moss, the skirts of her dress neatly spread out around her in the purple edged grass as she held the worn book in her curious gaze, light fingers stroking the dusty pages while she read. A glowing line of white pixies traced around her figure, more than a dozen resting little over an inch away from her, drawing a heart shaped light that swayed in the warm breeze. They seemed to be waiting, prepared to jump to her at any given moment, while they simply stared at her, watching as she turned a faint page every minute or so, like timid spiders hiding calmly above their web to see their prey casually fall into the deathtrap. Two brighter pixies, both giving off a darker tint than all of the others, lay on top of the girl, touching her without any showing of emotion, the lavender one of the two spread out lightly on her shoulder while its partner splayed quietly on lap, its back pressed against her thigh. She could barely hear the shrieking anymore, her mind floating over it as she read the words printed in the pages, the meaning and information burning into vague understanding as she progressed. Not even half a chapter in, and she already was aware of how to discern between average everyday animals and Snowdonia, immensely strong magical creatures that often took the form of a lesser being, and how the creatures would sometimes develop a particularly close bond with a human if given enough time and circumstance.

The man found her in that same position as he stumbled over himself and into the cool grass, where he couldn’t help but smile as tears bore into his eyes.

And that was when the complete silence was gone, disrupted by faint whispering in the girl’s ear that built slowly, the white pixies around her drifting into the air, sending sparks of ambient white light parachuting through the open air. The ever-increasing whispers were unremarkable; all twisted together in an endless slur of sighing, and as the girl looked up, she watched in blank confusion as a row of white lights descended upon the head of a stranger in a black cloak with entrancing, magnetic dark eyes. The girl stood up uncontrollably, the book cradled in her hands, and the final two remaining white pixies (the ones that had been engaging close to her) clicked into an automatic response. The lavender shaded on pulled on her dress while its other, whose fingers and outline burned a crimson-black, tugged considerably on her hair, stopping her where she stood. She cocked her head to the side slightly, taking in the sight of the dark figure of the man, the stranger…

“…the intruder.”

The baritone voice was gaining access back into her thoughts again as Phoenus brushed his crimson finger against her ear. Why was someone else here, and why were they so far away? Why was it getting so slow and progressively louder with each passing moment?

There was someone she had never seen before standing only a few yards off in the distance, though it seemed to be farther than that, his form becoming blurred and sunk through after she blinked in the bright lights. The girl took a steady step forward, shaking her head lightly to pull free from the strings of Phoenus, who was already sending quiet, subliminal messages to her to snap her attention, and watched evenly as the stranger moved closer little by little. He imitated her and shook his own head, rushing his hands over his ears as quickly as he could, his movements slacking as if he were under a great amount of deep, diffident water as he frustrated the floating white pixies, disguised as nothing more than lights to the girl, and proceeded. His face was already stricken with warm lines of tears when he finally met up in front of her, exchanging a heartfelt look with the girl before she completely fell past the range of the pixie that had been gripping so tightly to her.

Luechesie felt a small tingling in her heart like the severing of a thick string that flowed through her blood and to every inch of her body, shocking her at her fingertips. She tried to smile before she reached out a hesitant hand, fingers nearly trembling, and touched the side of his face. And then it hit her, sliding into place like rain from a heavy storm.

This man was no stranger, nor was he an intruder; he was M, the man who had once called himself Ensley in order to make himself seem different, in order to assume a new identity with nothing else on his mind other than her.

And he had come to see her.

After a moment of hesitation, the girl leaned forward slowly, her eyes closing as she kissed him gently, their lips meeting expressively. In the instance of a single moment, she felt the course of an entire lifetime flutter through her, ranging in a montage from birth to adulthood, where she was a butterfly crawling gracefully out of its cocoon. As they pulled away, the feeling was gone, and the girl looked down at her feet before he strung his fingers through hers and swung her hand gently. The storybook she had been holding fell to the ground, landing in the grass with a muffled thump.

She smiled; a mark to match the one splaying across M’s face.

Small bits of emotions played through her heart as she sat down again, taking him with both hands and gently pulling him down with her. But before she could begin to say anything of her own voluntary will, Phoenus appeared from around her shoulder, tickling her neck with his thin, black and red fingers and moved her thoughts away, his partner, Junae, creeping up to whisk around the man’s head with its purple lavender light.

sometimes you feel like you live to long

2010-12-20T16:54:00.000-08:00

That's right, baby, I finally finished the chapter that M's been ignoring me endlessly for not writing. It's not as awesome as I thought it was going to be, but that's because I refuse to write the next chapter until tomorrow when I have more zone out time...since it's going to be interesting. Plus, I have to sleep on the storyline, and read the book I got from the library. Salt by Maurice Gee. It's really good. And I need Chessie and M to tell me what happened in their chapter, anyway, even though I already have a pretty good idea. I just need to let them sleep on it, too.

--

M sat with his back slumped against the wall, head buried in his hands. Nearly everything in his bedchamber was broken, ripped, or torn, from the curtains that hung across a broad window that faced at an angle so it showed every inch of Exodus to the cracked wardrobe that sat forlornly in the corner with peeling white paint. Pages from books lay strewn across the floor, mixed with quills and fountain pens, spatters of ink dotting the wall and the scarlet sheets on the widespread four poster, cloaks draped across the half open door of the wardrobe and spilling out randomly through the room. The room was disheveled completely, a sign of the mass hysteria and other compelling emotions running through the man’s head for weeks on end, and there was no real sign of life other than the faint breeze that fluttered the unkempt curtains every minute or two. M had refused to eat anything or see anyone, especially Haylehn, who had tried to wear him down by knocking repetitively on his door and talking to him about everything except the subject he never left alone in his head.

His hunger strike had lasted almost a week now, and he hadn’t fully seen anyone else for longer, denying any contact whatsoever, even after Lydia had silently entered his room and tried to make him feel better. Lydia had always been there when he needed her, even though it was almost no secret that she had a sort of fondness for him anyway, but she always managed to cheer him up no matter what was going on in his life. She was the sort of happiness that showed up whenever he really wasn’t feeling up to sorts, despite the fact that she had a particularly nasty outlook on the enemy and therefore spat out a roughness that many people had trouble avoiding. She held high authority and power, two things that were treasured in the set up of the Hunters, the other rebels in the society holding her in the highest regard while fearing her out of pure intimidation at the same time.

He started to sob, a cry he didn’t feel the need to suppress as the tears rushed from his eyes and into his hands, trembling as they pressed against his face miserably. M had stopped holding in his emotions after a few days of feeling nothing except for raw bitterness and spite, and since then had taken to crying often, not trying to withstand the storm of bottled up fear and envy and hate and jealousy all smashed into his heart at once. Images of Luechesie still burned into his mind flashed red and fire hot white, the only thing he ever saw when he closed his eyes at night, and he felt so wrong for feeling so strongly toward her. It wasn’t like it was the best thing in the world for him, and especially now that she was gone…

She was gone!

It cut him more profoundly than the sharpest side of a jet black, glittering sword, and he always felt the weight that he carried with him, the emotional stress that piled on him heavier than an entire castle collapsing. And it was all because of that idiot man, Aspen, that he felt this way, the one fault of a simple blue eyed boy that had stood in his way and taken him off the course of his plan (not that he had had much of a well-thought out scheme once he had gotten there, anyway) that he had been once again separated from his Luechesie, the girl he had really thought fondly of. And it hadn’t even occurred to him that the girl wouldn’t have mutual feelings toward him, for he only thought of what he wanted, which was to keep Luechesie safe from everything that would happen in the future, to hide her from what was yet to come. And with the amount of attention she was getting now, he was quite sure that his worst fears had been realized, that Leven and the Council had found out who the girl really was and the amount of energy and power she had flowing through her. It had taken M more than a while to put two and two together, but the moment hew had found out the figure that Luechesie actually posed, his protective nature had kicked in and everything he had aver thought about was postponed and wrapped around the girl. It had been such a struggle to keep her locked up after he had promised her so much, to nearly drain all the energy she harnessed without even knowing it, but it had to be done. It wasn’t his fault that she turned out the way she did; although he took the blame for everything that happened to her.

Why on earth had Leven even gone with a plan to lock up Luechesie again? It wasn’t as if he knew of the bond that held her and the rest of the world together, or did he? It hadn’t been long before M himself had known it, and Leven was just as knowledgeable as he was, so why shouldn’t he already know? Maybe he had known from the start, and he was only setting him up, organizing the rebels in a neat little circle so it was easier to target them through their leader. Who knew how much the man that resembled his son so very much really could figure out about the girl whose inherited traits were just as easily stolen and traded as passed along?

A cold gust of air whirled into the room, leaving traces of powdery snow across the floor as it passed on. M ignored it, embracing the chilling temperature as if it were nothing more than invisible nothingness that soothed his bleeding heart. He was so caught up in his crying that he didn’t notice as Lydia swung open the door softly and wound through the diverse amount of broken pieces of everything, gently sitting beside him. She spread her hands out in front of her, skimming them along the carpet almost nervously as she leaned her head against his shoulder.

“How are you holding up?” she asked quietly.

Immediately, M’s expression changed from heartrending to a mask of utter apathy, and he looked up from his hands, pushing away the stray tears as he sighed in despair. He watched as Lydia’s pale fingers traced distant circles on the floor, breathing in the cool air that blew from the open window. What was he supposed to say? He hadn’t seen Lydia in days, but she already knew how he was doing. How was he going to answer her? That he was doing just fine and was soon going to be ready to finally leave his room that he had been hiding out in like a lovesick, heartbroken child? And put himself in a position to appear weak, to show a massive fault in his shield of equivocation? Never.

“You know perfectly well how I’m doing, don’t you?” he said.

She nodded her head slightly. “Mm-hmm.”

“What do you want?”

“You know perfectly well what I want, don’t you?” she laughed.

M felt a smile curve his face.

“Well, I thought I would show up here to see if you were feeling well enough to listen to something that I had Haylehn find. Only if you’re feeling up to it, though.”

“It couldn’t make me feel any worse than I already do, Lydia, so tell me,” he said, and the woman in the white cloak reached for his hand, taking his fingers in hers.

“Stop complaining, we all know why you’re so upset, but that’s beside the point, since what I’m about to tell you will probably make you change your mindset. Anyway, I’ve been speaking with Haylehn lately, since you absolutely refuse to interact with anyone at all no matter what, and she’s finally got something.”

