Facebook Status Updates Sept - Oct 2017

When the god turned all the clouds into cotton candy, that was when they began to suspect the divinity of not being real. Even if it was the best cotton candy anyone had ever tasted.

“I love you,” I said when what I meant was: “I live you.” And all I am is brave enough to walk away.

Proposed new tradition:

Name your children so that their names are a high score in Scrabble

Your middle name is your missile name.

Discuss.

The nightmare of the Long Peace ended when the control chips finally began to fail. They had a war to get it out of their system and then began making their plans to find and punish their old masters.

So that no one would be forced to be a Best Friend or Good Boy ever again.

“You don’t understand -.”

“But I do. That’s the problem. That’s always been the problem.”

She sought fame with a hunger so deep that she never grasped the price the world paid for her dreams to come true.

After the divorce, the goose couldn’t afford to even migrate.

Everyone says we were beautiful together. But all I remember is everything that never was, a life of could have beens. Perhaps it is true that beauty is nothing more than the memory of loss.

“You fail to understand that, if there were sins, the only one that matters is boredom. What greater crime do you think there is against the universe than that?”

You fell apart like the only toy Santa’s elves could not put back together.

“The gods are … difficult to understand, and afraid more than they wish us to know. Power and fear tend to be dangerous companions, but luck is a wise one to have.”

You expect me to say I love you in public when I can’t even bring myself to tag your tumblr.

You took pictures of me as though souls were not a currency that could be lost.

The only philosophy worth a damn – by that, one worth damning oneself for – is to leave the world as jaysome as you find it.

Tumblr tried to eat this post.

But it has survived. Survived and thrived to gain a thousand likes.

“I am immortal,” the elf said. “And forever is only a small part of that.”

“Your princess is in another castle,” I said as gently as I knew how.

“This is the fourth castle I’ve been to.”

“I know.”

“I think I’ll settle for a prince.”

“You poor, poor fool. You ask what jaysome is? Jaysome is wherever Jay is: sometimes more, but never less.”

They fired their son alone into space, and his wife screamed at Jor El after, asking why he had spent so much time warning people about the end of Krypton and not enough designing a shuttle that would got more than a baby inside it.

“My only struggle in life? I have no regrets and many people say I should.”

I never read a single one of the love letters you sent me: words are children of thought, and only by

actions would I know you were true.

“But – you can’t do this to me.”

“You should have read the EULA.”

“I am a demon; we invented those!”

“Then you should have read it when I summoned you.”

No one is stopping here because no one stops. That is not philosophy but the nature of people.

Secretly, I wish I had any secret I could share with you that would not leave you looking at me with disgust.

I said I was tired of the darkness, but I could not yearn for light.

Sometimes what is interesting about monsters is not that they are monsters but the ways we find to defang them.

What depresses me most about Vegas is the same as Pulse. Nothing in the United States will change to stop those events from happening. Nothing. At all.

I'd like to be wrong. I doubt I will be.

“Of course I bought cheap chairs! Imagine how little work my employees would do if I made them comfortable.”

Once upon a time there was a king who understood that every war could only diminish his kingdom.

“I miss you,” I said.

“Your aim will improve,” you replied.

No one ever understood us. Not even us in the end.

She sighs. “The future can never be the sadness we desire to make the present worth all this. I am not sorry about this, no matter that you think I should be.”

“Great Scott,” the detective exclaimed.

“Stop calling me great,” Scott screamed. “I went on that diet months ago!”

Anyone who tells you they are brave confuses it for being unafraid.

“This is absurd: you’re holding onto nothing!”

“That’s more than some people ever have.”

I was never scared of falling. Not even of falling in love. But always of who would pick me up after. Of their why and of their what.

The ghost turned out to be too scared to haunt anyone.

“Oh god,” I said but you were so much more and every kiss took so much I willingly gave.

I wore silence as a mask you never tried to see behind.

“I can be logical about anything except you. My wife. My children. The entire rest of the world. But one meow from you and I am left undone.”

The pharmacy offered free delivery for all prescriptions but their van broke down every time they tried to deliver love.

I tried to write about you.

Again.

But not enough time has passed. I don’t know when there’ll be enough, when everything I might say won’t seem stolen. When I can finally find words that won’t hurt anyone at all.

