30th of June - The Royal Ball

To invite my sisters to the ball was an olive branch, and so was my mother’s choice to attend. How sincere either side was about forging a lasting peace was anyone’s guess, but King Albien could not afford to make any enemies at the moment. His house had taken a great hit when his eldest son died in a hunting accident, and said son’s wife died in childbirth not long after, taking the babe with her to the grave. Albien’s youngest was unmarried, and the aging king was near desperation finding a suitable wife for his son. It was no secret that the reason for the ball was to find such a wife - and every eligible lady of noble birth from any neighbouring country or territory had been invited. For the leader of the witch contingent to be considered noble was contentious, as until recently the king would have burned my sisters on sight. Ariana stayed home, uninterested in balls and society, to watch Diana and Mira. Rosalia came along mostly to spite Gisela, and I insisted on going with them as extra protection. I did not trust Albien or any of his cronies, and if my mother and sisters were being led into a trap, I wanted to be there to get them out of it. For all that Rosie liked throwing fists around, it was much more seemly for a man to act as bodyguard than a girl.

Of course, the first mention of a pyre set me off. Some smug, clean-faced nobleman stared down at me through his nose, and when he refused to withdraw his comment on my family, I swung at him.
Unfortunately, he hit me first. 
His fist struck my face with surprising force, and my cheek burned with a sting so harsh I could hardly wrap my head around it. I sprang at him, but the guards separated us before I could have my vengeance. I managed to wrest myself free, but with the pain in my face, I swayed, and realised people were staring. I couldn’t see my mother or the girls anywhere, and I thanked my lucky stars for that. Rosie would have jumped into the fray for sure, and then there was no knowing where we’d end up. It was foolish of me to be so easily riled, I knew that - and here I stood, a smarting embarrassment, blood dripping from a cut face. 

I was glad no-one I knew saw me run away.

I sat down on the nearest balcony, thankful that it was empty. Every other one I’d walked past earlier in the evening had had some combination of nobles on it, engaging in subterfuge or illicit romance or some combination of the two. If the king’s redefinition of my mother’s status was to be accepted, I was, by definition, a noble myself. That did not make other ball goers the least bit more understandable to me.

Damn it to Hell, my face hurt so much I couldn’t stand. Curled up with my back against the railing, I began to think it wouldn’t have been so bad if mother or Gisela had seen me get hurt - they’d have known how to patch me up for sure. When someone stepped onto the balcony I tried to speak up and ask them to go get me one of the witches. I didn’t get far, though, because at the sound of my voice, he yelped and jumped.
“Bloody Hell,” he hissed, “What the fuck happened to your face?”
“Shithead punched me,” I explained, as the man crouched down in front of me, brow furrowed. Even in my pain-altered state I noticed that his clothes were plain but exquisitely made, the kind worn by those so rich they saw no need to show it off. And his eyes were blue - a trait coveted by every noble family, since Albien’s line had deep blue eyes and a similar colour in your own relatives suggested the possibility of royal blood in your veins. Though I did not know him, this was someone of very high rank, and I felt my level of embarrassment rise further. The nobleman disappeared for a moment, and I found myself praying against hope that he wasn’t fetching more people to cme crowd around me. 

Astonishingly, the prayer seemed to work, because he reappeared and crouched back to my level.
“What’s your name?”
“Tavian.” It was hard enough to move my mouth without flinching, I couldn’t think of a lie to tell instead.
“Alright, Tavian. My name is Dem. Let me have a look at that wound,” he said - a command, not a request, as was to be expected from someone of his class, but his hands were gentle as he held my face and examined it. He must have noticed the confusion in my eyes, because he paused to clarify.
“A friend of mine is a nurse. Well - some of the time, anyway. She’s not always there to patch me up, so she’s taught me a few tricks.”
A movement - a person - a box came onto the balcony from the castle interior. My head was swimming, and I was having trouble registering anything beyond my throbbing face and the peculiar man who was helping me. His explanation raised more questions than it answered, but I was in no state to ask them. Dem retrieved a piece of cloth from the box and dabbed some liquid on it.
“This is going to hurt,” he warned apologetically, and I was about to comment that it could hardly be worse than the cut itself, but when he pressed it against my face, I bit my tongue trying not to scream.
“Shh,” he soothed, like you would a spooked horse, “That’s it.”
He rummaged in the box and got out a container with some kind of salve in it.
“This should take away some of the pain. You might feel a bit numb instead, though.”
While he carefully smeared some of the thick, glossy ointment onto my face, he frowned.
“What?” I asked out of the opposite corner of my mouth.
“Gash like this, he must have used some sort of knife, or a very sharp ring - I don’t think you need stitches, but it’s going to leave one Hell of a scar. Don’t worry, though,” he hastened to add, “Handsome fellow like yourself, it will only make the ladies flock to you even more.”
I noted the compliment, but couldn’t help groaning in despair.
“Please no,” I mumbled, feeling my words slur a little from the odd immobility in the right side of my face as the painkilling salve took effect. That made Dem chuckle, a warm and subdued sound that seemed to fill the entirey night air around us.
“Not here to chase after girls, then?”

