The Soul of a Shadow [Changeling: The Lost story]

Leave a comment

She was a terror, a hellion. At least that’s what the neighbors said. She could be heard yelling defiantly at her parents at all hours, sneaking out, sneaking back in, throwing things when she was upset.

They’d tried everything: cajoling, yelling, threatening, therapy, punishment, pleading, none of it worked. Finally, in despair, they threw up their hands and sent her away to her great aunt in Britain.

Grandma Leona, as everyone called her, lived in a small town about two hours north of London. Hell on earth, Brie thought. And they seriously expected this old crone to tell her what to do? She began here just as she had ended at home, sneaking out with boys, going to the local pub at all hours, terrorizing the neighborhood girls. But her behavior was not limited to outside Leona’s house. Brie messed with her tidy cottage as well, breaking things, stealing, hiding things to confuse her great aunt.

However, Grandma Leona was less patient than her parents. She tried a few things, even swatting the girl with a switch, but her old bones were not made to deal with someone else’s mistake.

One night, when Brie had snuck out, again, Leona took several household items and made her way into the deserted back garden. Placing a jar of honey, a bowl of mead, and some bread and pork at the woods’ edge, she stepped back twenty paces and turned her back on the tree line.

“Good Neighbors and especially you, O Darkened King, please hear my words. My grand-niece is a terror amongst mortals. She flaunts all rules, mortal and your own. I beg you, come teach her a lesson. Teach her the necessity of rules, of obeying those who know more than she. Take my offering and help me, please.”

Grandma Leona waited for a few moments and then headed back to the house, leaving the offering for whichever of the Good People would see fit to accept it.

The next day, Brie was a completely different girl. Kind, courteous, obedient, helpful.

A completely different girl…

= = =

“I don’t belong here. I want to go home. Please! Please let me go home,” she sobbed and blubbered.

He stood over her, an ebon cane in his hand, which he brought down on her back again. Unfortunately, she only cried harder.

“I want to go home, you bastard! You can’t—you can’t keep me here!”

“I shall do whatever I please with you, you ugly trollop. First, we must make you presentable.” He clenched his hand and raised it upward.

The shackles around her wrists rose up, the chains clanking heavily as she was raised to her feet, the large shackle around her neck forcing her head up.

He paced and forth before her, observing, examining. His painfully, terrifyingly beautiful face was serious, grave. Then, raising the cane, he moved it along her face, feather-light and white-hot all at once. As he moved it along her face, her features began to reshape themselves. A higher brow here, get rid of those mortal wrinkles and blemishes, deepen the dimples, straighten the nose, draw out the cheekbones. He spent all night changing her, listening to her screams as her skin stretched, retracted, bones moved and realigned.

Finally, just as the Arcadian sun began to pink the horizon, he stopped.

“You shall remain here, now that you are a little less ugly,” he droned, the wolfish look in his eyes flashing.

She just hung there, the shackles tight around her wrists, ankles, and neck. Finally, out of sheer exhaustion, she fell asleep in that position.

= = = =

She never knew how long she was there. But he came to her every night, fashioning her until she was perfect in his sight. Then, when he came to her, it was to revel in that beauty that he had made…whether she wanted it or not.

After a while, Grayfold moved her from her cell to a rich, ivory-laden room. She was his favorite nocturnal concubine. But the shackles always remained. Even when he bedded her, the shackles were never taken off. They were part of her now. Her freedom was totally gone; Grayfold decided when she ate, when she slept, when he had his way with her, who else had their way with her. She never saw daylight; her room had no windows, only candlelight; he always came to her at night, and the darkness was her life.

Slowly, over the years, she began to change. Her skin darkened, as did her hair. The shadows of her room became a part of her, swathing her body, wrapping her like clothing. This pleased Grayfold, for when he came to her, all it took was a swipe of his powerful hand to disperse the shadow-raiment and lay her body bare to his sight and touch. That body that was now beautiful and perfect.

She never knew how she escaped. One day she was in her ivory tower and the next, she was scarred, bruised, cut, and broken in a place totally different. A place that smelled, looked, sounded, and felt different. Some part of her knew she was “home” but it felt…wrong in a way. Oh, yes, she was glad to be away from Grayfold, but something was missing.  It was then that she looked down at her hands.

Her shackles were gone! Her beautiful nightmetal shackles had disappeared. On her wrists, ankles, and neck were only thin, whitening scars outlining the bindings that had been there for years. Her limbs felt strangely light…and entirely wrong.