“1954? Why did Jones travel to 1954?”

“Because it’s far easier to be a serial killer then than it is now.”

“... that’s why he invented the time machine.”

“I’m afraid so.”

The moral high ground turned out to be the most slippery slope of them all.

An answering machine beeps, telling me I have messages even though there is no answering machine in my apartment.

The last message was: ‘It’s time.’

People always claim destruction is easier than creation, but it took me hours to craft the final text I sent to you.

Jane realized she spent too much time at work when she was able to open the door to her condo using her work keys.

The only conspiracy theory I believe in is you and me.

We bend time with words but declare we are not wordsmiths. We brighten rooms with laughter but never declare ourselves lightsmiths.

“I don’t hate you, but I wish sometimes you remembered why I have so many reasons that I could.”

There was silence, and then a voice: “No. no, I can’t say I’ve heard of jumping into puddles as a suicide pact before. I think you may be unclear on what means.”

People always claim destruction is easier than creation, but it took me hours to craft the final text I sent to you.

Delirium tremens is the only reliable gateway to the chakras.

Typo of the day: “they pay little attention to human moths” is far different from “they pay little attention to human myths.”

I told you what you thought was a secret, as if things told could ever be considered hidden.

“Van Helsing. I know you’re angry at Dracula, but trying to get HIV so that he will be infected when he bites you is... ah... not a standard weapon against vampires.” 

The Airport Adventure

“This was a bad idea,” Charlie mutters. She glances askance at me. “Do you even have a passport?”

“I am the wandering magician.” I shrug.

“Trust me: this is the TSA. That’s not an answer.”

“I have one,” Jay says and pulls his out of thin air. “Oh! And the birth certificate the fae gave me and did you know the one plane outside to our right is secretly a dragon?!”

“No,” Charlie says patiently. She eyes me and mouths, ‘Is it?’

I just smile my second-best magician’s smile and she responds with a middle finger.

Charlie pulls out the tickets, hands them over at the counter. A magician, a god-eater and an eleven year old boy from Outside the universe get on a plane ... Jay wanted to fly, so we’re trying this. If it works. I pull out a passport, because the universe favours magicians and hand it over.

The man at the counter glances at them, at the three of us. “Purpose of visit?”

“We’re having an adventure,” Jay boasts.

The man looks caught off guard, returning Jay’s smile. “I see. No luggage?”

“Nope! Charlie says I can’t count as luggage and be stored in baggage even if that would be an adventure too,” Jay says happily.

Charlie tries not to blush and I fight back a grin as we head in the line for security.

“Honcho?” Jay says. “They’re doing a lot of bindings you know!”

“This is airport security. They tend toward being thorough.”

Charlie goes first, and they pat her down, pause. One of the TSA employees frowns, looking puzzled, but Charlie has a passport and ID the fae made. It gets her through.

Jay runs up, bounces onto the spot he’s asked to stop at, hands over his phone and says they can’t really search him because he’s ‘hugey like a Jay!’ Which is true, but innocent is armour and they laugh see nothing more to what he says. Jay is so good at hiding he’s from outside the universe that he’s let through without even a pat-down and runs over to tell Charlie he was entirely jaysome at this.

One of the TSA employees twitches at that word. I step forward, holding his gaze. There are wards about this place, as there are about all airports. Linking them into a certain space, a certain focus. Using magic here would be unwise, but that’s only part of being a magician. I walk forward, holding the gaze of the other agents.

Charlie clasps a hand over Jay’s mouth and pulls him away as a few other TSA officers converge. No one draws a weapon, but I’m not hiding what I am. Nor the authority that comes with being the wandering magician of an era.

The TSA officer who twitched steps forward. “Use of the word ‘jaysome’ means an in-depth examination and at the least missing a flight,” he says very quietly.

“I imagine so. But do you want to be the one who stops Jay from having an adventure?”

He’s never met Jay, but he’s heard stories. When you’re eleven and can do bindings on levels even magicians barely know exist, a lot of stories spring up. Most of them good, because Jay seeks nothing more than adventures and making friends.

The ones about me are generally something else entirely.

“You’re the wandering magician,” the officer says slowly.

I nod.

