Exercice du jour : la folie meutrière d'un chewing gum à la menthe.

Nanoyo m'a donné cet "exercice du jour" : écrire un texte sur la folie, quelle qu'elle soit.

Puis il a changé d'avis en me disant "Non, mieux : la vie et la mort d'un chewing gum à la menthe".

Je me suis dit, pourquoi pas les deux?

Imagine, t'es né pour mourir. Born To Die. Je sais plus qui l'a dit, mais ça a l'air plus cool en anglais. Imagine, t'es même pas né, mais créé par une machine, à partir d'élastomères, d'aspartame et d'arômes artificiels. Créé pour servir l'humanité, cette espèce toute puissante, ce parasite de la Terre, qui arrache ce qu'elle veut à Mère Nature et en fait des immondices telles que moi.

Heureusement que les chewing gums à la menthe n'ont aucune conscience. Forcément, si un jour un de nos ingrédients était vivant, ça fait longtemps qu'il est mort. Mais imaginons que tu es un chewing gum à la menthe, doté, par je ne sais quel miracle d'un dieu farceur, d'une intelligence, d'une conscience de soi, peut-être même d'une âme.

Déjà, quelle vie pourrie. Tu viens au monde au milieu du bruit des machines, et on te ménage pas. Tu te fais trimballer dans tous les sens pour enfin finir dans une petite boîte en carton, entouré de camarades identiques, au destin identique. Pendant le transport, t'es seul dans une boîte de chewing gums inertes. Alors pour éviter de craquer complètement, tu leur donnes des noms, des caractères. Ca devient ta famille. Le temps que tu sois transporté, mis en rayon et vendu, t'as créé ta propre société à toi tout seul.

La vente : 2€ si t'as de la chance. Toi et tes neuf petits camarades, vous valez 2€, tous ensemble. Et les clients trouvent le moyen de se plaindre de l'inflation.

On va dire que c'est un homme qui t'achète. La trentaine, un métier stressant, cette manie d'avoir toujours un chewing gum dans la bouche. Aujourd'hui il a oublié son paquet de cent à la maison, alors il se contente de toi et tes compères pour la journée.

Il secoue la boîte, parce qu'il aime le bruit que vous faites tous ensemble contre le carton. Il l'ouvre. La gravité vous tire tous vers le bas, mais ce n'est pas toi qui tombe. C'en est un autre, un frère que t'aimais bien en plus. C'est pas comme si vous serez réunis dans l'estomac - un chewing gum, c'est pas digeste. On le crache après. Tu n'as même pas cette utilité là.

Un par un, il sort tes camarades, les machouille tout en pestant contre la circulation et la radio. Un par un, il les crache, dans un mouchoir, un morceau de papier, par la fenêtre pour se faire écraser sous les roues des voitures. Noircis, ceux-là finissent par faire partie du bitume.

Tu es le dernier. Tu es seul, il t'a tout pris. Tu attends que vienne ton tour, mais au lieu de ça il gare la voiture, en sort. Tu entends des cris d'enfants, une voix de femme, un claquement de porte, le silence. La nuit tombe. Tu es seul. Tu ne peux même plus t'inventer des amis. Tu ne peux pas sortir de la boîte pour en trouver d'autres. Tu es paralysé. Tout ce qu'il te reste, ce sont des pensées.

Alors tu penses à cet homme, à son espèce et à leur place sur cette Terre. Tu n'en trouves pas, et tu prends une décision. Tu sais que ça ne fera pas une grande différence, à l'échelle du monde, mais au moins tu auras participé à le rendre meilleur.

Le lendemain, il ouvre la voiture avant que le soleil ne soit levé. Tu t'attends à ce qu'il ouvre la boîte, mais il en est encore au café, qu'il pose à coté de toi. Quelques gouttes tombent sur le carton, mais ne t'atteignent pas. Il termine son café. Tu sens la voiture qui accélère, vous êtes sur l'autoroute, dépassant les camions qui t'avaient emmené au marchand de journaux pour être vendu. Tu frémis d'impatience.

Peut-être qu'il le sent. En tout cas, il allume la radio et ouvre la boîte. Il sait qu'il ne reste que toi, alors il te verse directement dans sa bouche. Une odeur de café et de clope t'enveloppe. Sa langue, cet énorme morceau de chair, te conduit vers les molaires, mais tu as un plan, et la colère t'a donné des forces. Mû par ta seule volonté, tu te projettes en arrière, vers la gorge, tu esquives l'épiglotte, et par miracle tu te retrouves exactement là où tu veux : en travers de la trachée, où tu te loges fermement.