It was then that she began to cry—breaking, wracking sobs. It was as though she had lost five very important limbs, five very intense parts of her. Those shackles told her who she was; what she was for; what her life’s purpose was; what her place was in the world. Those shackles were her identity. And he had taken that from her, tossed her out into the cold like a used-up doll.

Even as she cried, she began to weave leaves together and wrap them around her wrists, neck, and ankles. Anything to cover those scars, anything to make her feel normal again. She felt better once they were covered but it still felt wrong. She would have to figure out a way to make it right again. She HAD to make it right again.

The Right Reason to Write…Or Not?

Leave a comment

My journals since 2000, minus the most recent one.

One of the most interesting things that I will bequeath to Elizabeth (and other children we might have, if we decide to) is my stack of journals. I have ever journal that I have kept since entering college in 2000. I had one when I was a kid but destroyed for reasons I can no longer remember. I love writing here but it will never replace a paper journal. Which leads me to other thoughts.

Why do I need this? Why do I have the need, the compulsion to physically write down my thoughts?

I like writing. I like seeing the words flow out of my pen. Sometimes I don’t know my own thoughts until they are voice and, at the same time, I’m not comfortable voicing them to another living soul. My journals are the reliquaries for my emotions, for my thoughts, my failures, my joys, my despairs, my memories.

I write things down so I can remember them, remember that feeling in that moment for that reason. I wrote down the progression from theatre goer to script contributor for the American College Theatre Festival back in 2001 (though it’s not nearly as glamorous as it seems) because I wanted to remember every step. Every important date of mine and Ben’s beginning relationship is written down and my students were stunned to see that I could recite them all, which even on which date (first date, first kiss, officially a couple, engagement). I wrote down the date I first felt my daughter kick in the wee hours of the morning, the date that we found out that we were indeed going to have an Elizabeth and not a Jeremiah. I write these things down because they are important to me and so that, in my old age and inevitable senility, I can read back and, even if I don’t remember it, I can relive the warmth of it all just a little bit.

I write to hide. Like a friend wrote for his character not too long ago, “I know we’re supposed to feel, but feelings and actions are two different things…” he says. “Isn’t it better, sometimes, with some emotions, to stuff them away til later? Not forever… just til later?” I write to stuff those feelings and thoughts away so I can put on a happy face to the world or least one that doesn’t provoke questions and uncomfortable confrontation. (Oh, but I hate confrontation.) My journal holds those feelings, locked away from anyone else’s eyes. I’m a private person anyway and, though I am way past the journal-with-a-lock days, it is rare to never that I will offer you a peek at my journal. I always keep it near me and my mom was very good about reminding me to take it with me when I left the TV room and put it away. In my journals, My journal serves no other purpose than to keep my secrets and those parts of me that I wish to remain secret and private, ie, the perfect place to hide. Then, with the release valve hit, I can face the world with at least some bit of a lighter heart, maybe.

I write to know myself. Like I said, I sometimes don’t even know my own mind until I start writing it out. Sometimes I don’t like what I am thinking but it’s still does me good to find out just what that is.  And giving myself the space to admit that I don’t like the way I am thinking or feeling is helpful; there’s no one there to contradict me and I am able to be brutally honest with myself about myself.  I may not always be able to be so with people but my journal allows me a place to at least try to be honest about myself and learn about myself.

I’m not saying that there is feasibly no other way that I could gain a depth to myself without my journals but, for me, I think that this has been one of the best ways over the past 13 years. One that I don’t think I’m going to give up any time soon.

Changing Places and the Weirdness of It

1 Comment

Our first Middle Eastern Mayhem back in 2007

Our first Middle Eastern Mayhem back in the day

Do you remember that game “Go to the Head of the Class”? Yeah. Never played it, but I am familiar with the concept, one desperately frowned upon by education researchers nowadays. But that’s a rant for another day. Have you ever gone from peer to student? I have, and it’s really weird at times.

I am currently taking a belly dance class from a woman with whom I started belly dancing back in 2007. Back then, we were both students, totally new to this form of art and exercise. We had our first class performance together, we both performed in public for the first time together. We were invited to and performed in student troupe together. But there was always a difference between us. She had a goal: to someday teach belly dance. I had no such goal. I just liked learning and performing because dancing made me feel beautiful. So, life went on, life got busy, and I stepped away from dance twice for a year, One year, it was because of the sheer busyness of life and other hobbies, and then the second when I became pregnant with my daughter. In all of that time, she continued to dance, to go to workshops, learn from the greats, step out onto bigger and bigger stages, and start taking on more responsibility within the troupe. Now she is a member of a professional belly dance troupe, Intoxique, along with two of the gorgeous ladies who were our teachers, as well as directing the student troupe, and heading up one of her own, Rebellyon, a dub step fusion group, a style she has pioneered and continues to forge into something great.