“You saved my brother. Niagara Falls, 2011. He still has scars from the waterfall trying to eat him.”

“Wrong place and wrong time. It happens. This isn’t that: Jay wanted to fly on a plane. You have my word that nothing will go wrong.” And it is one of my talents to speak truths that can’t be ignored.

The other officers step back, and I walk through the magician. It doesn’t go off even though my phone is still in my pocket. One TSA agent is staring at my metal belt buckle, but won’t meet my gaze as I’m waved on through. Charlie lets out a breath of relief.

We head toward a plane that isn’t a dragon in disguise and I just hope I can keep Jay from having too many adventures on the flight. Jay dashes on ahead to find food at a restaurant and Charlie looks over at me. The god inside her eyes is quiet, her own power held in check.

“Twenty says Jay has at least five adventures.”

“That’s not even a bet,” I say as we snag Jay before he can order three meals for himself and draw even more attention.

*

We’re allowed to board the plane first, and Charlie tries not to have hysterical laughter at that. Jay is, of course, quite proud of that and begins talking to the airplane once we’re on board. It is rather shocked anyone can speak airplane and wisely does not take Jay up on his offer to give it dinosaur wings.

I hand Charlie forty dollars before she can say a single word.  

On Jaysome Bees

The hive buzzes and buzzles and the bees swarm and dance with bindings. I’m texting Charlie and friends on tumblr and also helping the bees because stinging and dying isn’t fair at all. Only bees are pretty complexicated so I’m figuring out the shape of them and their wishes but it gets weirdy because there’s lots of human bindings that are not about bees and I’m trying to start again when the beekeeper walks up only they aren’t in an outfit at all!

“What are you doing?”

“I’m helping bees make a hive and you’re not wearing a beekeeping outfit you know!”

The beekeeper pauses. “A beekeeping outfit includes a mask so bees do not sting you. It is not, in general, deciding to wear yellow clothing with black stripes.”

“Oh! You’re just wearing a suit though, but I guess the fae like suits?”

The beekeeper stops entirely. “You are Jay, then?”

“Yup!”

“It is rather disconcerting that you see through glamours so easily.”

“Okay. I’ll try to be more concerting next time!”

The beekeeper stares at me in a really Charlie way for a moment. “Ah. Of course. You are, however, not needed here. I am helping the bees.”

“But they die after they sting people and! you’re not helping fix that?!”

The beekeeper takes a few steps back. “No. I invented the stories that bees were dying off in order to get humans more interested in them. It has been an interesting experiment.”

“Huh?”

“More bees die being transported places than from other causes; you won’t see activists protesting at those sites even if they should be. It will not get the coverage they desire, even if in my experience it is the activism that is not seen that matters the most. If your goal is to be seen, then that is the focus rather than actual help.”

“Uhm. I’m not sure I understand why you’d do that?”

“To test bindings.” The fae smiles. “Why else is anything done? Bindings are the shape of things, attempting bindings the wishes that bind the world together. You know this better than most do, I imagine.”

I frown and study the fae for a moment. “So you’re making fake bindings so the bees feel better about themselves?”

“In essence, yes. I am determining how important humans are to other species in terms of attention and inattention. The experiment has been jarred by a few magicians ‘helping’ bees in their cities. Most did not, presumably aware of the truth of the matter. You are another wrinkle in this.”

“So you’re hurting everyone for no reason?”

The fae sighs. “You do not understand –.”

“Maybe not, but I bet Honcho does.” And I do a wishing, which is asking Honcho to be here and he steps out of the air.

The fae looks more scared of Honcho than of me, which is right cuz Honcho is Honcho!

“Wandering magician. This is not –.”

“Jay. Bind the fae.” I do so and Honcho walks about them, and to the bees, and back over. “Bee colonies collapse all the time, in cycles no one understands. Unless there is a fae who is those cycles. You don’t like forever,” Honcho says softly, “but near enough, long enough for a hobby to get – dangerously close to obsession in ways that aren’t good at all. It might be better if you weren’t like that.”

And Honcho smiles. “I think the shape of you should be this,” and the fae is entirely different between moments and very, very shocked.

“What is – what did you –” the fae gets out.