I really wasn’t. Not that I minded the company of women - my whole family was made up of girls. But women I didn’t know tended to look at me in this strange way, as if they expected something from me, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. And when they acted charming, or god forbid flirtatious, I felt nothing but awkward and a little bit queasy. A beautiful woman was just that - a beautiful woman. Like a pretty flower or a colourful sunrise. I didn’t have any urge to DO anything about it. When it came to men, my feelings were very different, but I wasn’t going to get into that train of thought right now. Not with a random rich and handsome man holding my face.
“No,” I simply said instead, then, feeling the need to expand, “‘M protecting my shishtersh - Bu’ I prefer i’ when i’s like tonigh’, an the girlsh’re all bushy chashing shome shtupid printhe.”
The numbness Dem had warned me about was fully in effect, and he let go of my cheek. The pain was still there, but it had dulled, reduced to a background event, however alarming. I could focus on the rest of the world around me now, or at least on Dem, who was laughing again.
“Well, they can keep chasing,” he commented, and winked, “I’ve eluded them so far.”

Oh. OH. Dem. Short for Demetrius. The prince my sisters were here to pretend to want to marry was named Demetrius. My eyes widened in panic as I amended my earlier thought to rich and handsome PRINCE, and damned my thoughtlessness. I’d just called him stupid right to his face. 
“‘M shurry t’keep you from your party,” I choked out, desperately grasping for something resembling decorum.
“Oh, that’s quite alright. I was actually headed to climb down that pillar,” Prince Demetrius said, nodding to the edge of the balcony. I hadn’t really given my surroundings much attention, but there was a decorative pillar going up the wall next to us, and someone dextrous could very well climb down it relatively safely.
“I was heading to Leda’s, next to Modenia’s brothel. Lovely place, much more lively than this stuffy affair. And, more importantly, the last place my father would ever set foot.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. I knew very little of the young prince, but he certainly didn’t live up to the wholesome ideal in the stories people told of his late brother.
“...’M shurry t’keep you at your party?” I tried, and he laughed again. He had sat back now, more relaxed when he didn’t have a would to clean, but still closer to me than felt entirely appropriate, especially now that I knew who he was.
“Don’t think about it, Tavian,” he assured me, “A friend in need takes precedence.”