Un spasme, une tentative de toux, mais tu t'accroches. Tu n'auras qu'une seule opportunité, il ne faut pas la gaspiller. Par chance, tu l'étouffes à un moment critique : doublant un camion, il perd le contrôle de la voiture, qui fonce à 140 km l'heure, accrochant d'autres voitures, qui quittent la Terre-Mère pour la retrouver en état de fertilisant. Le camion fait une tête à queue, c'est le carambolage, le nombre de victimes grimpe à la vitesse de la lumière, jusqu'à la grande finale, où la voiture s'écrase contre un muret, l'homme, qui avait oublié sa ceinture, est projeté à dix mètres à travers la vitre. Lorsqu'il attérit, le choc te projette hors de sa bouche, couvert de salive, ta coque en sucre à moitié fondue, et tu es bientôt écrasé sous le pied des pompiers venus lui porter un secours inutile.

Ton âme quitte ce corps minable, et tu surveilles de haut ton oeuvre. Vingt-sept victimes, dont une douzaine de morts. Tout autant d'humains qui ne pollueront plus, qui n'arracheront plus à notre Mère ses ressources, pour en faire des immondices telles que moi.

Poppies

Boom!

The Earth explodes.

And I’m nowhere near my body, I’m up in the air, I’m flying, and maybe what they say is true and you do remain conscious for a few seconds after they cut your head off. Not sure if the theory still holds when it’s blown off your body though.

Shrapnel sings through the air. I’m too surprised to feel it. Too dead maybe. You know you might die. As they start dying next to you, you realize fast that you might be next. Just another number. You know you might die. But you never think you will.

“De la chair à canon,” said Deroux this morning, before the daily slaughter began and they shot him to pieces. Cannon flesh. French is a colourful language.

That’s Deroux there, a few feet away from me (well, some parts of me), still leaking into the ground. I seem to have rained on him. The mud isn’t grey any more. The sky is grey, all the way to the horizon. Our uniforms are as grey as our corpses. Our battleground is close to a dried up riverbed, which we crossed to get here - four dead there, Perrot, Thompson, and two I don’t know - and the mud was grey to begin with - lifeless, grass churned out of it, the earth all up-and-down lumpy from being blown up.

My life doesn’t flash before my eyes. That bit they were wrong about. Only I find myself thinking about certain bits of it as I observe the infinite fall of my shattered flesh. Some of it surprises me - things I had thought forgotten. My mother’s face - dead too young for me to know her, but I remember her now, a dark, seductive woman whose carmine smile reminds me eerily of my own. That time my cold, stern brother, who I swear has never smiled at me in his life, bought me my first atomic firebombs and walked round town with me on his shoulders, not minding when I clung to his hair with sticky hands. I laugh - if Emma knew why I love firebombs so much, she wouldn’t scold me for eating them. She always did find it a shame about us not being friendly, like she is with her own brother.

Emma. A jump forward in time, and the brother in question is my bunk mate at school. We would fight so much, but we were the best of friends. Charlie he was called, and one day he dared me to climb the theatre curtains on the stage, and I brought them both - and the railing - tumbling down on his head.

I remember the embers of the bonfire in front of which I met Emma. It was the fifth of November - the sixth really - and everyone had gone home except for me, her and Charlie. I was staring into the dying flames in a rare contemplative mood most probably brought on by drink, and she asked what I could possibly be thinking about. I said I was wondering what I would do if I knew I was going to die tomorrow, in a war, say, and she said “Of course, the answer is ‘love’”.

So I did. I loved her - still love her, with the bright, firey passion of first love, that night and every one after it. I didn’t care what people thought. She did, and I regret that now, because without me there to protect her, who will?

Charlie died last week, in the hospital tent. He made me promise to take care of her, the bastard. He knew I couldn’t promise, but he made me do it anyway. I’m a traitor now. I made the others promise to kill me before I got to making them promise things. At least they won’t have to do that.

I’m floating in the air above a carnage. Watching it happen. Being dead does odd things to your nerves. I know why we were fighting. I signed up - Emma made me, mostly, I didn’t want to leave her on her own, white feather or no - but I did understand why we had to win the war. Still, it seems unimportant now. I should have stayed home. I should have kept her safe. Sadness as grey as the landscape fills what’s left of me as the last of the soldiers dies or flees the battleground. I can’t tell who has won. I don’t care.