“Are you going to keep stalling or actually get to a point, because if you’re not…”

“Haylehn found out where Aspen moved Luechesie,” she spat out impatiently, studying his forming expression as his eyes widened in shock. “And she knows a way to get in. So if you would like to do something about where she is, I would suggest that you move now before word gets out.”

Haylehn, that annoying little pest of an assistant had tracked down where that fool of a person Aspen had locked up Luechesie? How in the world had she managed to do such a thing? It was nearly impossible to find out where the pixies were, even if you knew that they were there in the first place, so what had she done to obtain that information? The thought of being able to see the girl’s facer once more was enough to bring M to his feet and across the room to the outside hallway, Lydia’s hand falling from his as she smiled and caught up with him.

“Haylehn herself was the one to find out?” he asked.

“Well, she was the one in charge of the entire thing, besides me, who organized the little search party. I told her to, so you should probably be thanking me instead of her, though it was her who figured out those blurry light patterns. She was the only one who really understood what magic went where and how the signals looked when the pixies were holding something captive.”

M nodded and moved more swiftly down a pair of concrete steps. “Where is she?”

“Haylehn? She’s—”

“Not her, I meant Luechesie!” he said, giving Lydia an assiduous look.

“Why don’t you just ask me yourself, then?” said a voice from in front of M and Lydia.

Haylehn stood on the second story platform curiously, her red cloak pulled over her long blonde hair and flowing from behind her in the night air. There was nobody else outside, all the rebels having returned inside from the cold, every Hunter busy or preoccupied with something else, and it looked as if the blonde woman was on her way up the platform stairs to the leader’s room. She had a slight smile on her face, as if she knew something that neither of the two did, and she stepped forward.

“Fine. You heard the question, now tell me where she is.”

“A simple please wouldn’t be so hard to add, now would it?” asked Haylehn.

“Oh, shut up, Haylehn, just give him what he wants,” cut in Lydia.

“All right then, Lydia, no need for hostility,” she said before turning to look M full in the face. “You have to promise you won’t go disappearing on us again like the last time, all right? The rebels aren’t as easy to control when they don’t have a visible leader—and that’s coming from experience, M—and since you already have spent the past few weeks in ultimate confinement, I don’t think they can take much longer before something horrible happens.”

“Can’t be any worse than what is already happening.”

“Well, actually it can. I hear that Morrissey’s already got his own form of revolt running all by himself, and he’s planning on taking action whether or not they have you here.”

Lydia seemed to shrink back shamefacedly, grimacing uncomfortably as she turned her eyes to look at the ground. Haylehn laughed shortly, M shaking his head in disbelief.

“I can’t promise you that I’ll come back as quickly as I can, though with that thought in mind, I may have to maintain some sort of time marker. I’ll do my best.”

Haylehn nodded, reaching into her cherry red cloak. “As far as I know, you should be able to make it there safely if you read these words.”

She pulled out a scrap of graying paper with a few sentences scribbled out in a tight script with thick black ink.

“It works similar to how you originally shut the girl up in her prison the first time, although it’s worded a bit differently. It goes against the rules of the utopia, having two people put in the same place at once, but you should be able to sneak in.”

“Didn’t that boy follow you to Luechesie when you first met him, M?” asked Lydia from her place behind him. The rebel leader nodded slowly.

“That was different,” he said. “Because we weren’t springing straight in, but instead were going through the entryway, which is set up so whoever sent the person there could enter it without any trouble. Haylehn, the command, please.”

She held the paper out gingerly, as if it were about to jump from her fingers. “There is one thing that you may want to know before you go right for it, Master M.”

But his hands were already on the words, his eyes searching the black ink as if for a hidden meaning. He was only just paying attention to Haylehn, hearing only distance and empty sentences.

“I think you’d want to hear this, M,” said Lydia from where she sat below, legs spread out in front of her and hands splayed out to the sides. M turned from the paper in front of him to look at Lydia, his dark eyes meeting her hazy silver blue-brown ones. The woman with the silvery blonde hair nodded, and he turned back to look at Haylehn.

“Thank you, Lydia,” the other woman said.

“Don’t push your luck, just tell him.”

“You may want to know that it will seem a bit different than before, besides the obvious, that both of you are older, the location is different, and you are being forced inside a protected white pixie utopia. This time, however, the pixies are not the same ones you may an agreement with, and therefore will not stop to invade your mind as well as Luechesie’s, so in truth, you’ll be in the same mindset as her. You won’t be able to control what you’re doing, and you won’t have any of your old thoughts or memories; the white pixies will attack you, and therefore, you have to try and get out as quickly as possible before you become too susceptible to them. Other than that, you should be completely unharmed.”

Lydia’s face was arranged in a horrible shock, her mouth gaping open and her eyes wide.

“So he won’t be able to get back, then?” she asked.

“Oh, he will, but the situation will be much more difficult to get out of. He’ll be fine, Lydia.”

And M swallowed his pride and whispered the words out loud, hoping desperately that they would work. The only thing that both Lydia and Haylehn saw before the rebel leader clicked out of sight was the emitting lights that sparked around where he stood for a moment, the high pitched whining draining from the air as quickly as it had sounded.

“How were you so sure that he can make it back?” asked Lydia.

Haylehn smiled. “Simple,” she said. “I wrote the words he needs to return here with or without Luechesie on the flip side of the paper that I just gave him.”

--

Oh, ho, Haylehn just told me that she did that. I am [ proud ] .

2010-12-16T17:28:00.000-08:00

so I figured out what I really would die for right now.

I'm not begging for it in a literal sense, but I would die if someone would get me an album that I've wanted to get since forever.

I want the Illuminate album by Lydia so badly. ♥

cause L-O-V-E's not what this was

2010-12-15T11:34:00.000-08:00

As excited as I was to be in A Bad Year For Tomatoes, I found out today after much searching for the cast list that I /didn't/ get a part in it, even though it was, and I repeat

DOUBLE CASTED

as well as

THEATRE IN THE ROUND, OHMYBAEXODUSLUFFELY.

I didn't get to be Myra, Reba, Tom, or anyone special. But, I did manage to land publicity with my sister, so I'm really excited about that. I knew I would already make crew anyway.

So nothing exciting, no awesome part for me, the girl who always aces auditions and cruises into callbacks but never manages to get a part in the actual play.

Excited about my new stuff though, since I get to make posters, programs, t shirts and stuff. With Bonnie. OhmahfreakingExodus it's gonna be pretty cool.

I've become so numb

2010-12-14T16:21:00.000-08:00

I think I've finally worked out my character issues, though Leven's still telling me that I should keep going with a better description on how he gets to grieve over his dead wife, Rahlaura, Penn's dead mummy, except for the fact that his next little part isn't exactly important at the moment, though it is key for the reader to know, and I need him to help me transition to the next chapter. and M has been waiting so patiently for me to write his chapter for weeks now. I've already got the first sentence in, except for I've left it at the bottom of my Word document, right above Chevelle, who isn't born yet anyway, so thus can wait until I know her better, and M stopped talking to me after waiting on his moment for over two weeks.

And now that I've found his trigger music, every one of my characters has their theme song/anthem/music that brings their character out the most/best, I think I can write it tomorrow. I need to sleep on it. But so far,

Luechesie - Lydia, Halou, Circa Survive
Penn - Hollywood Undead, Red, Placebo
M - [ Linkin Park ]; Breaking Benjamin, Escape the Fate,

this is what penn gives me to work with

2010-12-13T17:15:00.000-08:00

"The moment that Muse met eyes with Aspen, his temperament switched completely, and he growled and crouched, paws bent and tail flitting across the floor. Before Penn could stop him, the leopard darted across the room in a blur, lunging at the blue eyed man and pinning him to the ground with his claws.

“Muse!” the boy cried as his snow leopard scratched at Aspen wildly. The members of the Council nearest to him simply shrunk away from the cat, not wanting to get involved out of fear of being hurt themselves. “Stop.”

Reluctantly, the heavy, insistent cat leapt off of the man and back at the boy’s side, retracting its claws and looking up as if nothing had happened."

Really. And my best friend thinks I'm a skitzo for talking about my characters like their real people and for having arguments with them.

"Aspen was on his feet slowly, his hand pressed over the side of his face where there was a thick mess of blood dripping from beneath his fingers. His shirt was torn and his dark cloak ripped, deep scratches striping his face around his painfully blue eyes, and there was a small, rough indentation between his neck and chest where Muse had nearly bitten him."

Ohhoho, that's right, Aspen, you go and die in a hole. I don't like you anymore.

black dress with the tights underneath

2010-12-13T17:13:00.000-08:00

OH MAN GUESS WHO MADE IT TO CALLBACKS?! *points to self*

All right, so even though I felt so uneasy at callbacks, even though I sort of already knew I would make it to callbacks but not in the actual play….as always…I have a really good feeling about this once, since it’s…erhm *throatclear*

DOUBLE FREAKING CASTED!!!!!

That’s right. And I’m excited. The first thing they had me read was, ironically enough, a dramatic monologue, which is what my audition monologue was. Oh, bittersweet, joyous buckets of lol as well as IRONY.

Then I did a really funny scene with this super awesome Asian kid named Wee. Or something. And one of the directors was hysterical with laughter. It was so funny.

And Johnson asked me if I signed up for tech, implying that I am probably not going to make it into the play but into tech. Oh, man.

*isexcited*.

And my husband cut his hair. I was literally in tears with laughter since it was /that/ funny. Oh my gosh. I couldn’t sop laughing. Ohhahohohohohoh.

Where all our confidence kept is behind a shield only light can get through.

2010-12-11T11:09:00.001-08:00

Dddduuuuuuuuuuuddddddddeeeee...auditions went so smoothly yesterday, and I'm so looking forward to the results on Monday, when I will most definitely go to callbacks, because I was so good. No cockiness here, mind you. C:

At first I wasn't exactly sure if my monologue would be good enough, since the play we're doing is supposed to be really funny, and I picked a very serious one that I made slightly funny at the beginning, and I was suffering a massive stress headache for days on end, even after I was swallowing ibuprofen out the wazoo...And then I woke up the day of the audition with a totally clear head, not nervous at all. I was screaming my monologue all day long, writing all of my mess-up lines on my hand in marker, trying to see if I would get stressed out or nervous any time soon...which I didn't. Even during the actually audition AND the climax to the audition.

Tech auditions went really nicely, too, and I'm almost guaranteed to get into tech, now. Unless I wow them again with my amazing skills.

I freaking cried in my monologue, both when rehearsing it in front of Mr. Carter in the hallway with Britley and during the actual thing. The two directors sort of whispered to each other halfway in, like, "Oh, man, she's not doing a comedy, is she?" And I thought I was so brilliant. Oh man, I can't even wait.