So sometimes, it’s really weird to stand as student to a woman with whom I was a peer not too many years ago. Please, don’t take this for jealousy. OK, well, maybe a little bit of jealousy. But, the fact of the matter is, she had a goal to work towards and kept on working towards it. I didn’t have a goal; I taught for a living, I didn’t really want to do it for a hobby, too. Belly dancing is a hobby. I did it to get into shape and feel lovely and that’s what I’m working towards again. But here’s the other thing:

I’m not at the head of the class anymore.

She and I were two of the best in our day, I think, and I’m not saying that to brag. Just to put things in perspective. I never imagined to ever be a peer to our belly dance mamas but she was a fellow student. I guess I kind of expected that we would always be peers somehow. Now she has students who are far more skilled than I am and who can do things that I can’t. I’m not at the head of the class anymore and, to a chronic overachiever, that’s a blow to the ego. But I’m working on my vanity – well, trying to anyway. I don’t need to be the best. I just want to be better; I want to be stronger, more graceful, I want to be in shape again. So, when I go to class, I try to shove that ego into a box and lock it there while I am in studio. It’s like when I took horseback riding lessons. My mother told me, “Now, don’t tell the instructor what to do. You’ve only read about it; he’s done it.” And I try to remember that. She’s done the work: the learning, the study and research, the practice, the performance. She knows way more than I do and can teach me new things, as well as how to better execute the moves I THINK I already know.

I’m not a peer anymore. I’m a student, and I need act like one and do my best to learn. And it doesn’t matter that she’s my teacher now; she’s still my friend.

Thank you, Jenny. 🙂

You May Kiss…

1 Comment

“The best kiss is the one that has been exchanged a thousand times between the eyes before it reaches the lips.”

A friend of mine had this as her IM status for about a week and I got to thinking about it and how absolutely correct it is. We don’t tend to think about kisses that much, and how precious they are. But that first kiss…that anticipated kiss…there’s something about it that goes beyond explanation. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try. To explain, that is.

Now, let’s admit it, we’ve all done it at least once. We’ve all practiced kissing, whether on a pillow, a hand, or just an imagined partner. But nothing prepares you for that first kiss with that person who means so much to you. Now you may be a kiss-on-the-first-date, person, a wait-for-a-while person, a kiss-on-your-wedding-day person, it really doesn’t matter. That first kiss…there’s nothing quite like it. I’m not going to be ridiculous and say that no kiss is ever as good as the first because that’s just silly; as you get better together, of course the kisses are going to get better. Come on! But that first kiss, there’s just something about it that isn’t inherent in the ones that follow it. A kiss hello after a long absence is similar but not quite the same. That first kiss is your first view of intimacy with that significant other, that first taste of their innermost personality. I asked a friend what was important to him about first kisses and he said:

“I think that for me a first kiss is the most intimate thing you can share with a person. It’s the first time that the two of you start to kinda melt together. It also, I think, has more of the person’s personality and tends to be more unique than other sexual acts. I also find that I can get lost in a kiss, and that it’s a catalyst not only for physical sensations, but emotional ones as well. […] I feel I get a lot about how a person is in a relationship from a kiss. Those who don’t savor it, I’ve found don’t really savor the person. There needs to be the right balance of hunger, adoration, and patience.”

My first kiss(es) were very short but very chaste and sweet and I practically walked on air back to my dorm room afterward, almost forgetting to get off the elevator at my floor. They went like this. Forehead, both eyes, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, on both mine and my husband’s parts, finally, two short kisses on the lips. Very gentle, very loving, just like Ben. So…I guess I have to agree.

Deep-Felt Dreams

Leave a comment

I had a dream last night. A Doctor Who dream.

I was somewhere with the Eleventh Doctor and was his companion, I guess. But we were with a group of people, at least three others. People I apparently knew, though I didn’t recognize any faces. I can’t remember hardly any of the details but a few.

At one point, we were worried about something and the Doctor hugged me, telling me it would be all right. Then he kissed the side of my head like he would do to Amy a lot and said,  “Love ya,” in the carefree way he has.