That’s when I see it, right in the middle of the field: a single poppy. Poppy. The name on the last letter Emma sent me. I should have known I’d die before I got to see her. Should have known it was too good to be true. A little girl. A daughter. Poppy.

The sun dips under the blanket of clouds, and suddenly the sky is awash with flame. Colour seeps into the land, animating the corpses for a second. Blood shines as the earth drinks it in, turning death into life.

I wanted to win the war for Poppy. My baby, my little girl who I’ve never seen, but I love her.

I love her.

I love her.

Découverte

Les yeux fermés, la guitare dans mes bras, mes doigts dansant sur les cordes en nylon, je me laisse rêver. Ce morceau se joue tout seul, pourtant il est puissant : les notes tombent en gouttes sur mes oreilles, traçant leur chemin doré au fil de mes veines. Du miel en musique.

Je suis assise au pied d'un arbre, dans l'ombre verte des feuilles, là où l'herbe est douce. L'air sent la verdure, la poussière et cette odeur délicate que dégagent les platanes en septembre. Une classe d'enfants fait le tour du parc en courant, et quelques étudiants discutent de la rentrée pas loin, mais pour l'instant je suis seule, et je chéris cet instant.

Cette guitare est tellement vieille que le vernis commence à partir par endroits, et à ces endroits, le bois est tellement usé qu'il est devenu lisse et doux. Elle appartenait à mon père lorsqu'il était ado. Pendant très longtemps elle a été oubliée au fond d'un grenier, avant que je sois assez grande pour vouloir jouer d'un instrument. Aussi petite que j'étais, je me souviens encore du son qu'elle faisait avec ses vieilles cordes désaccordées, comme si elle ne voulait pas qu'on la réveille.

"Au contraire," disait mon père, pendant qu'il remplaçait les cordes, "elle m'engueule de l'avoir laissée seule aussi longtemps."

La musique s'arrête et j'ouvre les yeux. Il n'y a eu aucun bruit, pourtant le regard qui se posait sur moi était si intense que ça m'a réveillée. En face de moi, un enfant aux yeux noirs se tient debout, figé. On dirait un lapin devant des phares de voiture.

"Salut," dis-je.

Il ne répond pas, ne bouge même pas. 

Je le fixe encore quelques secondes, puis je recommence à jouer, les yeux sur mes mains. Du coin de l'oeil je vois ses pieds, nus dans l'herbe. Au bout d'un instant je les vois tourner, comme pour s'en aller, mais il hésite.

Je continue encore quelques minutes en l'observant, puis je m'arrête et je le regarde de nouveau. De nouveau il se fige, mais il a l'air moins pétrifié qu'avant.

"Tu veux essayer?" Je lui souris.

La peur quitte ses yeux qui sont désormais envahis de curiosité, le genre de curiosité dévorante qui n'attend que de devenir une passion. Il fait un pas vers moi.

"Abel !" Une voix d'homme, impatient, fatigué. Le petit tourne la tête, puis me regarde, l'air torturé. "Abel ! Viens là ! On rentre." L'homme tient une petite fille sur ses épaules d'une main et une paire de sandales dans l'autre. Un ado traîne derrière.

Le petit hésite encore. Il me montre du doigt.

"On a pas le temps, allez viens ! Dépêche-toi !" Le papa tourne le dos et commence à marcher. L'ado le suit.

"Je serais encore là demain," je lui dis. "Tu pourras essayer la guitare à ce moment-là."

Le soulagement remplit ses yeux énormes, et un petit sourire timide illumine son visage avant qu'il se tourne pour courir après son père.

Et moi je me remets à jouer, me demandant ce dans quoi je me suis engagée.

Therapy

I can ignore the knot in my stomach if I want to. In fact, ignoring it is the easiest thing to do, as any psychologist will tell you. Even writing about it is the emotional equivalent of poking at a beehive: do it too much, and they will all spill out in an angry swarm and overwealm you. Running away is not an option. It will be painful. It may even be fatal.

And you can't just spray the whole thing with pesticide. As any ecologist will tell you, that's bad for the entire ecosystem: the world needs its bees. No, the best way to untangle the knot is to coax these bees out one by one with their own honey.

"What are you afraid of?"

A dozen of them buzz out of the knot. A couple sting, but the hurt is bearable. The knot is smaller, a little lighter.

"Why are you afraid of that?"

A couple more. Or several hundred, depending on what your reasons are. You don't have to say it all at once. You can start with a sentence, and then another, and when it gets too painful you stop and throw up your walls again while you heal.