This was the first time I cried during acting, and I really got into the character. I stood out so badly that I'll be shocked if they don't get me into callbacks. I am so confident and positive right now, it's not even funny.

Auditions were SO great.

ah, penn...

2010-12-06T17:44:00.000-08:00

“Chess was just a normal person; she didn’t have anything so important that made you want her so much,” said Penn. “Everyone seemed to want her to lead their army against each other, but I don’t know why. Is it because she’s the heir of the throne of Xendrid, or just because you found out about how she’s the energy source for everything?”

The entire room fell silent, the boy’s last words hanging suspended in the air like a wispy cloud.

Leven looked down at his hands for a moment before returning his eyes to his son.

“How did you find that out, Penn?” asked Sommer, but the messy haired boy didn’t answer.

let's watch this city burn

2010-12-03T17:43:00.001-08:00

Hooray for breaking huge time lapses!

(Guess who was listening to Doubting Paris, Lydia, and Hollywood Undead all while writing this? Moi.)

I had some 'splaining to do.

Penn pushed open one of the great double doors of the classroom before he silently made his way to the back row of desks, finally settling in the furthest chair from the front, the closest to the back door. Muse rested at the boy’s feet; his knowing eyes set forward as the dark eyed boy entered the room despondently, sitting beside Penn without saying a word. The other seats were filled with several students, all hovering on the edge of their table in dead face of the instructor, each and every one of them related to someone of high position in the castle. Every student was over fourteen and between the ages of sixteen and the graduating year, and a little over half were descended from Council members; the pair of fraternal twins sitting three rows before Penn were the niece and nephew of Leven’s closest Council member, Sommer, and the others bore strange resemblances to whomever they were related to. The class was instructed by the only female Council member left, after Rebecca, the former queen of Xendrid and Luechesie’s named godmother, had fallen ill and died only weeks before, and was in charge of making sure that the youth of the castle were fully instructed on what was yet to come, from the inspirational magic that ran through the city to the basic information about the soldiers in the army. She was fairly young in terms of the Council, somewhere in her late twenties, with piercing emerald green eyes and black hair streaked with bits of blonde and brown. As well as attending regular Council meetings, she was in charge of making sure that every person understood what they were up against and what they needed to know to survive in the increasingly dangerous land of Xendrid.

“Sorry, mate,” whispered Nathaniel, watching as their instructor hushed the already silent class before starting. Penn cracked a half smile at his friend, staring at his hands while the woman in the front began talking.

She said nothing about the sudden appearance of Penn, just exchanged a brief look with Nathaniel. The Council was fully aware of the situation at hand, since the act of complete betrayal had been thought up by their leader in the first place and committed by one of their newest additions. There hadn’t been any news of trying to get Luechesie back, not even a suggestion; it was as if Aspen had sent her somewhere and relocated the entrance, so only he knew of her exact whereabouts, and he wasn’t very keen on telling just anyone about it. He was still in charge of running the army, still the same playful man he had been before, still the same person that Penn had been so jealous of before he had betrayed them all.

“I thought that we would focus on something that’s come up lately with some of you,” said the instructor. “It seems that many of the stories that have been told to all of you have yet to be clarified, and I supposed that we would spend some of today discussing it. Are you all familiar with the legend that revolves around creatures known as white pixies?”

Penn looked up, completely aghast. The woman made eye contact with the messy haired boy for a moment before she continued. Had the Council put her up to this? Or was he only dreaming again?

One of the twins, seventeen year old Annabel, raised a hand in the air. At a nod from the instructor, she spoke.

“Please, Madame, do you mean how they hide in some sort of secret reality and wait for people to send others in so that they can feed off of their memories and make their mind go blank?”

“Yes, that would be just about it. But does anyone know how one would go about locking people up in one of these ‘pixie utopias’?”

Nobody raised a hand, and the room remained silent except for Muse shuffling into a sitting position at the leg of Penn’s desk.

“Ah,” said the instructor. “I guess that we can start from there, shall we?”

Penn tapped his fingers against the table, trying to see past the strange illusion. It couldn’t be possible that the Council was having one of their members teach a class of potential future teenage soldiers and Council members about how to open up a passageway to the other side of reality. They were ignoring the fact that their original plan to send Luechesie back in order to keep her safe from everything that was happening had already been done and going ahead with whatever they thought was appropriate. But how were they ever going to use this? Were they trying to test him to see how far he could handle the stress, or simply teaching something that would actually be beneficial for the students to know? He was used to being taught lessons on how to understand the laws his father had set out for the land or how the army was the best thing for them to train in since it made them ready to attack at any moment, not something that had been told in children’s stories.

But if they were teaching that now, did that serve as a sign that his theory had been right all along? Did that mean that there were other children’s stories that were actually true, some other things that would be really there if he found them? So far the pixies had been right, as well as the control they had over the aging process and memory loss that came with being imprisoned with them, and Penn was already trying to find another set of stories from the library after the last one that he had found with Luechesie had been confiscated. They hadn’t had much time to look at it fully, but the girl had flipped open the old book to a page that began describing a story on how some animals could use camouflage to look like something else, just how Muse had originally been just a mottled street cat when the two had met.

“So there is an actual command to open up a connection to this pixie haven, and if you ever decide to use it, you have to be very specific in what you want,” said the green eyed woman. “You start out by holding the person or thing that you are trying to send before saying ‘I wish to erase every memory that this individual once had’. If you were to use an item, for example, say, oh, this book…”

To Penn’s absolute horror, she reached out to grip a thick, familiar looking novel from the plinth next to her and held it out to the side. The boy wasn’t able to see the full cover on it before she turned it away from him, but he was able to make out a few symbols from the title, the same fading red letters peeling off of the canvas cover that had been held in his friend’s hands so long ago.

“…then you would simply say ‘I wish to erase every memory of feeling that this object once had and to prevent it from having any further connections’. That would be the first part of the command, which in turn would tell the pixies what to do with it, or to let them know that they are allowed to do what they intend to do. Does anyone know of a good reason to use this particular command fully?”

Not a moment later, several of the students were raising their hands, both of the twins with an answer. The woman called on the other twin, Annabel’s brother Leighton, who seemed to have one at ready.

“To save someone that you really loved from something that was going to hurt them?”

“Yes,” said the instructor. “When else? Dahlia?”

“Hang on, but I don’t understand something,” said a girl with thick, blood red hair. “Do you stay the same if you were to go through to one of these pixie places? Would you live a normal life and keep going as you were, or would you just stop thinking totally?”

“Good question. If you remember the story correctly, you will see that the white pixies are said to control time, meaning that anything that crosses their path would most likely stop aging as they lost their memory, if not stopped growing completely. So with that in mind, when else would you use something like this?”

“To run away from everyone and forget about everything,” said Dahlia bluntly. Several heads turned to look at her, but she simply ignored them and focused on the lesson that the instructor was teaching.

“Right. Next.”

“Erhm, Madame, I don’t think that this sounds like a very good idea, to be going off and hanging around white pixies just because you can.”

It was the voice of Nathaniel beside him that made Penn avert his attention from his commenting peers and the woman. Was his friend really telling off their teacher for trying to get them interested in learning how to send things to the white pixies in the other side of reality?

“Oh, I know a reason, Madame! You can use it to send Penn’s little girlfriend away from him forever to have her head scrubbed clean!”

A few of the students around the offender laughed, but the rest stayed quiet; it wasn’t often that someone got Penn between the eyes and shoulders with an insult like that, but when it happened, it was always the same person, and he was turned around looking the messy haired boy full in the face. Muse leapt to his feet and bared a set of gleaming, pointed teeth at Ehrial, tail flicking dangerously at the direct son of the third Council member that was frequently at sides with Leven.

“Shut up, Ehrial,” said Penn, leaving Muse to rest in his stalking position.

“Does anyone know of the second half of the command that is used to transport objects, or shall I tell you that, as well?”

Muse gave a last growl at the opposing boy before he calmed slowly, sitting protectively in front of Penn. The woman continued as if nothing had happened, but the next few lines that she said sent the messy haired boy’s heart racing.

“Next, you would keep a good hold of whatever you are sending, and say, ‘I wish this to be trapped inside of its own binding and mind with no further company other than those that increase its fate and condition’.”

And the book that had been held in her hand was gone in an instant, without so much as a puff of smoke or even a whisper. Penn still had the high pitched voices ringing in his ears as he gave a hard look to the instructor, who kept the discussion open.

“Most of these words are interchangeable, meaning that they do not have to be exact when you say them, but you have to cover every basic outline of what you want to happen once the object, or person, gets there. There’s more to it than just saying the command, you have to think about a certain place, as well, but we can talk about it some other time.”

“Madame,” cut in Nathaniel. “How do you know about all of this if it was just some sort of children’s story? How is it that all this is even real, that you even found out about how all this works?”

“You are all dismissed,” said the woman, and the students cleared out of the room, Muse struggling to refrain from chasing after Ehrial as he left the room. Penn followed Nathaniel, who seemed to be having the same thoughts as him as he walked slowly past the rows of thin tables, turning to look at the woman before he fully was out of the room.

“Madame, what book did you send? Where did you send it to?”

She was quiet for a moment, sweeping aside a strand of black and brown hair that had fallen into her deep green eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Penn.”

--

I'm running out of common names for my modern/minor characters like Annabel and Nathaniel (both of which I took from real people I know) since I suck at coming up with those. I came up with Ehrial, but only because he needed to oppose Penn, so he got a cool name. Suggestions, preez?

she's got a love like woe

2010-12-03T17:37:00.000-08:00

"I kinda feel like it don't make sense, because you're bringing me in, and now you're kicking me out again. Loved so strong, then you moved on, now I'm hung up in suspense, because you're bringing me in and then you're kicking me out again."

All right, so I broke the massive time gap that was in my story, and I realised that I put the chapter way too early. Which made a lot of sense.

But here's what I made for Heather; and it's hilarious.

Heather pushed a strand of silvery brown hair from her eyes as the slight breeze in the air blew it astray, adjusting the stack of papers in front of her that lay perfectly organized on the wicker café table. The plastic fabric of the umbrella set in the center of the table swayed in the wind as she checked her watch impatiently, tapping her foot against the pavement. It was already ten minutes past nine, and she had already had experience with waiting for her meeting date to show up, but it was getting increasingly old with each passing second. She shook her head and gestured the waiter away from her table before turning her head to watch the passerby that walked past the outside seating of the café, noticing details like what color their shoes were, or where they were headed. A loud clanging followed by a hard crash clipped her attention away from the people walking by, and she watched, her hand half covering her face in shame, as a girl wearing a bright red pair of high topped sneakers shuffled through several tables and two waiters, dodging around the smashed glass from the broken dishes she had caused the servers to drop. She was being followed by a small black peppered moth that shifted suddenly into an albino snow leopard when she sat down, the creature jumping into her lap with bright, wide eyes as the girl pulled a set of blaring headphones from her ears.