He elbowed me, and I blushed. No matter how strange he was, no matter how much of an enemy his father was, a prince had just called me his friend, and that was astonishing.
“Right. Thanksh.”
“My pleasure,” he smiled. “You’re protecting your sisters, you said? Protecting them from what?”
My stomach dropped. My mother, Gisela, and Rosalia were somewhere in that ballroom full of twerps like the one who had cut my face.
“They’re - I should go tho them.”
I scrambled to my feet, but Dem grabbed a hold of me and kept me from rushing off.
“I don’t think you should storm through the ballroom like that,” he warned, “I mean, it would be a fun spectacle, but knowing my father you could get in some awful trouble.”
I looked down at myself and realised he was right - the wound had bled, and my shirt was blooming red and morbid. Come to notice it, Dem’s fine princely shirt had stains all over the sleeves from cleaning and tending my wound. It filled me with shame to see the mess I’d caused, but he seemed just as unflappable as he’d been since we got past the initial surprise of finding me.
“Right. Your shoulders are too broad to borrow any of my shirts, but nobody’s touched Aurelius’s wardrobe yet.” Before I could protest, he ducked his head inside the curtains and talked to someone - a servant, probably. 
“Could you bring me a clean shirt, please? And one of my brothers’, too.”
The thought of wearing the dead prince’s clothes was somehow even more disturbing than talking to the living one. Prince Demetrius ducked back onto the balcony, and gathered his healing supplies back in their box.
“She should be back in a couple of minutes.”
“Thank you,” I muttered again.
“You didn’t say what you’re so afraid will befall your sisters.” 
He sounded concerned. It was an easy enough thing to sum up.
“Witshesh,” I explained.
He let out an odd choked sound.
“You’re worried your sisters might run afoul of witches? In my father’s court?”
Alright, perhaps it needed more than one word of explanation.
“No, they’re the witshesh,” I corrected him, “My mother, an my shishtersh, they’re witshesh.”
“Ah.” his baffled disbelief was replaced with grave understanding, “That’s a reasonable concern. It would not be diplomatically possible for him to make any hostile moves at the moment, but as far as talk goes, well. There’s no stopping that.”
The twerp’s sneering face loomed in my mind. Dem seemed to see where my thoughts went, because he asked, “What did he say?”
I bristled a little.
“He shaid he hoped they’d throw the ‘ugly ‘un’ on the fire firsht, an then -” my cheek stung, and Dem shushed me. I’d moved my mouth too much speaking in affect, and it had cracked open the layer of ointment holding my blood in. The prince quickly dug the jar out of his box of medical supplies, and restored the healing layer on my face, using his already ruined sleeve to wipe away the blood. I winced at the touch. I’d already managed to forget how much my face hurt.
“I’m sorry,” Dam lamented, “I’d kiss it better if I could.”
“Yesh pleashe.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could even finish thinking them. Dem’s eyebrows flew up towards his hairline and I felt my face grow red as a beet. My hand flew up over my mouth, too late to do anything but get stained with blood and salve.

“It’s alright,” Dem insisted, holding my shoulders, “This much of the ointment is a bit like wine - you might say things you’d otherwise keep inside.”
That was cold comfort, because the words had escaped, and he had heard them. I grimaced a little as I let my hand fall back to my side, careful to keep the movement on the left side of my face so as not to upset the wound again. I tried not to look at Dem, but it was impossible not to notice that he was smiling again - a smile that was becoming a little bit infuriating, albeit a very different flavour of anger than what I felt towards the sneering twerp. He seemed to want to force me to look at him, because he grabbed a hold of my chin. I moved my head as he requested - he was a prince, after all. He looked at me for a second with those royal blue eyes that really should have been a tip off to his identity. And then he did, in fact, kiss the corner of my mouth where the wound began. As he wiped the blood and ointment off his mouth, my mind was blank except for a bitter thought of annoyance. Of course, the one time someone I wanted to kiss actually did kiss me, it was while my mouth was too numb for me to feel it. From Dem’s chuckling, I could tell that those words, too, had escaped my mouth without my permission. He grabbed my hand and pressed his lips to my knuckles, letting my hand know what my mouth had missed out on.

I was concentrating so hard on not spilling every single thought that crossed my head that I was grateful the serving girl returned with the shirts before any more conversation could take place. I thanked her gratefully as she studiously avoided noticing the terrifying state my clothes and face were in, and changed my shirt as quickly as I could while being careful of my injury. I was equally relieved and disappointed that it took long enough that I didn’t catch a glimpse of the prince’s skin as he changed.

When we were both decent, he adjusted the collar around my neck. Prince Aurelius’s shirt was the most luxurious fabric I had ever worn, and looked prettier and more expensive than anything I owned, even though it was a simple everyday garment.
“Go find your family,” Dem gently commanded, “And once they have stayed as long as politeness requires and you’ve seen them back to your lodgings, you’re more than welcome at Leda’s tavern. No matter how late, I can promise you’ll find me there.”
He winked at me one last time, and I watched helplessly as he climbed over the balustrade and clambered down the pillar. 
There was nothing for me to do but rejoin the ball inside, keep my medicine-drunk mouth shut and my sisters out of trouble, and of course to deflect questions about the state of my face. All the while, I wondered tirelessly how I was going to find the way to Leda’s tavern.