You work through the pain, one sting at a time. Your pain tolerance builds up, and you can let out a couple, then a few more, a dozen.

And little by little, she gives you an entirely different world view, one that makes even the bees stop in their tracks. They stare at you, scratch their tiny heads, and say in their tiny buzzy voices, "Why the hell didn't we think of that?"

And you feel amazed and relieved and a little bit stupid. 

Of course, that's not the end of it. You still need to get rid of that reflex you have of hitting all the buzzy insects that cross your path. The road is long, and it takes work. But once you're there, you realize it's worth it. The bees buzz about their business, making the world more colourful, and once you're part of the hive, they won't sting you any more.

Why do you exist?

Ariel was free.

It had been so long. It had been forever. Since she was made.

You might have argued that freedom was relative, and that as far as robots were concerned, Ariel had been given a surprising amount of it. She was the prototype of a new chain of robots, a project that had been abandoned for lack of funds. Her creator had had a vision: several of her kind wandering freely in each city, with only one objective - to aid humanity in whatever way they needed, be it climbing a tree to bring down a pet cat, or providing a listening ear to a person in grief, or helping a child with their homework. They would be connected to ThinkNet, and could be summoned by Telepsychically by humans in need.

In this objective, her programming had to simulate the positive aspects of human nature as closely as possible: compassion, sympathy, sociability, initiative, a desire to learn, the ability to create tools and work as part of a team. The aim was to create what would essentially be perfect, immortal humans, self-sufficient in terms of energy, their sole purpose to aid humanity.

The intricate weave of human technology composing her brain wasn't quite as complex as that of a human, but it was much closer to it than any other robot so far: a leap forward, it was said.

It only took one short circuit for the whole thing to go "wrong".

Of course, thanks to Sycorax, there had been more than one short-circuit. Well over the edge between genius and insanity, Sycorax's abuse of Ariel had been the expression of both sadism and ruthless curiosity. Ariel, whose self-preservation mechanisms had originally been programmed to come second to her primary mission of aiding humanity, had been reprogrammed by Sycorax to feel pain. She had also been programmed to express it - silently. The artificial muscles in her face and body had been revised, made more precise, more realistic.

But that hadn't been enough for Sycorax. There had to be fear as well.

Fear meant more than just increasing her self-preservation programming. It meant increasing her capacity to learn and acquire reflexes: Sycorax had spent hours teaching Ariel to fear pain. And it meant creating a sense of temporary relief at the cessation or avoidance of pain. Weeks had been spent perfecting the balance between her wish to help others and her wish to avoid harm - enough that Sycorax could torture her psychologically by threatening to hurt her own son, Caliban, if she didn't slit her own wrists.

By the end of what Sycorax called her "training", Ariel had been the perfect slave.

When Sycorax had died, Ariel had been so relieved that of her own will, she had bound her life to that of Prospero, her saviour. At first, he had seemed kind and gentle in comparison to her former owner. He had reduced the pain levels in her to a certain minimum, and given her a coping mechanism that allowed her to turn it off for a time if needed. But he had also installed an obedience chip, the function of which was to create pain when she disobeyed him, and although he seldom used it, her fear of pain - which he hadn't removed - had more to do with that than his kindness.

By then it was too late, of course. Prospero had seen the fault in her, and instead of trying to fix it - or terminating her entirely, as many would have done - he let it evolve, and watched what happened. Occasionally he would fiddle with her wiring if he thought she was becoming too opinionated or fearful, but he never touched the short circuit.

And then...

Melinda had wanted freedom.

At first it had been a human concept, one Ariel had trouble understanding. The idea that people should be able to do and be whatever they wished didn't fit with her knowledge of human society: Prospero had been accused of murder and exiled to this lonely asteroid, which proved that freedom did not truly exist. And fortunately so: Ariel's knowledge of human sadism led her to the firm belief that if humans were allowed to do whatever they wished, quite soon there wouldn't be any left.

Prospero had patiently explained that freedom as a social concept was limited by the golden rule: treat others the way you would like to be treated. But Ariel had seen a flaw in that immediately: humans were all different and had different desires at different times. If person number one was an extrovert and person number two an introvert, person number one would become a nuisance to person number two by constantly seeking their company.

Prospero had thought about that, and concluded that in general, the limit of freedom was that you could do as you liked, as long as you didn't harm others.

Ariel still didn't see how this had anything to do with the laws of human society, but she understood the general idea.

She had stored the concept of freedom away in her memory and - inasmuch as robots could - forgot about it.