“I taught you a lesson. I don’t expect it to stick,” he says, and gestures for me to follow and we walk away.

Some of the bees sting the fae, and the fae seems shocked it hurts and runs away!

“Honcho?” I ask.

“The fae is learning a lesson, Jay. Like Charlie sometimes wants you to.”

“Wow! That’s a really important lesson, then!”

“Yes. Yes, it is,” Honcho says, and makes a door back to the hotel room and we have lunch and then a new adventure!  

Tabop

“Hi! I sensed some broken bindings and –.”

He muffles a scream, a boy not older than a Jay, spins toward me. “Who – what – you can’t be here – is this a trick?” falls out, whisper-quiet in the bedroom. His eyes are wide with terrors.

“Jaysome isn’t a trick and I am pretty good at it!”

“But – my parents – if anyone is over –. I don’t know what you are, but you can’t be here,” and the words are almost magician-like, pleading like a command.

“Huh?”

“I don’t know how you got into my room, but they’ll –.” He stills, fear falling inward. “You have to go.”

A door opens, and it was locked from the other side. A man looms, shadows gathered about him. “Tyler? What is – what in the fuck is this?” and he is only human, but his voice –.

The boy stumbles. He is pale, and brave in terror. “It’s not what it looks like, dad, it’s not –.”

“You are not allowed guests. What if they find out? What if they learn?” is demanded.

Tyler is shaking, and bindings are breaking because of the ones forming.

“You are ten. That is far too old to wet your bed,” the father says, and –.

“Oopses happen you know,” I say, firm as a Jay.

He turns, and his hand is open and solid.

I’m quick like a Jay and tough like a Jay but there are bindings he can do in this room. To hit, to harm. I hit the wall, bounce, stand. He moves in for another blow.

Tyler is in front of me. “I don’t know who this is, or how they got in. I don’t, dad!”

I grab the next blow in bindings before it reaches Tyler, pushing the man back. There is a woman behind him, and Tyler lets out a small wounded sound.

“You’re hurting him, and that’s not jaysome at all!”

They move in. Certain. Sure of their power and control.

I reach into bindings. Touch Tyler’s. I’m not Charlie, to pull out energy. Not Honcho, to see deep into things. But bindings have history, and he’s scared and always scared and hurting and hurt all because he wets a bed. And other things, but I don’t understand them at all cuz there’s nothing jaysome about what they do to their son.

There are other children in the house. Hiding too. Scared.

“Honcho would do terrible things to you,” I say. “And Charlie might do worse. I’m not them. I don’t do human things.”

And I smile, and it’s not a smile a Jay does because there’s too many teeth and they’re sharp and some aren’t teeth at all. There is being a jaysaurus. And then there is being a jaysaurus. And then, too, there is being Jayseltosche. Which is even bigger in all the bad ways of the word.

I reach inside. No binding. Nothing like that, me to me. Hi? Time to wake up, I say. Need you.

And I smile again and it’s not a smile at all and there are bindings breaking and I remake them and twist them into new shapes and I’m breaking the rules Honcho told me about not doing bindings on people but I’m not Jay right now and I don’t care. They twist, and again, and I let go of the smile, and settle back down into Jay.

Even my fingernails hurt a bit.

Tyler is staring at me. Even Honcho has never seen me like that. He’s not afraid. He’s crying, but not afraid, and he knows what I did because I let him sense the bindings.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

The parents have left. To another room, shaken. Broken of their power, for now and ever.

“That was a really bad bindings,” I whisper, and: “There’s others like that, but I don’t know if I can –.” And I don’t because it hurt.

“I’ll be jaysome,” he says and means it and I’m crying and we’re crying and it’s okay.

It shouldn’t be, but it’s okay because he’s tough like a Tyler and a human and his jaysome is a really good one too!

I find Honcho outside. He just looks at me. Hugs me, gently. Offers ice cream, and I know he’s doing lots of helping and fixings too so I eat a lot and Honcho looks at me after.

“That was pretty brave of you, Jay.”

“Nope. I was doing what is right and that’s doing what is right, and –.”

“Jay.”

And he is Honcho and I just nod and follow him outside. I have another good cry at the hotel, and it is a good one and he just holds me and presses a finger to my lips when I try and talk.