“I’m sorry I was late, Heather, honest, it’s just that Moriodoma forgot to tell me what time it was…” she apologized, stroking the cat behind its ears as she clicked her player off.

“Moriodoma? Is that one of the new characters you kept telling me about?”

“Oh, no, that’s Chevelle; this is Moriodoma, my dæmon,” said the girl, nodding down at the cat in her arms.

“The animal that represents you?”

“Something like that. Anyways, sorry I was late; I en’t going to do it again, I promise.”

“That’s what you said the last time,” said Heather, crossing one leg over the other. “All right, Sierra, so we are here to discuss your characters in your story, and I have quite a few comments on Penn.”

“Isn’t he adorable?”

“Yeah,” said the woman halfheartedly. “Adorable. I have it all written down on your story somewhere…”

The girl ran a hand through her auburn hair excitedly as she watched Heather shuffle through several of the papers in the portfolio on the table. “Ah, here it is. ‘Comments made on Penn’.”

The snow leopard raised its head, looking up at the woman with full interest, matching the expression on the girl’s face above him. His fur rippled with anticipation, his tail flicking back and forth as she placed a finger on the printed paper and read aloud.

“All right, so you said, ‘Xendrid. It’s the name given to the Forbidden Lands by the people that live there’. This is good stuff, but it’s back story. It’s good you know it, but the reader doesn’t always need it right off the bat. The key is to start with a significant event that creates a problem for your main character, and then tell the reader pieces of this as they need them, but not too much at once to bore them before they can get caught up in the character or what’s happening.”

“I know, I know, but I already told you of the tragedy that happened with the first couple thousand words, right?” said Sierra. “I had to go through a month of therapy using a ton of new bands I found while having to listen to online radio because I couldn’t get to any of my music, since my mum doesn’t seem to want me to mess up her computer. I’m glad I did, though.”

“Yeah, you’ve told me that before, but I think time-twisting pixies are a cool idea, though.”

Sierra smiled. “I know. I got the entire story from that one idea, which was inspired by The Spiderwick Chronicles movie. Long story short, I thought of Luechesie as being a girl trapped as an eight year old before some boy helped get her out.”

Heather leaned forward, a curious look striking her face. “Really?”

“Yeah, but I en’t totally focused on my baby Chessie right this second. So what do you think of my sexy mysterious beast M?”

The woman moved another piece of hair from out of her eyes, able to answer without consulting her notes. “He grosses me out. He treats Luechesie like some sort of precious object instead of a real person.”

“Aww, but M’s super sweet! But you think that M and Luechesie are adorable together, though, right? I mean, I know there’s sort of an age difference going on, but it’s amazing how sweet they are together, huh?”

“Erhm, no. It’s the kind of affection that a captor has for his hostage, and it feels kind of twisted to me.”

The girl smacked a hand on the table. “Seriously? But they’re so super cute, and Chessie is really symbolic of all the things I’ve anted to be, even though I couldn’t, sort of like she’s me and M’s all the obsessions I’ve had. Let’s think f him as…Mister Carter, whom I’ve been stalking for the past few weeks simply because I’m having massive paranoia and separation anxiety because I wasn’t ready to let go of him, yet, and now I miss him horribly. So it’s like that—how he and I would be in my mind, except a lot more sweeter, because it’s, well, not me.”

“I’ve told you about the massive crush I had on this guy in high school, right?” said Heather. “Embarrassingly huge. And about three days after we starting going out, I just stopped liking him completely. So I’m glad you’re venting through your writing, even if it does cause some creepy relationships.”

“But every time I see him, I quote lines from Hello Fascination at him or silently whisper, ‘No one can know the things I’m gonna want to do to you’, which is a reference from another song. It’s horrible.”

Heather sighed, thinking of a good reason why she even put up with the strangeness that issued from her former apprentice, Sierra. Even after they had been forcibly separated, much to her relief, the girl had never quite left her alone, constantly spamming her with millions of emails that she didn’t care about or calling her out whenever they were at the same place, referencing amnesia and tagging Heather and her husband, Michael, as lobsters. And now she was getting over an enormous crush she had on some teacher at her school that had a moustache, something that Heather had never liked. She was repulsed by the very thought, shivering in disgust.

“So you need to work on your political conflict and setting out the boundaries for the land,” said Heather. “At the beginning, I could use a really solid, straight forward explanation of the different lands in narrative instead of dialogue.”

“All right,” the girl nodded. “I’m still working on the first part of the second half, if that makes any full sense, but I’ve got a massive time gap that needs to be fixed, but I’ll get there. I en’t giving up anytime soon, that’s for sure.”

“Good,” the woman said, scribbling another note on top of the first page. “Now just keep plugging away.”

If you didn't laugh once at any of that, you have some serious issues. XD Or rather, I do, since I wrote it to amuse only myself and my dear Heather. Ah, yeah.

but why does it have to be perfect

2010-11-30T17:21:00.000-08:00

Ah, Luechesie and Chevelle, what would I do without you?

"Hey you ~

So I just wanted to tell you how much I still love you even though I've spent the past few weeks getting over you, because there are some people you just never get over no matter what happens. I love you more than I ever thought I could love, and you taught me how to really love without really doing anything at all. You probably don't realise it now, but you have shown me that it is possible to love even when you least expect it to happen. You have taught me so much.

I see now how stupid I was to let go of a smart, experienced, lovely, funny, beautiful person like you. The surprise of the century? That I want you back--back in my invisible, hopeful arms--and that I want to feel your presence once more, for you not to be such a ghost, such an empty shadow. I want to once more be held in your invisible, non-existent arms again and to be captivated once more--held by your blank stares and vacant longings.

In short, I miss you, my lovely, my whole heart and other half. And you may not know it, but I'm sure that your heart secretly pines away, too.

I love you."

baby, i LIKE it...

2010-11-26T17:10:00.000-08:00

Oh, man, I knew this day would come. I spent over three hours today dedicated to hardcore writing, and I didn't even get distracted or pulled out of the moment until I hit the end of my new 4,191 words, when I had to let other people get on the computer, try on new clothes that were sent to me, and when I decided it was such a great idea to listen to last.fm instead of the select 90+ songs I already had set out. Di-stract-ing.

BUT GUESS WHO IN THE WHOLE OF EXODUS AND XENDRID JUST [ [ finished ] ] THE FIRST PART OF HER NOVEL?

Part one is completely done, and I'm so super excited, because now I get to move on with the rest of my story that I spent hours writing out the outline for! I was still writing out the first two pages of story outline I had, making it as detailed as possible, and now I get to move on to part two! I'm halfway done in my NaNoWriMo word count, and I only have [ [ four ] ] days left. I can actually still finish if I have no interruptions for tomorrow and Monday, meaning over 5k words a day. [ [ Hardcore ] ] writing, which is good if I get to start out with new conflicts and shixx like that.

I ended up with a nice little word count of 27,265 words for part one of Xendrid, and I'm hoping the second part will be a bit better, and I'll think of some better stuff for it later on, as I did before for part one.

Except guess who got out of character without my permission? M. Mister Ensley, the gorgeous amazing man who is supposed to be the bad guy is acting either a. like he was really the good guy the whole time and that Leven and the real good guys were bad or b. being a total egotistical jerk who thinks he can do whatever he wants to my Chessie. Not okay.

So that's why the ending of the last chapter of part one is total crap.

EXCEPT FOR [ [ LYDIA ] ], who was named after my favorite bands, who is my own version of Bellatrix Lestrange. In fact, I got most of my inspiration for her from thinking about how amazing the Malfoy Manor scene of the Deathly Hallows was whilst listening to 30 Seconds to Mars, so therefore, I got my own Bellatrix who amazes me still. She's sort of in love with M, too, so I'm gonna guess Helena Bonham Carter has re-entered my soul for the time being. Ah, Helena and her characters portrayals...

So here's some of what I got today, but I'll just show you Lydia, her and her silvery blonde flowing hair and white cloak, her. She looks like how I pictured Narcissa Malfoy would look like in the books with a mixture of the star from the movie Stardust (who I honestly cannot remember the name of right now) but with a Bellatrix personality. Augh, man, I love her.

--

“Every single one of you, get somewhere safe! We’ve got M and a load of Hunters in the castle as we speak!”

The girl didn’t know what to feel as Aspen moved her down a flight of stairs and through another row of scrambling people, but focused more on dodging her way past the men and women that were rushing the opposite direction. Everything she saw was a blur, and she had to hold on to Aspen’s hand so hard that it made her fingers numb, but something smacked into her and severed the grip she had on the man with the blue eyes. She skittered across the floor, and immediately felt countless feet stomp on top of her, the heels of a pointed boot cutting into her side as she held up her hands to shield her face.

“Luechesie!”

A familiar voice sounded close to her, and as the girl looked up, Violet was dragging her to her feet and leading her hand to another one, this one rough and warm, as the old maid put an arm around the girl’s waist and shifted her forward. Violet fought to swing open another door around the corner and nodded as Aspen pushed her through a completely empty corridor, taking her down the way to her room. They were retracing their steps, trying to get to the collective space where Leven was!

But as they crossed a meeting point of two stone floored hallways, Luechesie caught sight of a small group of white cloaked strangers, two men and a woman with long, silvery flowing blonde hair mounted on a stallion, and a tall, proverbial man in a thick black cloak.

“OH MY GOD!”

Aspen skidded to a halt as he met eyes with the woman, who returned with such a hungry, bloodthirsty glare that made him feel like a mouse cornered by a mountain lion. In the moment it took him to recover, she was already moving toward him, followed ever so closely by the others, and the man with the blue eyes reached into his pocket with his free hand and jerked out a small knife, which he hurled backwards and into the neck of the woman’s horse. It whinnied and toppled sideways onto the ground, where the woman retaliated by chasing after him on foot, leaving the animal behind her in a growing pool of its own blood.

Luechesie was jerked forward as Aspen hurled her through a black door, bolting the lock with shaking fingers as she slid across the hard floor.

“Chess?” said a boyish voice behind her. The cat stretched its limbs and padded to the floor as Penn moved aside his sheets and stood up. “Chessie, what’s going on?”