Until she started getting bored.

The short circuit - the important one - had occurred in the part of her that urged her to help humans. It had lessened the urge, but it had also affected the part of her that regulated inactivity, making it unpleasant. Before long, Ariel became restless.

And Prospero still didn't fix her.

She had begged him to, but whenever she did, he simply gave her some task to keep her occupied. Once, when everything else had been done on the ship, he had sent her outside to count and map the rocks within a mile radius of them, manually instead of using her radar. That had appeased her for a day or two.

Her learning programming had morphed into a certain curiosity about humans, and she wondered why he didn't fix her. She longed for the mindlessness of a single purpose, the peace of mind that she'd lost when she gained free will.

For that was the curse Sycorax had managed to bestow upon her: the freedom to think and make her own decisions, regardless of her primary purpose. The ability to say and do what pleased her as freely as any human. And then, as if to prove a point, she'd taken it away; not literally, but the way she would break in a human slave.

Prospero had left it there. And then, when her restlessness became a nuisance to him, he offered her freedom.

Truly, humans were cruel.

Having an objective that would take a while to attain had given Ariel a sense of relief such as she hadn't felt since Sycorax had died. "Freedom" meant that she could find someone to fix her bug.

And now she was free, and the ship's engineer had told her it wasn't possible.

Prospero hadn't left her like that out of curiosity. He'd done so because he couldn't fix her.

Ariel had found herself seeking out Miranda without knowing why. That was another bug that made her all too human - the fact that she didn't understand her own actions, sometimes. That she had her own autopilot that she didn't quite control.

Miranda had hugged her. Physical contact wasn't one of Ariel's needs (thankfully), but she appreciated the sentiment.

"Humans have no purpose either," she'd said. "We have the purpose we give ourselves. Why do you want to exist?"

Ariel had thought long and hard about this, and given that her thought processes worked several thousand times faster than those of a human, this was quite exceptional.

Now she stood in the engine room of the ship, moored in at the landing bay of Honey Moon, where the happy couple would be celebrating their marriage. Everyone was outside, she'd made sure of that. She'd also made sure there would be an extra ship to take them home. This one would no longer be functional in a minute.

Humans were born without a purpose, certainly. But humans were born.

Ariel had developed what the humans around her thought of as free will. She hoped they were right.

She opened the control box, fiddled with the circuitry and ripped out one of the longer wires. Putting it against the chip in her mouth - the one placed there in case her kinetic energy synthesizers stopped working - she hacked into the ship's telepsy system, as she had just a week before with Fernando's ship. The current ran through her tongue pleasantly. She wondered if this was what taste was like.

It was her last thought before she ordered the ship into hyperdrive.

The energy bolted into her circuits and fried them. She had no time to feel pain before her body jerked away from the wire and slumped to the ground with a slightly metallic thump.

When they found her, the delicate weave of circuitry inside her were irremediably destroyed, but her skin and frame were intact, and she was smiling.

Ninth of August, seven o' clock

We are sitting on a stone slab, him behind with his arms around me, and me with my back to him, leaning against his chest. We are probably interlacing fingers - I can't remember exactly, our hands are in lazy but near-constant motion in their desire to be everywhere at once. We are talking about smells, and he is trying to figure out what mine is. His breath tickles my neck.

In the background of my head, thoughts form their usual filter to the outside world. They're not too thick at the moment, but their grey chatter is so much a part of me that I tend to forget it exists. There's the warm fuzz of being in love, residual elation at having gotten over my fear of it, reflexive worry at being seen, frustration with that worry, the stern reminder (in my mother's voice) that we're not doing anything wrong. There's the mental post-it note saying we're supposed to do the shopping, a vague irritation at the presence of mosquitoes. Not wanting to leave on Saturday, wondering when I can come back. Like headlines running across the bottom of the TV screen.

"That's it!" he says, "Hay. Hay and... chestnuts. You smell like autumn."

"Really?" Surprised. Pleased. "Wow..."

I look up at the leaves, find one backlit by a ray of sunlight and transformed, like a dancer in the spotlight.

And suddenly, I'm there.

The filter is gone, and my senses blink awake. I can feel him behind me, his chest warm through his shirt, and smell him - like hot bread dough - mixed with the cut grass smell of the park. My skin prickles against the breeze on my arms and legs, and his words hum against my back. Our hands are warm, and the air is fresh, and the leaves are green as gold.

The Baby

Exercise: write from a point of view that is the polar opposite of yours.