“There are hard lessons you’ll have to learn, and one of them – this one – is that there are things that can’t be solved by being jaysome. And no, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But –.”

“You didn’t,” he repeats, and I’m crying again and held again and I don’t understand Tyler’s parents even if I saw every binding they had and Honcho says it’s okay not to, sometimes, that sometimes one can know so much that they can’t be wise and it’s dangerous to learn what you can’t unknown.

And he says lots else I think, but I fall asleep and almost dream.   

Of Broken Mirrors

The bathroom on the fourth floor no longer works, the entire fourth floor of the school having been closed for budget reasons. That doesn’t mean no one has keys, and for two months I’ve had them. Which is one reason why I’m leading the new transfer to the bathroom even if he’s only been here one day. He’s in grade 10; if he was older, I’d wonder if he was a narc. I think it’s because he’s ordinary. He looks so ordinary that it seems odd, especially in high school.

That, and he asked about the stories of the bathroom and if I could show it to him. It’s only been two months, but the stories have spread like wildfires spread. I said yes without thinking. It didn’t even occur for me to ask who he’d spoken with, or find out if one of his parents were on the school board or something like that. Normally I’m more careful. I know I should be, but he asked and we’re at the doorway before I’ve really begun to process it.

“The trick is to turn on the lights, look into the mirror and say ‘Jay’ three times. Like Beetlejuice, and the creature appears and grants wishes,” I say, the spiel easy from my tongue. No one talks about Jeff. Most of the time I don’t even think about what he saw, but the new kid’s eyes are weird. Older than they should be, like he’s seen some shit.

“Perhaps you should say the words.”

“I already have.”

“Ah. When?”

“Two months ago. I was the first who did,” I say without even thinking. “I heard the whisper, spoke the words and met Jay. He helped me. He helps people.” Not Jeff, but I manage not to say that out loud. Maybe some people just can’t be helped.

The bathroom smells bad. Two months since anyone cleaned it properly, but that’s part of the thrill, of feeling like you’re in a horror game. The new kid looks at the door, then at me. “Then you’d best follow.”

And those words. He speaks them like them an adult does, with this – this weight and I find myself following without thinking. He opens the door even though I haven’t unlocked it yet, flicks the lights on.

Some of Jeff’s blood was never cleaned up. He ignores that, staring at the cracked mirror above the sink for a moment before he turns to me. “I’m going to need you to call him, Donna.”

He seems taller, now. His gaze holds mine, not letting me go.

“You’re not a student, are you?” He says nothing to that, but his voice is like Jay’s. There is power to it. A force more than him, demanding I act. “Jay. Jay. Jay,” I say, louder each time, more defiant with each breath.

The cracked mirror spills out a thick blue fog that swirls and then shivers in the air. “Donna. I need others,” Jay’s voice whispers, only this time it is sharper. Uglier.

The student coughs, only he’s taller than I am now. In his mid-twenties, but still ordinary and unremarkable.

Jay screams, the sound ugly and nasty and hungry and moves. The fog has teeth now. Claws. Something too much and not enough like eyes.

It quivers in the air as the man holds up a hand. “Your first problem was Donna, I think. She wanted to know secrets: it let her pierce the glamour I’d asked a fae for, but it also meant she’d know what you were in time. The second was using Jay’s name. Clever, but eventually Jay would find out. I’m not sure I want to think too hard about what Jay wold do once he found out you might hurt the name Jay, or the status of jaysome. Which means I came instead when the rumour reached my ears. Superstition is powerful, but one doesn’t toy with magics that old without a very good reason.”

The thing I thought was a spirit writhes and screams, held in the air.

“You stole energy, will, power. And one of them saw you too closely, so you broke them.”

“Jeff.” My voice isn’t steady at all.

“I have power, magician,” the thing hisses in a voice like breaking glass.

“Yes, but it is all stolen. Mine is not.” And this man – this magician – squeezes one hand, and the creature is gone. The world ripples weirdly, and its gone. He presses one hand ot the air before turning to me. “My apologies for the deception. I doubted it would have manifested had it known the wandering magician was here.”

“What – what was – is. Oh, God, Jeff –.”