29th of June - Motherball

Clack clickety clack clack
Fingernails on the countertop clack
Butterball is coming back coming back
Been to the woods with his dad but he’s back
Clickety clack
Butterball’s back

Click clickety clack clack clack
Why is he always coming back
Butterball wants another snack
Mother’s nails on the countertop clack
Clickety clack
Butterball’s snack

Click clickety clack click clack
I know a hag with a great big sack
Butterball wants a knife for his snack
Clickety click on the countertop clack
Clickety clack
Get in the sack

Click clickety click click clack
Against the odds Butterball just came back
Back from the sack and demanding a snack
Mother’s nails on the countertop clack
Clickety clack
Never come back

Click clackety clickety clack
Thrice now Butterball’s gone in the sack
Every time Butterball has come back
Fingernails on the countertop clack
Mother it’s time that I pay you back
Clickety clack
Thank God you’re back

28th of June - Flower

Take your shoes off. Your socks, too. Feel the grass under your feet. It tickles. It stings a little, sometimes, when you step on a dry blade. The green feels cool on your skin, a myriad of textures, hard and soft. It sticks up between your toes. You take one step, and another, into the meadow.

Feel the cold on your bare arms. It’s not cold enough that it gives you goosebumps, just chilly enough that you notice it, a difference from the toasty indoors where people have turned up their thermostats. The morning air is countered by the slow rays of the sun, gaining purchase, warming up the world, and you with it.

See the meadow before you. Green, yes, but so many colours between - the beige and brown of sticks and dead grass and the occasional leaf left over from winter. Yellow dandelions and coltsfoot strewn about by the wind. White Queen Anne’s lace and purple clovers. A red chocolate wrapper peeking out from between some tufts of grass, the jarringly bright intrusion of modern technology. Consider picking that up when you leave, to toss it in the nearest rubbish bin you can find - leave the nature cleaner than you found it.

For now, close your eyes. Can you smell it? The smell of earth, the smell of moss, and of grass. A soft trace of decomposition, overshadowed by the spicy sap of the birch trees and the gentle scent of the flowers. Listen. Do you hear the wind in the leaves? A rush almost like a waterfall, but coming from above. Do you hear the birds chirp somewhere off in the distance?

Do you hear the sacred silence lurking behind it all?

Go to the middle of the meadow, and there you will find it - the most beautiful flower it has to offer. It is yours. It will be obvious to your eyes, to your ears, to your hand when you touch it, your nose when you smell it. Pick that flower tonight, and it will bloom forever on your windowsill.

27th of June - All the Boys

Mary and Lars were married on the twenty-first of October, which was a grey day but not a windy one, which Mary was infinitely grateful for because the ceremony was outdoors and she wore a large white hat in lieu of a veil - she had not been happy with the way her hair turned out, even though her mother had told her it looked perfectly charming, so she decided to hide it underneath the wide brimmed favourite instead of hiding her face and putting even more focus on the part of her appearance she was most insecure about. They worried a little about the rain, but it had been an unusually dry fall so far, and though the clouds threatened to break the streak of good weather, they chose not to do so until the wedding had moved indoors, and the couple got their outdoor wedding despite having had to move it several months ahead. The move was especially stressful for Mary, who had to have several alterations done to her wedding dress so that it would not be visible for everyone and anyone attending that she was carrying a very small wedding guest with her to the altar. The seamstress did a wonderful job - nobody who did not already know could tell what was going on beneath the folds of the dress, and even looking at the wedding pictures, you cannot tell at all. Mary was free to worry more about her hair than about her belly, though she might not have been if Johnny hadn’t been an extraordinarily small baby.

Johnny was the first of their boys, named after Lars’s father, and he was born early the year following the wedding with a head full of dark hair and eyes that looked far too big for a baby and limbs that were more like malformed twigs than the chubby arms and legs you could usually expect in an infant. Mary and Lars worried that he might be sick, and that they would lose their firstborn as a punishment from God for not waiting to produce him until after they were joined in holy matrimony, but the doctor said he was fine, and after a few weeks of suckling at Mary’s teat, he grew to a more regular sized child. He would never be particularly tall, but he would not be so small as to inspire comments from strangers, and he would grow to have a relatively normal life, though the first few months of being fretted about by an anxious and overly attentive new mother might have left some traces, as he was always very close to Mary and never entirely comfortable being on his own - Johnny required company, if not constant supervision, otherwise he grew nervous and sad. His friends might see him as needy, and his younger brothers might be annoyed by his constant check-ups, but he found a wife, Petra, who had spent most of her life being neglected by her family and ignored by her peers, and who relished the constant attention that her husband showered upon her and gave him plenty of attention in turn, making them both less of a worry for the rest of their family.