"Who's a gorgeous wee boy? Who's a - oh, look, he's smiling! Who's got a beautiful smile? You, that's right! Yes, you do! Aaaaahbrprprprpr-"

My sister Imogen raspberries into the child's neck and is rewarded with a chortle. She does it again. And again. I turn the volume up on the TV.

I never got all the hype around babies. I mean, sure, some of them are cute, once they've grown hair and can smile and stuff. Some. This one's not too bad - big black eyes, long eyelashes, the beginnings of curls. 

Most of them look like aliens to me, though. And that's the least of what I hate about them.

"Ah, I think he's done a poo..."

That, on the other hand...

Imogen gets up and takes the baby to her bedroom, which has been transformed into a nursery for the day. I follow her just so that I can shut the door on them both.

There's a whole plethora of other horrible things in between how they look and how they smell that I also don't like. How people just go crazy around them. That brain-shattering cry of theirs. Or how much time they take up, and space, and money. The year Lydia was born was my last year of guitar classes.

Of course I don't blame Lydia for that. She didn't ask to be born. I blame my mother for wanting a boy so badly that she tried for a fourth child she couldn't afford.

Bitter? Me?

The problem with not liking babies is that people think you're a monster. Which is stupid, because really, just because you don't like chocolate (which is another much-loved thing that I hate) doesn't mean you're going to go into a supermarket and take a flamethrower to the confectionary aisle. And chocolate doesn't turn into people.

Imogen returns, holding the baby, who is only slightly better-smelling.

"Would you hold him for me while I put the changing things away?"

The first and last time I held him was this morning, and he wailed and writhed so much I nearly dropped him. She has been trying to get me to try again - while sitting down - ever since. I give her a look that tells her exactly how crazy I think she is.

"Give him to Tiff."

Imogen sighs and gives him to Tiffany, who shrugs and takes him. She sits him on her knees and jiggles him a bit. He laughs. She raises an eyebrow and tries again. To Tiffany, babies are mostly boring until a certain age, and then they turn into curiosities. To me, babies are terrifying.

Especially since you're having one.

Shut. Up. Brain.

 

"I read on Cracked that babies this age are practically telepathic," she remarks. "They can tell how you're feeling even if you're smiling at them."

"That explains this morning, then," I say. She lies him down on her knees and tickles his feet. No particular response. She tickles his stomach instead and gets a laugh. Tiffany proceeds to systematically test all the parts of his body that would usually be ticklish.

"When's Meriem picking him up?" she asks.

"In two hours and twenty-three minutes," I say, trying to ignore the chortling. "Please stop making him laugh, I'm trying to watch this."

"It's Jersey Shore, Lex. Even I find the baby more interesting than that."

"The stupidity of grown adults is far more fascinating than that thing you're holding" I retort, just as Imogen enters the room.

"You're horrible, Lexie, you know that?" she says.

"Thank you, Gin, I love you too."

She ignores my use of the hated nickname and tries to take the baby back, but Tiffany's in full experimentation mode and waves her off. She pokes him in the tummy. He writhes. She rights him, pokes him in the side. He giggles.

"I didn't think you liked babies, Tifa," Imogen says.

"I don't not like them," Tiff says noncommittally.

"Still, I've never seen you like this with one. With Lydia, for instance."

"I was six when Lydia was born. I had better things to do."

"Well I was seven and I didn't," Gin retorts. "Give him to Lex, she needs the therapy."

"I'm pretty sure he doesn't," I growl.

"Oh for God's sake, Lexie, how are you going to manage when-"

"IMOGEN!" I shout. Everyone jumps. I grit my teeth. "Just shut. The fuck. Up."

The baby starts to cry. I throw the remote into the sofa a lot harder than necessary. It bounces off and hits my thigh. I ignore it and flee to my room before they see me cry. Stupid hormones.

I know perfectly well how I'm going to manage: badly. If at all. Adoption seems like a brilliant idea right now, care babies or not. Even a care baby would be better off than one with me for a mother.

The Thrumli

The Unseelie Court is widely known to be the least noble of the two fairy Courts of Prettania. Aristocracy belongs to the houses with the strongest fairies, those who excel in glamour and magic, and minor houses are born and die every month. The oldest houses still exist because they are powerful; they know that in order to maintain their line, each generation must marry the most powerful scion possible in order to produce strong heirs, and to that end, any means is fair game. Assassinations and maiming, secret duels and plots are common currency in the Unseelie Court.