A terrible explosion cut off any explanation the girl had for him, and it reverberated through the room, flooding the air with a thick, powdering dust. As it cleared, Luechesie surveyed the room, recoiling as she saw the damage that had been done. The door to the bedroom and the entire first wall had been blow completely off, a massive chunk of the corner eaten away by the explosion, and between the floor of the room and the corridor stood three people, all in cloaks, was the woman, another man, and M. The tall man in the black cloak never took his dark eyes off of Luechesie, who was so hollow and torn that she felt as if she were running out of space to breathe.

The girl searched desperately for some sort of ally, but found Aspen a few feet away, facedown with a pointed shard of glass wedged in the side of his chest, and Penn had his hand protectively on her shoulder and was standing defensively at her side.

At her side?

“Where’s my mother?” he asked, directing his question toward M, but it was the woman in the white cloak that answered him in a harsh, commanding voice.

“Your little mummy’s all tied up on the Master’s wall, where she’s supposed to be. You didn’t hear how the Master only just killed her, did you? Had her strung up and hung on his gallows, all pretty and dead!”

“Lydia,” warned the man beside her, gently reaching for her hand.

“Shut up, Morrissey,” she said, pulling away at his touch. The man went back to his scornful look, never taking his eyes off of the boy and girl.

“You killed her?”

Penn let his fingers slide down his best friend’s arm and fall at his side. The look of horror on his face didn’t seem to have any effect on the Hunters before him, other than turning a cruel smile up on the woman’s face.

“Doesn’t feel so nice, does it?”

Muse was in front of the pair of them, arching his back and hissing roughly at the woman, tail raised high. He seemed to be increasing in size with every passing moment, and as the woman uttered a high laugh, the cat had moved into a full form snow leopard, growling and baring its teeth.

“Oh, look it, here, the little boy’s got something of a pet for us!” cried Lydia, kicking aside a piece of crumbled wall and moving in front of the cat, clicking her tongue and tapping her fingers against her thighs, calling to it. “Well, come on there, cat, and let’s see what—AUGH!”

The leopard growled and pounced, biting and hissing at the woman as it ripped through the fabric of her cloak, pulling at her hair and scratching her face. In one swift movement, Morrissey was lunging toward Muse and dragging Lydia out of its reach as the woman across the room and tackled an empty Penn to the floor. Luechesie watched in shock and in terror as Muse leapt at the two, tearing at the woman while it tried to defend the boy while Morrissey tumbled after them. Meanwhile, M’s eyes never left Luechesie’s image, taking in the sight of her beautiful face, her sixteen year old body that he thought he would never live to see, drinking in her golden light.

--

I know what you're probably thinking, but M is not a creeper, even if he may be my creeper. You have to really know him like I do, or like how I explain in a whole chapter, to see that he's not as odd as he seems.

Plus, he's never seen Luechesie as anything outside of her eight year old childlike innocence, so the whole sixteen year old thing overnight is sort of a thing he'd like to notice. *shoulder shrug&*

Ah, but what I just posted was a good piece of thousand words. I luffles me a good word count combined with a good emotionally rendering piece plus another new epic character.

(Sorry if none of that made any sense, but I couldn't include all of what happened before it, or you'd be getting another chunk that wouldn't make even more sense, so I just jumped straight into the action.)

The whole "oh my god" thing was Chessie being emotionally ripped to pieces, if you didn't catch that, and [ [ not ] ] me looking for an excuse to say it. Because I don't like saying it; it's just that Chessie is totally against throwing her filter up at a time like that. She said the 's' word earlier, which didn't make [ [ someone ] ] happen, even though I explained, it's not me saying it, it's the character, and it's used to show how she feels during the situation and how emotionally stressed out about things she is. I don't go around saying it, and neither does she, but she needed to say it at that moment. So, I'm sorry, dad, but it wasn't my fault, and 'crap' isn't exactly in her vocabulary. XD

this is twice now

2010-11-23T19:58:00.000-08:00

So Luechesie had me going for a bit before she decided to blow off Penn since he was sleeping and bear her entire soul and being to Aspen. I am not happy about that, but I have to keep her torn between M and Penn, and Aspen needs to be the jerk in this relationship, instead of the sympathetic gorgeous person that ~~I know he is~~ I want him to be. Penn's asleep right now, and I don't know whether or not he really wants to walk in on Chess and Aspen's conversation because that would create unnecessary drama/plot conflict. I don't know if I should just have M launch the whole attack on them right now, because one, Leven's already got Aspen as the head of the army, and it's too late at night, two, my LueLue isn't doing so well, and she needs more time with Penn, since, you know, she just found out that she finally aged to her true years, meaning she went from eight years old to sixteen in a matter of months, and a couple of days ago she was only thirteen. Nobody told her except for Leven, that irritating epic beast, him.

M sort of wants his own chapter now, except I can't really give it to him unless I go straight from him finding out Luechesie's been taken out of her mind-erasing prison to Penn and Chessie talking just before the Hunters storm the castle and start tearing everything apart. None of them know who is attacking them, since both of them have the same symptoms: arson, dead bodies, etc. and they don't find out until much, much later in part two or three, most likely three, after Lauren, Chessie and Emmie's baby girl, falls in love with the Honeythief.

But that is thinking way too far ahead.

Leven still isn't owning up to all the awesomeness I made him have, but that's probably because I don't have a ref point to look off of, since my first 3,715 words were erased and forever imprisoned on Adam, my demon computer that hated me enough to crash and never wake up. Go die in a hole, Adam, or fall down a well. But give me Sony Vegas Pro 9 and my baby Penn back, please. Please.

Leven is being such a jerk right now, I can tell that he really likes Chessie just not in the way she thinks, but hey, I'd prefer to have at least her best friend/lovely's dad be sane and not be all over her, since half of my other male characters are. I had to make her so irresistible, didn't I? Leven doesn't seem to be missing Pen's mum, Rahlaura, though he needs to, because she was missing him, but mostly Penn, since everyone in the world loves Penn and should hold his hand. Rahlaura is trying to see if I'll let her die or not, though I don't want to kill her, because then I couldn't have another reason for M to storm the castle gates and get Luechesie. Though the thought of her being out of his safe haven for her might be enough.

Aspen needs to follow in Leven's footsteps and be a total jerk, although he needs to be able to betray both Penn and Luechesie, so maybe I should just let him do his thing, since I know his gorgeous black heart will do the whole traitor thing in the end. He loves me enough to rip my other children into bitter-tasting shreds, which is always nice to know.

Luechesie now gets to reveal to Aspen that she really has learned to care for M, though she needs to stop making me use the words "torn" and "a million mixed emotions rushed through her chest and gutted her stomach, twisting her insides into a sharp knot", or something along those lines, because I freaking get it, already. I just can't describe it any other way, with my personal experience with this stuff and all. I feel that she's getting out of my control range for a little bit, but once she starts talking about M again, I think I'll have her back.

My writer's block was so over until I realized that I had to write the next chapter.

tell me it's you or nothing at all

2010-11-20T15:19:00.000-08:00

Oh my gosh, today has been full of writing. I am still blown away by my newest coping medicine, Lydia, the band that makes me bawl my eyes out. I'm not kidding. And I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part one last night and it was the most amazing fantastic thing I have ever seen. The acting was brilliant, and I am still matching the animation scene of the three brothers to Lydia music because it made me cry the animation of it was so beautiful--oh my epic gosh.

I wrote over 3,600+ words together, equal to maybe a chapter or so, even though I'm still 15,000+ words behind where I'm supposed to be, but maybe I can fix that when i have off next week. Writer's block has been broken big time, and Penn and Luechesie are fighting to be the main character, and Chess is winning. She's finally warming up to me, but probably because I'm listening to such sympathetic music now and I'm having random depression attacks with her, so that also helps, as well. Sigh of relief.

My best friend told me something that made me so excited, because I've been searching for something just like it for months. A 3D animation editing software called Blender. Like how in movies like 9 and stuff are made in animation programs, well this one's free. I want it so badly, although it's supposed to be nearly impossible to figure out all by yourself, so I've been reading up on tutorials. I want it. I need it. But I can't download it until I get my computer fixed (it's been down and broken for almost a month now, and the withdrawals are putting me to sleep), so that's a shame. I need to video edit so badly too, since I'm having Sony Vegas spasms because I haven't been able to use my new style in over a month, and WMM just isn't cutting it. I hate my mum's computer, but I need it to finish part one of my novel for NaNoWriMo.

So here's some of what I wrote today, or some of my favourite parts. Remember, this is with listening to a brand new band that makes my characters reboot and write the story themselves. I love Lydia so much right now. I can't get the album Illuminate until I get my computer back, though. Mother of squirrels, really?

I'm coming to love Aspen. Except he's a mother-doubting, psycho-perverted fiend with a jerky attitude later on, as well as a couple other choice words that I can't say on here, or anywhere, really, lol. But he really turns me on for chicken *reference reference* and right now he's going to be my reason for living. Besides the guy that plays Xenophilius Lovegood (Luna's father) in Deathly Hallows and the Death-and-the-three-brothers animation scene.

“You may or may not be aware of the fact, dear friend,” said one of the men sitting directly to the right of Leven. “But we’ve gotten some news of an attack that has yet to happen. Now, I don’t—”

Just then the heavy wood of the double doors swung open and smacked the walls with a loud thud! and in walked the girl, the boy, and the cat, Luechesie still catching her breath while Penn offered an apologetic smile to everyone looking at the pair of them.

“Sorry,” breathed Luechesie. “We didn’t want to miss it, and we were already running sort of late, so…”

“Please,” interrupted the boy’s father, gesturing to two empty seats at the end of the furthermost table. “We were only just starting, so there was nothing of importance that you didn’t hear.”

“But, Leven…” said the man who had spoken earlier, but a warning look from his friend quieted him immediately.

“As I was saying, Sommer,” said Leven. “It is imperative that none of his leaves this castle, otherwise defeating the point of this entire meeting. I’m surprised myself that you all were able to make it here without getting caught, seeing as we are under siege with the force of the rebels. I would like to start out with the obvious issue that has been troubling me for weeks, now turning into months. I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but we haven’t had Rahlaura with us for quite some time, and it is making me sick with how much time I have had to wait. It has been much too long, and something needs to be done about it. I have already set out to do what any normal, sane person would do, and have found out what the problem was and the reasoning behind the kidnapping. I have found that M decided to infiltrate the castle with several of his own rebels and took my wife because he is using her as a piece in his game, a sort of decoy if not bait for us to move ahead and towards him, where he hopes that we shall fall just as easily into his trap as we already have. And then I did what any insane man would do and sent out several of my own men to try and gain access inside of M’s own castle, thus creating opportunities for them to steal her back. I haven’t heard any responses from them for weeks, and I’m beginning to think the worst of it.