A full ten months after Johnny was born, he was followed by his brother Arthur, a ball of sunshine of energy that kept Mary in her birthing bed labouring for thirteen hours, terrifying Lars that something might be wrong. As with Johnny’s minuscule size, there was nothing to worry about with Arthur’s protracted entrance into the world - both mother and child survived and thrived, though Mary insisted she needed to wait a little longer before they got started on the next one, since the ordeal had left her sore in all sorts of unimaginable places. Arthur passed his older brother in height by the time he was nine years old, and was always a broader boy physically, and a more boisterous one socially. He was a bit of a clown and a prankster, and once got expelled from school for planting a home made stink bomb in the teacher’s desk - he had made it out of leftover fish parts from a dinner he helped Mary prepare, wrapped in wax that would melt as the summer weather grew hotter, releasing the stench of rotten seafood into the classroom and stalling the educational proceedings until the offending weapon could be found. Arthur did not suffer as a result of his expulsion; he was never a big fan of academia and worked better with his hands than with his mind, whether he was setting up tent poles or mending fences or fishing in the stream near the park. There was never a shortage of work that he could do, and though he never married, he left a legacy of happy customers and close friends who appreciated his help as well as his overactive sense of humour, because once he learned to avoid the smelliest kinds of pranks, he was actually quite funny and quite harmless.

The middle child of the family was Brian, and there was nothing particularly noteworthy about his birth except this - he came into the world around midnight, making his birthday hard to determine exactly, but they solved the problem by flipping a coin, and decided that his official birth time was five minutes past midnight on the sixteenth of July. Lars was overjoyed that he did not have to worry about the safety of his wife nor his child on this occasion, as they were both healthy, and Mary was glad she had not been confined for as long as she was last time she had a baby. Beyond the fact that one of his girlfriends in his teenage years, a flighty, spiritual girl who wore many too many rings and bandanas, had a meltdown trying to do his astrological birth chart, the coin toss birthday hardly ever came up in Brian’s life. He was a strange child, there was something eerie about him that nobody could ever put a finger on, but he had his own charm and became quite the ladies man, the distressed zodiac enthusiast being only one of his many conquests throughout the years. Like his older brother Arthur and unlike his older brother Johnny, he never settled down and got married, though it was always generally accepted that he fathered many children throughout the town, and some even speculated that certain married women whose babies did not look a lot like their fathers might have had Brian to thank for their offspring. However, none of these children were officially claimed by him, and Mary and Lars never got to meet these grandchildren, so they never spoke of the rumours of impropriety, and carried on with their lives assuming Brian was as childless as Arthur. His brothers, who did not wear the same morality tinted spectacles as their parents, were more intrigued by the fact that Brian never seemed to have to pay child support, despite the fact that he had grown to have a great amount of money, through means nobody else was entirely certain about. There was something about Brian that always remained a mystery, a glint in his eye that no-one could explain, a certain smile visible in photographs of him that unnerved and intrigued, but did not offer any answers at all.

Mary’s third pregnancy was also an easy one - Sean was born a year and a half after Brian, and was a quiet child from day one, only reluctantly crying out after the third time the nurse slapped his bottom. Sean and Brian looked a lot alike, both favouring their mother in appearance, though Sean lacked the ineffable oddness of Brian’s demeanour. He was the quietest of the boys, though he smiled a lot, the most difficult for Arthur to get a rise out of, and the easiest for Johnny to boss around into keeping him company. Sean faced some ridicule both from his brothers and other children for helping his mother around the house a lot, silently content to do girl tasks like washing up, dusting shelves, and even darning socks, but he never seemed to mind the teasing. Sean never seemed to mind anything at all, really. He was close with his parents, and out of his brothers he was most on a wavelength with Johnny, with whom he had a close friendship his whole life. Johnny’s wife, Petra, had a large collection in her attic of embroideries Sean had made, exquisite little works of art that he had known better than to share with a world that did not expect nor condone a man devoting himself to such a flimsy, girlish hobby - he was fortunate to have a sister in law who appreciated his skills, and would proudly hang his work in the nursery, never telling anyone who exactly made the endearing cross stitch over her daughter’s bed.