I hugged him back tightly, kissed his cheek and told him, “I love you, too.”

Apparently, the way I said mine struck him as different and he pulled back from me, looking at me oddly. It was like a mixture of disbelief, bliss, and pain as if I had punched him in the gut and he was trying not to cry.

And then I realized that it was true. I did love him. Truly love him. And so, “I said ‘I love you, too’.”

I cannot remember if I kissed him or not, but I know that I took a fair amount of teasing from the others in our group later on in the dream.

Now I don’t do dream interpretation, and I haven’t watched Doctor Who in weeks so I am unsure what led to the dream. But what I do remember clearly and sharply of that moment in the dream is the feelings. The feeling of him hugging me, the warmth of his arms and his lips as he kissed my temple, the surge and skipping beat of my heart when I saw his face and realized that I loved him. As I have said before, I am very sense-oriented and my memory is tied into my senses. This was a dream/memory that I fought to remember, because you can never get enough of that lovin’ feeling.

The Face in the Mirror

1 Comment

I have a routine. It starts after we get home from a walk and my infant daughter is down for her nap. It goes: shower, face care, lotion (start from the feet/legs and move up). It is my time to myself; a time of quiet in my house. Though, today, I had a thought as I was putting my face cream on. LOL, yeah. That.

When did I start worrying about this? When did I start worrying about wrinkles and the like or how old I look? I always thought I’d be above such things, as pretentious teenager as that sounds.

I’ve noticed, over the past couple of weeks, that sometimes I will catch my reflection in the mirror and I look…different. I cannot quite describe it but my face looks different to me. Softer was the word that came to me when I first noticed it. I sort of felt like I was looking at someone far classier and more graceful than I have ever been (read: felt). Now I find that I start looking for her, for that face that looks like not my own but, apparently, is my own. It has to be. I don’t think any of the four mirrors in our house are magic, in any case. I search for that face now, search without searching for her. I look to catch her in the corner of my eye. When I do spy her, I try to keep very still and just look, for fear I’ll scare her off. It’s in those quiet moments that I find her lovely, find her to be…what I always wanted to be.

And there she is, in my mirror. And I can find her. Me. Sometimes. So, I guess, thank God for routine.

Momentary Writing: “I Cannot Help Myself”

Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This five-minute writing was inspired by a scene from CBS’s “The Good Wife”.

“I Cannot Help Myself”

I smiled at him! I can’t believe I smiled at him. I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help myself. His smile makes me want to smile back, to hold that smile, hold that gaze that we share. Hold it for as along as we can, far past what’s socially acceptable. But I always blink. It’s like the world around me goes quiet, becomes just a murmur in he background. All except the dropping of my belly and the rush to my head that comes with it. But  I always blink.

I blink because I can’t. I blink because I am scared. I shouldn’t be doing this, but I cannot help myself. I smiled at him.

Comics Spotlight: Catwoman

1 Comment

Jim Balent’s Catwoman, written by Chuck Dixon.

I have been an avid collector of Catwoman comics since the early 1990s and, today, I have found that I am only 16 issues away from completing my collection of Catty comics from the era of Jim Balent. For those of you who don’t know, Balent is the man who first drew our dear Selina Kyle in her dark-royal purple catsuit, thigh high black boots, black clawed gloves, and graceful whip. Balent took Catwoman from a rather laughable TV show character (though I worship at the feet of Eartha Kitt) and turned her into a sensual, deadly femme fatale. The writers circulated quite a bit but, throughout at least 70 issues of this series, Jim Balent remained Catty’s faithful penciller, refining and defining the form and figure of the woman that has become positively iconic in the world of Gotham City and beyond. Especially to me. Of any series that has come after, the Balent-era Catwoman has always remained my favorite version and is the most appealing to me. She goes after what she wants and rewards herself when she is successful. However, she still has a heroic mentality, unwilling to leave those who are innocent to suffer if she can help it and never taking from those who cannot easily afford it.

Last summer, DC launched its New 52, restarting all of its major comic book titles as well as adding some new titles, Catwoman.  I was a little iffy on this, as I knew that they were keeping her new black outfit, which to me, has always felt clunky and with no sense of “slink” to it. But, when it dropped, I began to read it and found myself rather pleased with its beginnings. One thing that I really love about it is that they openly acknowledged the attraction between Batman and Catwoman almost immediately. In the past, it’s been rather “pussyfooted” around and implied but, in the New 52 Catwoman, it is acknowledged (and enacted) by the end of the first issue. Well done! I like it! Unfortunately, the series fell short of my expectations and, though I have collected most of its 20-something issues, I have only read a few but disliked the path the story took.