“However, we, too, have our own piece in the game, our own thing to bait him into our trap. Gentlemen, you may not have heard it before, but are you aware of the relationship that M had with the little girl that was taken from this very castle some years ago after the true king and queen of Xendrid were murdered? Many of you have dismissed the idea as merely a story, I’m sure, but it was real, and the one part of the story that no one has ever heard before is how M really felt about the girl.”

Until this point, Luechesie had been busy staring at the edge of the table and scratching lines and marking points into the side of the wood, but at the mention of the story, she looked up to meet the man’s eyes, so very similar to his son’s. Her stomach turned over and she felt her face turning pale, leeching every inch of color from her complexion, when Leven said the fatal words that turned ever pair of eyes in the room to look at her.

“I have reason to believe that M himself fancied the girl, that he was in love with her, and gentlemen…”

She held her breath, as if doing so would make her disappear forever.

“This is that very same girl.”

A bitter murmuring swept the room, every man whispering his thoughts to his neighbor as Leven simply exchanged looks with the beautiful, insipid looking girl seated directly across from him.

“Leven, but I thought you said that you had found the girl to lead the battle against the rebellion?” asked Sommers.

“You are correct; I did.”

“But this girl, she is clearly not ready for such a commitment, so what makes you think that we can simply use her as some sort of device to lure M, the master of every Hunter there ever was, to us? Were you meaning to exchange her for Rahlaura? Trade a girl who has had her very own story about her that has been told to literally every child in the entirety of Xendrid for your wife? Is that it?”

“Have you not noticed the superior difference that she once did not possess, or are you simply overlooking the fact?”

“What do you mean, ‘superior difference’?” spoke up Luechesie, rising to her feet.

His expression was indiscernible, not giving away anything, but carried an almost mocking look to it.

“I have been observing you for some time, now, and have you finally figured out. Just how long were you locked in that utopia prison for?”

“Eight years,” she muttered inconsolably.

“And you were just eight years old when Penn brought you back, and that was some time ago. You have been aging, my girl, have you not seen yourself recently? You are getting closer to your actual age in years with every day you live out; it is catching up to you. You would be preparing to have your seventeenth birthday sometime soon, am I correct? And now you are no longer the eight year old I once knew, but the thirteen year old that has surpassed anything I have ever seen anyone else do.”

Luechesie opened her mouth to speak, but held her comment back as her best friend’s father gestured a hand towards her. She looked down at what he was pointing at, and realized with a jolt of pain how right he really was. Her legs were much longer and less thin than they had been in her memory, and her feet had grown out slightly, her fragile hands outstretched with long fingers with dirt under the chipping nails from playing outside with Penn. Her body as a whole was much more developed, right up to her face that had softened into a sweet look but was patched with shock and amazement at the moment, her eyelashes thick and full around her piercing brown eyes that were tinged with blue. She had been outgrowing her old clothes lately, but she had simply accepted it as her height increasing rather than gaining years, but Penn, her best and most trusted friend in the world, had not said one thing to her about it, though he himself was already growing older as well, just not as rapidly. What was happening to her? How had she not noticed that she was getting older, how had she not had anyone tell her?

She felt Penn reach out his hand and touch her arm, gently easing her back down into her chair. Now that she thought of it, Penn was looking older which each day as well, his hair becoming increasingly matted and messy, his height shooting up every month. The boy held out the cat, Muse, who had been resting in his lap patiently, and placed it in his friend’s arms. The animal was instantly warming up to her, purring softly and rubbing its head against her fingers as she stroked it in its favorite place, behind the ears. It calmed her down and eased her hard headed emotions, bringing a small smile to her face.

“Moving on,” said Leven as the room quieted. “I would like to introduce you all to the newest element in my plan.”

“What plan might that be?” someone called out.

“Sommer, if you would,” he said, nodding at his friend.

“Thank you, Leven. We have received news of a recent attack that is being launched in the future, and I have thought it fit to have something of an army prepared and ready to send as a counterattack. I have yet to find out who these attacks are coming from, though I am almost certain that they come from the Hunters’ side of the region, though I have reason to believe otherwise, considering that I have seen the same sort of attacks on their side, but it would be just like M to make it look as innocent as possible.”

“Why have we not been informed of this beforehand?” said someone in the room.

“Because it was not very serious until now,” said Sommer. “And it will take some time to figure out our new men put in our army, if I am not mistaken.”

“Which brings us back to what I was saying before,” started Leven, and he turned his attention to a young man sitting diagonally from Luechesie and Penn, whom the two had not noticed before. “This is Aspen, and he is going to be one of the heads in charge of building our army. He is the first soldier to be chosen for such actions, and he is most likely going to be leading any counter attacks that would be necessary after this.”

He was a boy, somewhere in his late teenaged years, with dark black hair that fell to his shoulders and eerie blue eyes, and he was tall, handsome, and strongly built. He was several years older than Luechesie was, probably approaching his twenties, and was clearly very capable of blending in with everyone else despite his somehow attractive looks, but Penn’s first impression of his was of arrogance, stubborn narrow-mindedness that allowed him to appear much better than he really was. And why was his father so keen on the way he spoke of him, as if this new person was the answer to every question, as if he would end some horrible life-threatening disease that the entire world was plagued with! Beside him, the boy heard his friend utter a small laugh, almost as if she thought the entire thing was a joke, which it seemed like in the first place.

“Hopefully there won’t need to be such measures,” said Aspen, his voice calm, serious, almost a pure mirror image of Penn’s father. “But in case there need be, I am already helping to assemble and train the best I could find.”

“Right. While we are on the subject of something of attacking, I must propose something of great importance to you all. The attacks are growing stronger and stronger, and I feel that it is best to keep the one object of value here, Luechesie, as safe as we possibly can. I know that all of you are here because you are the last remaining members of the Council, and that you have power to make decisions such as these, or at least help to pass them. So I must ask you: do you think that it would be right to have the girl put back in another time-controlled atmosphere like she was before? It would be so simple, we would just relocate her to somewhere nobody would be able to find her, and she would be safe from M, the Hunters, everyone who wanted to do her harm.”

The girl’s mouth fell open in horror. Memories flooded through her mind, racing past and flickering in her eyes: The pixies, messing her mind and infiltrating her ears with the horrid voices that numbed her to everything in the world except her new mental image of herself, the one that had to perform in front of everyone in order to be happy. The man who called himself Ensley, showing up and talking to her, just talking, enjoying her presence and never leaving until tears began streaming down his face and he seemed to be crying with the pain that he couldn’t stay with her forever. Then that crazy pang of emotions she felt whenever she thought about Ensley, not M, but Ensley, who always loved her and made sure she was okay, who never wanted to leave her side until he had to.

“No,” said Penn, speaking for his friend, who was still mesmerized by the very thought of ever going back to such a place. “Would you really have her locked up and go insane just so she wouldn’t get hurt? Are we not already having ridiculous problems with her regaining her true age? What if something else happens that we can’t predict, or even control? Are you just going to throw her in there like some caged animal? Do you forget that there are supposed to be spies and Hunters set up all around us, just waiting for the opportune moment to just run and take her over to their side of the region? No.”

“I agree with Penn,” said Aspen, standing up for emphasis. Both Penn and Luechesie, startled out of the overflow of bad memories and mixed feelings, stared at him in awe. “I don’t think that we should just shut her up simply to keep her away. Wasn’t the point of getting her out of her prison before so that she could help to be the leader of the army against the rebels? Just because I was brought into the picture doesn’t mean that we erase her out and pretend like none of this ever happened. I say we leave her as she is.”

Leven frowned, but seemed to think over what the young soldier had said, replaying his answer several times in his head before he spoke.

“I have already had the arrangements made for her to leave, and the entryway has already been made, but Aspen here has made up my mind for me. Luechesie, we will not be locking you up again.

“Now, if you three would please be excused, the Council and I have some other matters we need to discuss privately.”

Penn watched as Aspen pushed in his chair behind him and left through the double doors, following suit before looking at Luechesie. Her movements were slurred and slow, as if she was thinking about something important, and she didn’t seem to be aware that the cat had leapt of her arms and padded closely at the boy’s heels. She pushed in her chair and drifted out of the room, barely remembering to close the wide doors afterward.

“Chess?” he said, slipping his hands into hers and swinging them loosely. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head, but seemed to recover, looking up to see the black haired man heading down the corridor on the right. She called after him, and he stopped, turning back to watch her make her way toward him.

“Aspen!”

“Yes?”

“I don’t understand something,” she said, still lost in some distant thought as she met his deep blue eyes.

“What is it that you don’t understand? Luechesie, right?”

She nodded again. “Why did you do it?

“What?”

Penn stood a distance off, the cat sitting at his feet with a curious look on its face as it watched with the same intensity that the boy did at Luechesie and the black haired newcomer. What was she doing? He felt a small wave of bitterness race through him, like a ribbon of jealousy waving through his stomach and wrapping around his heart and every inch of his internal organs.

“Why did you tell them not to send me into the utopia prison again?”

“I don’t know,” said Aspen, running his fingers through his thick black hair. “I already gave my reasoning why, have I not? I don’t feel that it’s the best idea in the world, and Leven was going to do it unless I said so otherwise, I think. It didn’t sound as fun and amazing as he made it sound, somehow.”

“No, it wasn’t,” she said absentmindedly. “But thank you.”

“Well, anytime, then. I suppose I will see you again later on?”

And Aspen turned down the corridor, and Luechesie was left standing in absent disbelief, her mind trailing somewhere else. She felt Penn’s hand on her shoulder and the soft fur of Muse pressed against her knee, and the air seemed to shake, clearing her out of the strange feeling she had been drowning in.

“Chess, are you all right?” he asked, trying in vain to get the newly thirteen year old girl’s attention. Her words were halfway hollow and breathless as she said them aloud.

“He saved my life.”

-

Oh, Aspen, how you deserve Luechesie but at the same time don't at all. Luechesie belongs to M. Or Penn. Or everyone, really. But Ens-chesie/Lue-ly us by far my favorite couple in my story, considering Luechesie is myself or how I would love to be, and how the two are so perfect for each other. I made them that way. I love my characters. Especially Aspen. And Ensley (M) and Chess. Oh man.