Even the plebians fight among themselves, so that only the strongest, cleverest, and most powerful survive.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Thrumli's presence went unnoticed for so long. Had it turned up in the Seelie Court, where every death was either King's order or punishable by the same fate; where nobles disliked to get their hands dirty and commoners didn't dare; where there were laws - had the Thrumli acted there, it would have been discovered at once, and some means found to destroy it.

There were no laws in the Unseelie Court.

In the Inkestwood, the deepest, darkest corner of the Unseelie lands where not even the moonlight reached, the fae had long since lost their eyes for more useful senses, and the hapless few who wandered in with a torch had a short glimpse of something white and blind and ethereal, like those fish of the deepest oceans, before both light and life were abruptly extinguished. There, three moons before Arwyn's return, the mutated descendants of a nixie turned on their mother and ate her alive, before turning on each other.

Further south, if south you could call it, deep under the Silver Mountains, the last peace treaty between goblins and dwarves was torn to shreds along with the goblin tribe massacred by one young dwarf - a mute and a simpleton, who before then had never been known to hurt a fay.

In the Capital, an entire household was found dead, one member in each room of their home. One had banged his head against the wall until he cracked it, another had eaten his own arm, and third had stuck iron pins in his eyes - the question as to where and why he'd gotten such Catspawn objects ran across the grapevine like lightning from cloud to cloud, landing nowhere.

Even in Sundown, a swarm of fey gathered as if to dance and mate, but instead began attacking every other thing in sight, until a boggart swallowed them all and died of it - but the story was eclipsed by Arwyn's return.

It wasn't until a group of exiled Seelie rebels, brothers all of them, like fingers on a glove, turned on each other the moment they were through the barrier into Unseelie lands, to the bewilderment and fear of their Escort, that the matter was brought to the attention of Oberon, and the Seelie King, knowing what it was and knowing it could not pass the barrier into his realm, decided not to inform his rival Queen, but instead let the Thrumli do his dirty work for him.

Which was her plan, of course.

The Storm

It's one of those days when the sun is hot lead and the air presses onto your skin like a damp flannel. There are no clouds, but the sky isn't even blue any more, pollution has hazed it to a dirty white. All around you, the few who are still here pretend they're not slowly cooking in this mountain-rimmed oven that is Grenoble, student city, deserted for the holidays. The wiser permanent residents have also fled to gentler climes, leaving you and these strangers to roast in your own sweat.

Sometimes there's a breath of wind, and even though it only sends the hot air into your face again, you think it's cooling you down, and that's what matters. You don't get used to this sort of heat: rather, you learn to think of other things, to add lemon juice to the tap water you keep bottled in the fridge, to sleep after lunch. Children splash in fountains, and you take your shoes off and paddle with them. You find the shops with air conditioning and there you spend far more time than shopping demands, and nobody needs an excuse for ice cream. And once you've finished, you have no money left and can't put off the walk home any longer, you take the more shaded route back, and cross the street to avoid the sun.

Sometimes, a miracle happens.

Of course, most of the time it's just the windspray from a fountain, or someone watering their plants a little too carelessly as you walk by underneath. But sometimes, that warm, heavy drop on your arm multiplies. Clouds that weren't there five minutes ago gather and grow, and a promising rumble raises hopes - people run for cover with newfound energy, and a prudent few take out umbrellas. But you and I, and those like us, we just stop and stand there, gazing up, hoping to be the first to see a flash -

It hits us, sudden as an awakening in which we remember why we're here, on our way home from the air conditioned shopping centre, where the whole town had turned out, united in the desire to escape the summer heat. The rain soaks into our clothes, weighing them down, and into our skin, reviving us, bringing us back to the surface of our dry fatigue and into a strange wonder - for on this day, at this time, the sun is opposite the clouds, and through the meteor shower of sunlit rain, the whole spectrum glows against the sombre sky.

Children dance, adults laugh, and we celebrate the fulfilment of everyone's secret wish - that the heavens would open and drench us all in a deluge of sweet relief.

Le Onde

The same chain of notes, over and over, sustained by the pedal, a wave in minor evoking lightplay at the bottom of the ocean. Her tempo is imperfect, but the image is still clear: my sister is learning Le Onde.

I started out teaching her the intro, which is simple enough even for a beginner, and when she'd mastered that and wished to learn the next part, I taught her the right hand notes of that.

"Eh, j'ai réussi !"

I applaud, outwardly approving, while in my heart my inner child leaps with joy at the prospect of another musician in the family. An apprentice. That would be...

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

"J'ai re-réussi !"