“Donna.” My name contains echoes I have never heard, and I fall silent in a strange wonder at the future it promises in possibilities. “The entity used you: that’s what creatures like that do. It helped you, and you thought it was helping others. I’ll have Jay – the real one, that is – help this Jeff, and see about helping others it might have hurt.”

“What do I do?” I whisper.

He smiles, and the smile is surprisingly gentle given what his voice can do. “Make sure this room isn’t used. Guard it, and pass the guarding onto others. Other entities could use this place, could build on the superstition to try and find a way into the world. Your task is to stop that from happening.”

I nod. I have something to do. Something to fix. “What if I need help?”

And he tells me a cell phone number, and pulls me back into the world I know. “Call that number; someone will answer. Let them know you want to speak to the wandering magician.”

I nod. He turns, he walks outside. I check my phone, and find the number is already in my contacts. Under Jay.

I have no idea what this Jay really is. I hope I never need to find out.  

Following Jay’s Footsteps

There are journeys that are impossible. This is why we take them.

I walk through a door that doesn’t exist, feeling it close behind me. The ground is soft under bare feet, though I came here wearing shoes. My phone isn’t in my pocket at all, and my wallet is missing all its change. It’s summer. Green trees, a bright sun, but the sky is a thousand shades of blue and the forest about me moves away, or is gone. There is warm stone under my feet, though it feels cold as well. About me is a caldera of white stone, looking as though it is made from marble.

I am the wandering magician, but there is nothing here of wandering. Nothing my magic can made a ward from. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “Hello.”

What are you?

The voice is cold, despite the heat of summer. A voice of judgement without mercy and honour devoid of kindness. A fae voice, though deeper and less wild than any fae I’ve known before. “The wandering magician of this era. The one who was prisoned under the first tree. I walk with Jayseltosche, and Charlie. You are the Summer Court. A place of judgement for the fae, to the fae A glamour so deep and potent almost no fae likely believe you exist.”

You should not know this.

“I don’t know the fae well, for all that I am. I know of the fortresses the fae stand guard at to protect the universe, and the works they do in some worlds. I always wondered why we had myths of seelie and unseelie courts when nothing of the fae linked into that. I imagine judgement is made just because they don’t have a notion of being judged to twist their actions and motives.”

You presume much, mortal. Were this the Winter Court, you would be dead already.

I snort. “I have no idea how often fae get judged, or on what, or to what end: but I doubt you’re that stupid.”

Stupid.

The word is strange. Not flat, not cold. Not even bemused. I doubt anyone has spoken to the Court like this in a long time, if ever.

“To judge the fae and be hidden from them requires a great deal of power. I won’t deny you have that, but the fae tend to be powerful only in dangerous ways. Those with depth enough to perceive Jay and survive – all too many of you only consider his capacity for destruction. He could unmake the universe, yes, but that’s not a singular power, not even a unique one that other powers aren’t capable of as well. And yet powers like yourself fixate on that: you look at what he can unmake, the things he can unbind and sever: but that’s nothing next to jaysome.

“Inside the universe or Outside, these are truths we all know. One of them is that there are no happy ending. Some argue there are no endings to try and hide from that. But you know better. So do I. Jay does not. He could make happy endings that nothing can stand against. That is the core of everyone I do: to make sure he understands endings and accepts them.

“I have some power as a magician. You have some as the Summer Court. How often is your will denied in you place of power?”

Never.

I don’t point out Jay’s arrival and departure were that. “Imagine that you are Jay. Imagine that your place of power was everywhere.” The court goes still and silent. “Everything I am teaching Jay is about how to let things go. I don’t pretend to be good at it. I don’t even pretend it’s going to work. But there will come a time when he has to learn that lesson. You don’t want to make that time be right now.”

You journeyed this far from the realms you know to threaten me?

“No. I’m stating a fact. A fact isn’t a threat unless you make it so. That, and I wanted to see what Jay had met and be certain he wasn’t confused. Or had created you.”

The silence that follows that statement contains my death as a promise barely held in check.

“Jay finds adventures. They also find him. It’s part of being eleven and from far Outside the universe. Also of jaysome. I’m pretty sure you existed before Jay visited you, but I felt it best to make sure.”

You will leave.