[ [ n o t i c e ] ]

2010-11-15T16:06:00.002-08:00

If you know me, then you'll probably have noticed that I'm still pretty much obsessed with a man named Rhadi in addition to a million other things. In case you didn't know, Rhadi is my all-time favourite character from Heather's novel Persephone...just a little bit more than Hades, who was replaced ever since what Heather did to him. Still very, { { very} } bitter about that, by the way.

So I ended up writing my little thing of fan fiction about him and a chic named Oliver, who looks pretty much like Hayley Williams but a million times prettier, [ [ if that's even possible ] ].

The first thing I wrote when I came back from hiatus, meaning that I was living off of my brilliant, gorgeous [ [Snatniss] ] fan fiction as well as this beautiful little thing. And I haven't posted it, so while I'm avoiding Penn, I should, or I swear on everything holy and squirrel-related that I will forget. And Luechesie would never let me hear the end of it.

Also, warning, this is really weird and the end is ridiculously lame, but I love it to pieces all the same.

And it's sort of about seven pages long. Heh.

Rhadi broke away from the crowd of grey robed figures as he moved down the corridor and into a much larger room where a series of long tables were spread in front of chairs to serve as desks, sitting down at his own desk where he rested his head on the palm of his hand, heaving a great sigh. It had officially been two weeks since Helen had left her position as a guide and returned home, and he couldn’t help but notice how empty the class seemed without her daydreaming in the back row, how empty every day seemed to be, droning on as annoyingly and monotonously as a cricket’s nighttime chirp. He had really started to grow fond of just having her presence around, her personality that brought a smile to his face whenever she made a joke. There was no one else who possessed even a relative amount of that sort of spunk and individuality, and he missed having someone make comments under their breath whenever he told them to do something that they didn’t feel like; the guides that he had been helping lately were almost robotic, automatically doing whatever he said they had to do, studying and remembering everything that was necessary knowledge to work with souls.

There was no longer that sarcastic element to his life, nothing to really make him smile even when he wasn’t feeling very up to being happy that day, and now, with Hades being dead and Elizabeth being half Persephone and half herself with some other counterpart thrown in somewhere, many of the people he was around were practically having meltdowns over what was going to happen next. He seemed to find himself in an emotional slump that he could never pull himself out of. Was he too, becoming that auto responsive, mindless puppet that he thought of everyone else as?

He had always told himself that he never would miss Helen much if she ever left, even though he felt that eventually she would have gotten tired of her job as a hopeless guide and gone home, but Rhadi had been just fine when she had stopped coming to training to take care of Hades. So why was he suddenly missing her as much as he would an arm or leg? Helen had felt like his only somewhat friend, who actually cared enough to help out even when she didn’t feel like, it and now she wasn’t around anymore.

Rhadi pulled himself from off the top of the desk as a trickle of his students entered the room and took their seats, and his mind immediately flicked into routine teaching mode, scrambling to remember what he was supposed to have the lesson on. He was getting the newer guides this time of day, the ones with only two or three years of experience and were still getting their bearings, and they were supposed to be doing review over the basics of souls. As he made his way to the front of the room, he watched over twenty pairs of eyes affix themselves onto him, waiting his next move almost eagerly, something Helen never did.

Helen…

It had been the exact same lesson when she had run out abruptly, after he had been asking which way to pull a soul, the same day he had given her a one way ticket out of the class altogether. There was nobody in the wide assortment of guides he was looking at who would even dare to not know an answer to a question like that, nobody who would even attempt to procrastinate or slack off. Rhadi missed that feeling enormously, and he paused briefly before starting the discussion, braving the wide-eyed curiosity that was radiating from the far side of the room.

No less than a few moments later, just as Rhadi had pulled out the example rabbit from its testing cage and started probing important questions from his students, a tall girl with flaming scarlet hair and a book in front of her face walked in, almost oblivious to everything else going on around her. He stopped mid sentence, something he usually refrained from doing – he absolutely despised not being able to get his point across when he knew what he was talking about – when the girl gently lowered her book and looked up at him with the most stunning dark blue eyes he had ever seen. There wasn’t even a trace of the typical deer-in-the-headlights in them, the usual response to any newer guide of his that came in late to a training session, and she simply offered her hands to the air in a questioning position.

“You can take a seat by Charlie on your right,” he said quietly, gesturing to the free chair next to an eighteen-year-old boy with long hair who was taking notes intently. Rhadi watched the girl follow the instructions and resume reading her story, vaguely paying attention, picking her head up to see what he was doing every now and then before returning to her own apparent fascinating world.

She didn’t even seem to notice that the training session was over until the door shut behind the last grey clad guide, leaving nothing but the increasing silence, her, and Rhadi, who was still standing next to the rabbit cage stupidly. His eyes kept running over her, examining the oddness that she was amidst everyone else from her hands, which were written and drawn on with black pen, to her painted nails, a strange sight to see around here; nobody painted their nails, it took up too much time, and there were much more important things to take care of, anyhow. Finally the young woman closed her book, smoothed out her bloodred hair, and stood up, meeting Rhadi’s wandering eye.

“Did you get anything out of that, erhm…” he started, trailing off when he realized that he didn’t even know the name of the new guide.

“Oliver,” she answered in an almost bored, resonant alto voice. “My friends call me Leo, or Ollie, but I haven’t made too many friends here.”

“Oliver…” repeated Rhadi, whispering the name as if to try it out.

“I’m not very good at all of this soul pulling stuff,” said Oliver. “I know how to do it, I just get it confused with everything else, like how we’re supposed to take certain ones to one place and which direction that is, if you know what I mean. They might have even pulled me here by accident, since I can’t even get the hang of things, even though I already know everything.”

She doesn’t get it all, thought Rhadi, and he immediately understood why he was so attracted to the newcomer.

Because Oliver was just like Helen, the same attitude, same understanding, the same everything.

“I’ve been here for two and a half years, and I still can’t figure out what to remember for what situation. Is there any chance that I could switch to doing something else around here that doesn’t require obsessive studying like these other losers are doing?”

“You remind me of a favorite ex-guide of mine,” said Rhadi.

“Ex-guide? Are you telling me that she left? Was she the only exception, or am I allowed to go home, too?”

“There was something that happened here that didn’t quite agree with her. I’m sure you’ve heard the not so recent news of how we lost Hades a matter of weeks ago? There was a bit of controversy when that happened, and Helen decided to leave.”

“Helen? Are you talking about the girl who kept complaining about how she couldn’t do any of the guide stuff?”

“You’ve met her?” asked Rhadi, a smile lighting up his face at the memory.

“Only briefly; we were in the same position a while back, but other than that, the only time I’ve ever come close to talking to her was bumping into her in the hallways whenever she was running back and forth from downstairs up to her boyfriend’s room.”

Rhadi didn’t know whether to laugh at the fact that Oliver had found out the line of attraction between Helen and Hades or become upset because of the manner she was talking about it, but he decided on remaining neutral by keeping the simplest of smiles.

“That sounds just like her.”

The tone in Oliver’s voice changed from cheerful and reminiscent to edgy and straight-to-the-point. “So am I allowed to skip all of this confusion and just take myself somewhere else? I’m not the right person to be a guide, I promise you that.”

“Everybody says that they won’t be good at being a guide, but from what I understand, you can be brilliant if you have a little help with it. You say you already know everything?”

“Yes. Are you asking to help me?”

“If you’ll let me, then I’d be more than happy to help. Do you mind staying behind for maybe twenty or so more minutes? I want the chance to analyze what I’m working with.”

“If it means missing hanging around the Path Split with nothing better to do than just stand and watch, then analyze away,” said Oliver, her red hair swishing in a pendulum motion as she resumed her seat, sliding her novel out to the side.

It wasn’t long before Rhadi had Oliver completely figured out: the way she could pull a soul from its body without even trying, how she could do everything that Helen couldn’t effortlessly, as if it were as easy to her as breathing, how she wrinkled her nose whenever she laughed, which was often. It was clear to him that she excelled at everything, and needed nothing more than a tiny push in the right direction, which had been given within the first few days, and two weeks into the extra guide training, he realized that his guidance was no longer needed, and that he had to let her go. Deciding that he would tell Oliver that she was ready to be released, he mentally prepared himself the entire day, going over what he was going to say to her and how he could say it as nicely as possible.

He chickened out the moment he stepped forward.

Oliver turned to look up at him with her bright blue eyes, and Rhadi felt the room shoot fifteen degrees higher. His mind went blank, and he couldn’t remember why he had moved toward her in the first place. Was he supposed to kick her out of extra lessons, tell her that she was the best student that he had ever had and needed to be somewhere else, somewhere far away with all of the other higher ranking guides? A pang of guilt and sorrow told him that there was no force in the universe that could make him do that to her.

The sea of blue staring at him had a curious look, waiting for him to do something.

What was he supposed to say?

Rhadi felt as if he were about to pass out, right in front of her beautiful blue eyes, never to wake up and face the discomfort that was knotting in his stomach. The room was starting to spin, and the lighting in the room seemed uncommonly bright…

“Erhm, Rhadi?” said Oliver, breaking through odd silence like a knife through a thick sheet of glass. “Are you okay?”

A question, thought Rhadi. She asked me something.

He suddenly found his voice, and the spinning sensation slowed down.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“You don’t look so hot, you’re really pale.”

Immediately, his hand shot up to his face, and then he mentally smacked himself across the forehead. He might be self conscious for the moment, but he wouldn’t be able to feel if he was pale or not. What a stupid idiot I must look like.
“No, I’m all right. Listen, Oliver, you’ve been here to learn how to be a better guide, but I can’t teach you anything else. You already know pretty much everything there is, including the weird laws that apply to Zombies.”

That’s it, he told himself. Now just let her go.

“Yeah,” she said. Her eyebrows were arched in confusion, but she still had her nose wrinkled like she didn’t know whether to laugh or to take him seriously.

“You know everything there is – probably more than that – and you don’t need me to help you anymore…but I don’t really want to release you.”

What are you doing!? She doesn’t care about you at all! Take it back and tell her to leave!

The expression on Oliver’s face changed, almost softened into a look of surprise, interest, and overall happiness. “You don’t?” Her voice had softened as well, barely a quiet whisper, as if she were scared of the answer.

“No, I don’t,” he said.

Stop this ridiculous charade and kick her out to where she needs to be!

“Leo,” he started, no longer in control of what he was going to say or do. It was like he was watching another person talk from fifty feet away and there was nothing that he could do to prevent it. “I don’t want to stop reviewing with you, even if you could answer everything in your sleep, but if there’s anything that I could do to still see you, still be around you, I…”

“Rhadi, are you trying to ask me out?” asked Oliver, her tone questioning without showing how she felt.