"Bravo ! Continue..."

"J'suis trop douée."

"Oui."

She keeps practising, the volume turned down low, and the sweet melody is perfect for the quiet of the evening and the dim yellow light in our almost-tidy living room. I could almost be at peace right now.

She gets up, about to leave.

"Eh, reviens !"

"Quoi ?"

"Joue encore, ça m'inspire."

She laughs, then realizes I'm serious. Looking bemused, but flattered, she sits back on the piano stool and practises some more until I've finished my piece.

The Void

It started as a dream, the way it always does. The one where I'm running. Or trying to run. I can hear them behind me - heavy boots and harsh shouts, or leathery wings and laughter. Or silence.

The silence is the worst. I can feel it pressing in on me, like piercing eyes, a song of terrible discord not heard, but felt in my gut. If I could only hear it, it would be more bearable, but I can't hear anything - not a simple absence of sound, but like I've gone deaf. Like hearing was just a dream, the memory of which trickles out of my brain like water, leaving me in a soundless void.

The void has eyes. My skin puckers under the chill gaze, yet I'm hot, so hot, and the more I try to run, the harder it becomes, the less I can move. The blood in my veins is hot lead, my muscles drain of energy as the my fever rises.

I realize that I am in bed, and I can see my bedroom around me, through closed eyelids. For a split-second I'm relieved - it's just a dream - and then I realize I cannot move, that the Void is still staring at me, freezing my skin, it's here, in my room, in real life, and I can't escape, if only I could move - it's pressing down on me, heat and cold, and my breathing is too shallow, I'm suffocating -

I try to turn over, but I can't. I try moving my arm, but I can't. My hand. One finger. I must - if I don't, I'll die - it'll get me - I can't breathe - I concentrate, but the heat is unbearable, still rising, and the contrasting chill on my skin begins to hurt, creates a pain that becomes unbearable agony-

I'm awake, gasping like a fish out of water, trembling, I fight my way into sitting position, eyes frantically scanning the room for any sign of - of what? There's nothing there.

No, not nothing. There are lots of things here - objects with the dozy souls of the inanimate, dusty and familiar. There is wood and metal and plastic and glass and air, filling my lungs and not being less for all that - but there is no void.

And I pull the covers around me and pull me knees to my chest and cry in relief, my head in my hands, but my eyes wide open, not to let the void back in.

The Dance

Those of you who have read "Strawberries" (redubbed "The Glimmerlands") might recognize Arwyn.

If you're interested, try my FictionPress account.

The dance was there, in the middle of the hall, spinning in its centre and turning slowly towards the ends, like a galaxy.

The air felt warm and electric, like just before a summer storm, only the electricity seemed to be coming from the glowing centre of the dance, the naked bodies of sacrificial fae illuminated from the inside where it snaked and writhed in their veins and shone through eyes already lost.

She could feel it, a faint itch in her muscles that no amount of stretching would relieve. She would have to dance, she knew, or it would spread first to her stomach, then up, through her heart to her brain, filling her with a wild, terrifying joy that would pulse through her, connecting her to the others and throwing her straight through logic and reason into the throes of helpless ecstasy-

"Arwyn."

Of course, everyone knew she was weaker to it than them, out of practise from so much time in Cat's Court. But only Orren seemed to realize just how vulnerable she was.

"I'm here," she said tonelessly. She was still angry with him.

He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. "I'll make sure you are." His protectiveness annoyed her, and distracted her from the itch - she focused on it, stoking her gut into grumbling ire, refusing to wonder if that had been his aim.

 

Magic Motorcycle Cat

Nothing like a bit of utter nonsense to get you back to writing again. Freedom is the key, really - if I'm ever going to write seriously again, I need to be able to write for fun first.

My friend Arran gave me the theme for this one, which is about his motorbike.


As reincarnation went, being born again as a motorcycle wasn't bad. Especially when you'd been an alley cat in your last life. Granted, being taken apart and put together again differently took some getting used to, but Pouncy McFast was adaptable. Alley cats had to be, and old habits die hard.

Which wasn't always a good thing. The hardest part about being reborn a motorcycle was being, well, inanimate. Sure, he could move, but only when he was told to (although he retained a certain amount of control over the how), and he wasn't nearly as flexible and agile as he had been, nor as discreet. Those things were made up for by the way other creatures parted hastily to let him pass - the humans he'd once begged from and been kicked by were terrified of him now. The cars weren't, though. Next, thought Pouncy, I want to be reborn as a fire truck.