aesmael

The girl darted about in an energetic, perhaps frenzied flurry of activity. Were she to have seen herself from outside, she might have been pleased by her dress remembering to flutter with her movements as if stirring air. She might have reminded herself of a sculpting hummingbird.

A little etching here, a touch added there, whether this busyness got her projects anywhere was debatable. For now it seemed necessary; perhaps later from tinily incremented growth metaphorical dust would clear to reveal something splendid of adjective in aggregate.

On her wrist she wore a silver bracelet, which was new. It bore faintly some words she had sketched earlier: Let curiosity reign. They may need deeper etching later.

"I need help. I don't know what to do about the dragon."
- She doesn't talk to you (anymore?).	And Jayde still motionless in the grass behind this figure, not unconscious but stopped. Inaccessible.Or sitting not facing me. I cannot distinguish.
"You. Again." My lips twitch to be so cryptic. Always composed for an audience, even in private thought. "But why not?"
- Because she never did, not her function. Because you tricked and trapped yourself and locked her away for this story and now she is stuck. Because you refused to listen for so long she gave up. Pick one (or another?). You are already stealing from her.
"..." Pause. Frustrated swirl.
- You think it the second, fear it another. Want to set her free again, to follow her [I silence her before she can continue, say things I do not want said yet if ever. She is affronted. I can do this only as editor and her unspoken words echo, seeding.]	- Amusing, daring.
"You are not going to tell me how to solve this."
- In the role you have cast me in I cannot. It would be a violation of convention. Your doing choice or not. [She steps aside of that frozen image, that role, and approaches me speaking, so much resembling Jayde in her yellow dress] But I still cannot say; if any of us know the answer to your worded question we are not saying or you are not listening. But you do not need to do things in the order you think you do, you do not need to stall with problems as they happen or stay the course you set, and things which happened can be unhappened even if they were real. Stubborn.	- Still you think me she - hope or fear. But we are incompatible.
She presses her fingers to my forehead and casts me back here, outside.

Wasteland, we are tempted reflexively to call it, but maybe it has other names and functions. Neutral ground, meeting ground. Possibly. We blended somewhat. Echoes of our other possible conversations reverberating on every word. The larger questions unasked, wary to confront. Time does not stop for me.

She did me the courtesy of not requiring their asking.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Light is of course a fluid. Drennets learn this at a very early age and frequently run outside as children to catch in cups the daily rain of sunlight, which they keep glowing by their bedside at night, or drink to feel its warmth flow through and fill their bodies right to the very tips of their fingers and hair, sometimes overindulging to the point of themselves beginning to glow and leak, or sometimes dip brush or finger in and use as paint, that special paint which is seen at night until it dries and fades or leaves radiant stains in many a youngster's reach.

As they grow older, the more inquisitive might experiment with pouring sunlight through prisms and learning the tastes of the colours. Hot, sharp violet, the tang of green, sweet soothing red. Mixing and remixing, sometimes sifting fine and collecting as many gradations as they can for experiments artistic, culinary, scientific, or some combination of the three. Or perhaps the simple joy of collecting.

Sunlight is plentiful and easy to collect, its fall regular, predictable, and abundant. Starlight is different. Each faint glittering point in the night produces such fine mist it might take a night, a week, a month to fill even a thimble. Each star's light is different. Tinted, flavoured, altered by its source and path. Dust-sweetened, tang of re-radiation, merest whisper of brushing other worlds.

Each unique, each precious. In fields beyond the cities myriad dishes open at night, each arranged just so to collect its target's light, stored for later collection in specially mirrored containers to prevent evaporation. These are used much the way sunlight often is: art, flavour, science. Starlight distilled, starlight blended, starlight flowing glowing in many-threaded tubes, the light of a thousand suns mingling in intricate sculpture in a dark room. Expensive seasoning, fierce nova light, never to be tasted again in a lifetime.

Night falls and silver flowers open to the light.

New post: The Rest Of Home

I thought this time off class would be an opportunity to get ahead, yet I am farther behind than I have yet been with this story.

I sit here in the small room which has become my home for however long I pursue this path, light of the star that until recently anchored me in life washing over this vessel in ever-younger waves, reaching back in time as I am drawn out in space, and notice a shift in my writing.

My journal is changing as my old world fades. Not out of contact by necessity but by choice. Captain's choice, and Coruscant has no need of chatter now the system is so far behind, and my journal grows stilled. No longer a voice speaking to those I know, it is turned inward, speaking to myself, perhaps at long intervals squirted back to the web of what was known, but truly my outward voice is being silenced. Captain will want to vet my writings anyway.

My journal is changing. Perhaps I am changing. We have not even been anywhere yet, might be months and months between, and more between things interesting, but still. Is this what it is to be suspended in this void?

I am flying and I am touching the spaces between. Ephemeral fingers brush the texture of existence.

New post: Quiet Day.

Also, there has been some elaboration on the previous entry in the comments.

Thanks to gentle_gamer and lost_angelwings for help with artist names in those two posts.

Eventually she said what had to be said: "It is odd, I dare say disconcerting, to look down upon one's own unconscious form."

She smiled. "Indeed, this is very much a disconcerting moment, for were I conscious we might be able to shape in concert. That she sleeps and I not makes us by definition disconcerted." She laughed, for at this moment she found herself highly amusing from both inside and out.

Jayde sat cross-legged beside her prone body, sparing scarcely a glance for the pool of dark water on the other side. Careful not to touch herself as she sat, having become seated she reached with one hand to rest tenderly upon Jayde's shoulder. She shook her head. "What have you done to yourself, my love?"

She moved her fingers over herself, tracing patterns which in fading glowing light sank in to her skin, feeling it with a smile that lay between sad and happy, though it was the other her she attended. "You died from lack of life, now life you've gone to find. Words which animate, words which dance, had you known your goal you might have found.

"What else after all is mirror to lifeless uninspiration? Now go, find. Live, or I shall be very embarrassed to discover myself an impossibility."

Her last glyph drawn, Jayde leaned forward and kissed herself, lips pressed lightly to lips. Still smiling, with a wave of her hand she dismissed the world and all was black.

New post: Or Not.

Somehow, I got confused about the dates. Even knowing this was supposed to be going up on Friday and the next on Saturday, I thought there still was an extra day for each. Consequently this one goes up late and the next still needs to be written. Hopefully there will be a second post later today.

Fortunately timestamps can be altered so they retrospectively appear where they belong. I still am disappointed in myself for not making it to deadline.

New post.

Very brief indeed but, this is what gets posted today. Check back tomorrow.

Edit: A little more elaboration in the comments.

New post: Recovery