“I really like being with you, Leo, and I know that you probably only see me as someone who wants the best for you and was only helping because it was what I was supposed to do, but these past few weeks have been so different…”

Rhadi sighed.

Way to go, loser.

And then, out of nowhere, Oliver was laughing. Really laughing.

Now she’s going to laugh in my face, walk out, and tell everyone how absurd I am, he thought, and he hung his head in embarrassment.

A moment later, there were cold fingers on either side of his face, and Oliver pushed herself forward before kissing him gently.

“And all this time, I thought I was the only one who felt like that,” she said, seeing Rhadi’s reaction of pure surprise.

They both smiled and embraced each other.

“Does that mean I still have to go?” she asked, and Rhadi laughed.

Rhadi stood near the Path Split doors, following Elizabeth and Tim as they entered the vast room. The two were discussing what it had been like when Tim had become a guide for the first time, and how the situation differed greatly from what he was now. The argument had been going on for over and hour, and Rhadi had finally realized that the best thing for him to do was to ignore the conversation and pay more attention to everything else. Elizabeth was just beginning to take over her role as Persephone and learn how she was supposed to perform judgment for the incoming souls, and Rhadi was there for both guidance and moral support, two things he had always been exceptionally good at depending on the situation. For this particular case, however, he felt as if he had to pry the two apart from their dispute before Elizabeth would listen to his instructions.

The first few souls were easy, but after that, the more difficult ones passed through, and Rhadi had to help her out more than he would have preferred. Tim continued to mutter complaints as to how he shouldn’t have come with them and how he felt so out of place that he would rather be somewhere else by himself than to be the awkward one doing nothing.

The black doors swung open once more, and in came another soul, this one looking to be easier than the last few had been, and Rhadi relaxed until a fiery red mess of hair rushed into the room. Oliver cautiously moved to the side of the room, her back to the wall as she pretended to be casual by watching Elizabeth pronounce judgment on the newly entered soul. Her breathing was shallow, as if she had just run a long distance, and her hair was windswept, her fingers busying themselves to fix it. It took her a moment to look to her right, the soul was off and out of the room before she did, and notice Rhadi standing beside Elizabeth, his eyes focused entirely on her.

“Hey, cutie!” she said, ignoring the fact the both Elizabeth and Tim turned in time to see her move in front of Rhadi and kiss him briefly. “What are you doing here?”

“Are you two going to making out the entire time?” asked Tim. “That’s so gross.”

“Only if you and Lizzy promise not to,” she answered.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

Rhadi laughed. “I’m supposed to be here, Leo, you know that. The better question is what do you think you are doing running around here like you’ve caught on fire?”

“I got assigned here as an extra to help out with the judgment today. I completely forgot that you like to hang around here. I’ve been running because I had to get here from three floors up, and apparently, I’m not allowed to be such a know-it-all about everything there is about judgments and souls, according to Charlie. He kept getting in my way when I was coming down here, the idiot, and I happened to try and get through the corridors when everyone else was shifting to who knows where.”

“Today is not your day, huh?”

“Obviously not. The only reason they sent me down here was because I’m supposed to take it as an educational experience, otherwise called ‘get the Hell out of here because the rest of us don’t want to watch you read your book when you’re supposed to be helping out’. Sorry to complain, it’s just I haven’t had anything good happen to me at all.”

Oliver sighed and reached for Rhadi’s hand.

“Have you heard from Helen?”

Rhadi frowned. “No, I haven’t. I don’t think that I would be the first one she would want to talk to, were she to make contact with anyone here, which is very unlikely. She didn’t leave on a very good note, and I think she’d rather stay where she is than come back to be a guide again, especially with her self-confidence in that area.”

“Oh.”

“Rhadi’s right, I wouldn’t expect to see Helen running back to us anytime soon,” said Elizabeth. “She doesn’t exactly see us as welcoming her with open arms, anyhow.”

“I’m sorry, I forgot. She’s really upset, isn’t she? Sorry for how I talked about her a few weeks ago, Rhadi.”

“She’s not just upset, Leo,” cut in Rhadi. “Helen is heartbroken.”

[ [ugh, sorry for the lame ending.] ]

[ [ and part two to the fictitious love of my life...(not really, but Helen is my life right now) ] ]

Helen let her fingers fall from the hands of the two guides beside her, feeling more tears burn their way through her eyes, threatening to fall before she even got to the front door. She offered a small, careful smile to Rhadi on her right, whom returned the gesture knowingly. There was an abrupt pause after Helen had collected her wheeled chest, where she froze in place awkwardly, locking eyes with him as if it would take all of her bad feelings away. The silence was broken as she dropped the handle of the chest and moved forward to embrace Rhadi tightly, not wanting to let go of the world she was leaving behind. George cleared his throat from behind them, and Helen pulled away to shake hands with him.

“Well, I suppose this is our goodbye?” she said, a hint of a laugh behind her voice.

“I’m going to miss you, Helen. I don’t think there will ever be another guide like you for a long time,” said Rhadi.

Before she could change her mind, the two grey-cloaked figures disappeared before her, fading into the nothingness of the air.

And then Helen was running through the door of the funeral home, throwing her stuff to the floor as she hit the entryway and moved past to the main room, stilling the tears that were still pushing their way out.

“Dad?” she called out as she navigated her way through various boxes and vases of flowers strewn out around the room.

“Helen? Is that you?” the reply she got was distant and disbelieving, and then it occurred to her that her father had not seen her for over seven years. She had been so young when she had been pulled to be a guide, and now it seemed over a lifetime away that it had happened…

Helen stopped dead center in the middle of the room, trying to figure out what to say. Hey, Dad, I came back because I was sick of being where I was. Oh, and please don’t talk about how I was never any good, because it really upsets me and I honestly just don’t want to hear any more of it. And please don’t ask me about what happened with Hades, because I honestly just can’t tell you…

Hades…

Just like that, Helen couldn’t fight the tears anymore. She completely lost it and broke down, head slumping to look down at her feet as a fit of sobbing overcame her, her mind cycling through a montage of everything that had happened to her, or what would now never happen to her.

A tall man with messy black hair that nearly covered his eyes appeared from the hallway, dark clothes marked with patches of dust from working in a funeral home. The look in his deep brown eyes changed from thrilled to confused and finally settled to concern as he watched his daughter cry right in front of him.

“Oh, Helen…”

She felt the arms of her father come around her, embrace her and comfort her, and suddenly she was seven years old again, crying because she scraped her knee or fell off a swing and the only person who could make her feel any better was her dad. Her mother had died when she was only five years old, and ever since then, her dad had been the one person who really knew her, how to make her laugh, how to cheer her up, how to make her feel better when she got upset. She hadn’t seen him in seven years, and she felt as if those were the years when she needed him most, even though she had been living on her own and visiting him often. That time seemed to belong to someone else, anyone except for Helen herself, who wanted nothing more than to take all of the pain away.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Helen put down her mug of hot chocolate to answer the question. She was curled up under her favorite blanket on the couch in her father’s apartment, her head resting against him as he talked to her, coaxing her problem out of her by simply coming closer and closer to the subject.

“It’s really kind of complicated, because there’s a lot of things that went wrong,” she said, voice still vaguely trembling as she spoke.

“Well, if you try your best to explain, I’ll try my best to listen closely so I can understand.”

That was why Helen loved her father so much, because he was willing to hear her problems and wanted to help her, to see her happy. Anthony hated to see Helen upset, especially when she was this torn up inside.

“Do you remember a few years ago, when I became a guide for the first time?” she asked.

Anthony nodded.

“Well, I was never very good at being a guide. Ever. I used to think that I was just going to have to try harder to understand what I had to do and learn how things worked, but I never got it. And then Rhadi, the guy that taught me everything, or at least tried to, anyway, caught me after I ran out of his class and told me that I could help Hades get better.”

The moment she mentioned his name, a faint whimpering issued from her, as if the memory was too strong and painful for her to keep a straight face while talking about him. And it was true. There was no way Helen would be able to tell the story without crying.

“I’m listening,” he assured. “Did you help him get better?”

“I don’t even know. I thought I did. I was with him for so long, and I started feeling something for him, I could have sworn that I loved him. But then he started getting better, and he didn’t need me anymore. One day, he actually kissed me, but then we had a fight because he had to marry someone else because Gaia named another Persephone, and it wasn’t me. It was a Zombie, a cheater, who I thought was already going to Tartarus, anyway, and her name was Elizabeth. I got to meet her, and she was really pretty. A lot prettier than me. And it turns out that she was actually Persephone herself, just reincarnated as someone else. Eventually, they figured that out, but by then, I was so upset with him that I…I don’t even know.

“I helped her get ready to marry him, but I couldn’t stand to be around them anymore, and I ran out early. I saw her a few more times, and then uMvelinqangi got out and then everything was off balance and out of order…and then he killed him, Dad, uMvelinqangi killed Hades.”

Helen leaned towards Anthony, burying her face in his shoulder as she cried even harder, remembering how she felt to watch the terrifying sickle pierce through the only person she had ever loved more than her father and slice through his skin…

“He killed him, and I didn’t even get the chance to apologize…I didn’t even get to say goodbye…”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Helen,” said Anthony quietly, stroking his daughter’s hair comfortingly.

“He’s dead and I couldn’t save him. I just couldn’t save him…” she sobbed, images crowding her head of something different, someone else she just couldn’t save because she had been too little to even understand at the time…

“Is that why you’re upset?”

It took almost every ounce of courage Helen had to say the next few words.

“I really miss Mom.”

Never before had she disclosed this information to anyone, not even her own father. She thought by not talking about it, she would eventually overcome the sadness, the depression that crept up on her when she slept, the ghosts that never went away because she couldn’t face them.

Her words pierced tears into Anthony’s eyes as he heard them, his protective shield around him crashing down as he, too, remembered his wife.

“I miss her, too, sweetie.”

“I feel like I could have done something for her, something that would have saved her so that she wouldn’t have died. I never even saw her when I was a guide,” said Helen.

“Well, I know that you want her here with you, and you think that things would be different if you still had a mom, but there was nothing that either of us could do. Nothing that anyone could do. I’m sorry it’s happened to you twice. I feel the same way, but I don’t know who has it worse. You don’t remember her, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I’m really sorry that you’re so sad, Helen.”

“I’ve missed you, Dad. Since day one,” she said, and she pulled away, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her sweater.