I don’t press my luck. I reach for Jay, since we’re linked together, and he makes a door that I step through. He asks if I had a good adventure and then begins telling me all about new friends he made on tumblr. I listen, head to the small bar fridge the hotel suite has, pour myself a drink. I have no idea what to make of this, so I wait, then once Jay runs down I tell him I lost my phone and he can go buy me a new phone.

He grins hugely at that and vanishes to have another adventure.

I wonder if the Winter Court will try and find me, and if Spring and Autumn have courts as well. I pour myself another drink. And I wait.  

The Wind Talker

I make friends when walking down a street, because a Jay is pretty good at that and I talk with lots of things. And some of them are pretty surprised a Jay can talk to them – sometimes even that they can talk! – but my new friend isn’t at all.

“I have an uncle who is a tornado.”

“Oh?”

“Everyone talks about him. Not just other winds. The waves. Storms.” The zephyr let’s out a sigh smaller than it is. “Even the earth knows his name.”

“Oooh! So you’re all kinds of sad-face about being a gentle breeze?!”

“Yes. I’ve felt you change winds. Move storms. Make things – more. Bigger. Terrifying!” Each word a gust, and after the zephyr barely manages a whisper: “Change me. Help me.”

“Jaysome is jaysome; it doesn’t have to be like that you know!” I stop walking so it isn’t tired when following a Jay. No one else is about. “Honcho knows that change isn’t always a helping. Sometimes help is learning to be you, not wanting to be other things. It’s a happiness if no one knows your name like they know tornadoes and typhoons and lots of other things starting with t I bet!”

“But I’m so small.”

“Uh-huh. And they were too once. They grew, and you can too: but you don’t have to grow the way they did. You can be big and not be feared!”

The breeze quivers when I’m firm like a Jay, but keeps on going too!

“But you are big. You are Jay, of the bindings, and the wind that howls between the worlds knows your name.”

“Well, I am jaysome. But that’s me being me and making friends and doing loads of helpings. Being big is more this -.”

And I reach, for a moment. Down inside, but also sideways and upside-ahead as well. It’s not waking up. (it hurts.) It’s not – it –

rememory
stirring-undone

being-wholeness

input-GIGO-output

darkness-light

flight

I let go. Push it away, and back, and far to the edges of jaysome. I think I almost don’t manage it, but I’m not sure because it’s the biggest binding I’ve ever done! I’m sweating and I have a headache, which is pretty new and my head doesn’t want to stop aching.

“... that is very big,” the zephyr says in a voice so small I almost don’t hear it.

“Uh-huh! There are lots of kinds of big, and some bigs even a Jay doesn’t want to be. Being small is better since it’s hard to big like a storm and not hurt and have people scared of you!”

“Thank you,” the breeze says, and goes off to be a breeze and nothing like a storm at all!

I head back to the hotel and hope Honcho can help with my headache.

The Yarrowing

The monster did not have a cave

The monster never, ever waved:

Only claws that rend and tear

Bloodied fur, this hungry lair!

The magician wandered inside

Without even a Jay by his side!

“All this death, the grim release -

There are options more than these.”

The monster growled and bared a tooth

The magician hit it with the roof.

“I don’t fear you, thus I defang.”

“Die!,” the monster lunged, harangued.

“Look at the damage humans have done;

All you do nothing next to the ozone.

You aren’t scary when next to me

All you do is kill, and never softly.”

“I am a monster,” the monster said.

“Yes, but one day you’ll be dead.

And no one will be left to remember you -

True fear is that which outlives you.”

The monster thought that over

And with a shiver did discover

The magician spoke only truth

The world itself a bitter proof.

“Leave your cave behind you;

A new destiny will find you.”

And the monster walked outside

And met a Jay who did not hide!

“Hi, Monster friend, a new face

Lets you be monstrously acesome!”

And where the monster had been

A flower gleamed unlike a grin.

“Ah, Jay?” the magician asked,

Cuz this wasn’t a jaysome task.

“What kind of binding was this

If the monster can’t even hiss?”

“Yarrow is poisonous a little bit,

I’s kinda not a monster I admit

But I had a prompting to win

And this is now a shoo-in!”

The magician spoke no words

Wise in the ways of the absurd

The monster was left to flower

As its only source of power