I admit it, I am a small comic nerd and proud of it. More importantly, I am a Catwoman comic nerd and proud of it. I will forever love Catty and may the Femme Fatale live forever!  =^_^=

The New 52 Catwoman

 

ANNOUNCEMENT: Revise, Regenerate, Re-open

Leave a comment

So I have decided that this blog needed to be opened up to ideas beyond that of my own writing, as more than just a repository for my skill practice.

So I’ve opened it up to my whole existence within words, my life. Not just me as a writer. Me as…everything. Writer, mom, geek, and woman, er, superwoman. So…welcome and feel free to poke around, read, follow. Just understand this.

I may be superwoman, but I am human. Very human.

But that’s what makes me great, isn’t it?

Utter Dichotomy

Leave a comment

She was an utter dichotomy sitting there at the diner counter in her sundress, polka-dot, peep-toe, wedge sandals, a turquoise ribbon shining against her dark hair, the abundant curls of which had been hastily caught up into a makeshift chignon at the base of her neck, due to the unexpected heat in the restaurant. Wasn’t this why air conditioners were invented? Surrounded by Coca-Cola memorabilia and looked down upon like the moon by a giant portrait of Elvis, framed by vinyl records, she bounced her toe slightly to the beat of “Earth Angel”. She looked like a picture out of “Grease”, sipping on a milkshake while playing with her iPhone. The smell of sizzling meat and deep-fried whatever filled the diner as servers rushed back and forth behind the counter before her, making milkshakes and getting ice cream cones. In the background behind her was inconsequential chatter as she typed away with her thumb, putting down her milkshake so she could use her more dexterous index finger. She was writing it down so she would remember, though none of them ever would.

None of them would ever remember the strange man (whom she was still sure had a smorgasbord of mental issues) with the bright blue box that was bigger on the inside, ancient and inexplicably new at the same time. He said he’d borrowed it, sort of. He’d shown it to her, offered her “adventures throughout time and space. I love a good spot of adventure, don’t you?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, I don’t like adventure.”

And she didn’t  She didn’t like the unknown, with all its variables and dangers and long, long ways from home. Life had enough adventure as it was. She was getting ready to start graduate school soon, leaving the school where she had been for four years, the friends she had made, the professors she admired, the campus that had become home. She was already scared enough of that; she didn’t need the whole of time and space to compound that fear.

He seemed intrigued. No one had ever told him no before, at least not that he could recently remember. So he sat down next to her on the steps just inside the door and they…talked. For a long, long time they talked. Correction: she talked. She told him about her life, her parents, her home, about her. Why, she never knew. Why did she open up the book that was her life to this strange stranger? But she did. She told him it all, punctuated by laughs and tears, anger and joy.

And he listened. Unlike when he had first come to her, he hardly said a word. He leaned his elbow upon his knee, his cheek propped upon his fist, and he listened. When she finally circled around to that day, he gave her a small smile.

“You’re right,” he said, “You have adventure enough here. Your entire life is an adventure, don’t you see? I suppose…I suppose I never really thought of it that way. I always thought I was offering adventure, never that I was interfering with one.” His smile is sheepish then. “Sorry about that.”

She smiled and laid a small hand on his arm, telling him that it was all right. She hadn’t thought of her life as an adventure either.

“Well! I will take my blue box and leave you to your adventure.” He bounced up from his seat, all his former energy returning.

“You’re part of it now, you know,” she told him as she rose herself, pausing on the steps, “You’re part of my adventure, even though I won’t go with you on yours.”

The strange man smiled and, coming back down the steps, reached out and gathered her to him in a hug.

She couldn’t quite describe what he smelled like. A hint of smoke, strawberry jam, silk spiced with incense…she just couldn’t place it. Finally, she gave up and hugged him back.

When he pushed her back, the strange man smiled and then turned her around and began shoving her out towards the doors. “Have a good life, look both ways before crossing the street, don’t take any plug nickels (whatever that means), and…” He paused as she was almost out the door.

“And enjoy your adventure.” He smiled was broad and bright as he stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his feet.

“I will,” she assured him before stepping out the door. When she turned around, the borrowed and blue box was gone, as was the strange man inside.

No. None of them in the diner would ever remember. But she would. She would always remember. With a smile, she finished up and turned towards the diner doors and the adventure that awaited her beyond them.

“Geronimo.”