Thomas was the youngest of the boys, and the least likeable, even to his mother - Mary struggled with her last pregnancy, and the delivery itself was hazardous on account of Thomas’s large head, which left her in need of many stitches, and with a bitterness towards the baby that made her feel guilty, as the size of his head was hardly the boy’s fault, but bitter all the same because her feelings did not always keep up with her thoughts when it came to the logic of the things they were upset about, a shame she had learned to live with long ago. After the blessed silence of Sean, taking care of infant Thomas was an ordeal, as he was loud, gassy, and constantly dissatisfied. In theory, he wanted for nothing - they were not the richest of families, but Thomas had food, warmth, a doting mother and a kind father, and four older brothers besides, who were far from as hostile as some older brothers could be. But Thomas was always unhappy, as a toddler, as a child, as a student at school. He was not close to anyone, because he pushed anyone away, and he did not seem to love anyone - in fact, he never seemed to even like a single person in his life. It was almost a relief more than a mystery when, at the age of twenty one, Thomas wandered off never to be seen again. Nobody knew where he went, whether he had killed himself, met with an accident, ran into foul play, or simply ran away from his life to start again in a far off place where he might find that rare something that could make him feel something other than petulant annoyance. Mary grieved for her child and wished him well, and Lars lit a candle on the mantelpiece in his honour every night, but in secret both his parents were somewhat glad they did not have to be subject to his scorn for the rest of eternity.

And there we have it - a small slice, not at all comprehensive or even reliable, of the lives of all of these boys.

26th of June - Farewell

New Mother held me. I loved New Mother. She was kind but strict. Sometimes I hated New Mother, but not really. I always loved New Mother. Things were bad. I was all bad, and I didn’t know why. New Mother didn’t say why. I didn’t understand most of the things people said, but there were some things I understood perfectly - walk. Treat. Food. My name - Bernie.

I had a Mother before, and a Father, and a Sabrina, and they smelled similar to each other. They were my pack. New Mother smelled different, but she was very kind. She was new to the pack, but she was older and stronger than me, so she was still the leader. It was just the two of us in the pack now, but I knew that Mother and Father and Sabrina would come to join me and New Mother soon. They would come back to me. They always did.

My paws hurt. New Mother had petted them and soothed them but the pain did not go away. My tail hurt. I hid it between my legs, but that didn’t help. Something inside me hurt. I didn’t know how to do anything about that.

New Mother was weeping. She was sad as she held me. It made me distressed - I didn’t like it when the people I loved were sad. Usually, it made it better to let them hug me. It made me feel calm to know that my pack was alright. I was proud when I got to help them. They always helped me so much.

New Mother did not feel better, and I wondered if I was too full of bad and pain to help her.

Maybe she was trying to absorb some of the pain and bad but instead she just became bad hurt herself.

It was hard to move.

New Mother held me. I was falling asleep.

No! I shouldn’t fall asleep! What if Mother and Father come to see me?

I can’t fall asleep before Sabrina gets here

She’s coming back to me

I know it

She always comes back to me

I can’t fall asleep yet

What if I don’t wake up again

25th of June - Antichrist

The air was loud with bullets, the projectiles slamming into the town hall wall, sending plaster pieces flying in every which direction. Oleana dove behind a battered old Mazda and scrambled along its side until she was somewhat safely tucked behind the front wheel. Greta and Dan followed behind.

“Where’s Chess?” Oleana asked. Greta shook her head. Oleana felt a pit open up in her stomach, sending her confidence plummeting down to her toes, but there was no time to stop and grieve now. They had to get the fuck out of here. A bullet skidded under the car, barely missing Dan’s knee where it leaned on the asphalt.

“Ready?” Oleana asked breathlessly, and the other two nodded. She gulped down a deep inhale, and dove back into the open, sprinting for the next car. They just needed to get around the corner, just needed to get in the back door. The building would hold even if the outer wall looked like Swiss cheese on account of all the bullet holes. It was a damn sight safer than crouching behind a car, anyhow.

As she scrambled behind the maroon Peugeot close to the corner of the parking lot, a hot bullet hit the Mazda right in the fuel tank, and it must have been full because the resulting explosion threw her back and sent her ears ringing. No longer able to hear her compatriots, nor the rain of bullets they were fleeing, she looked around desperately. There was Greta. There was Dan. His face was bleeding, but he was running just fine - Oleana hoped it was because the injury was superficial, and not just the adrenaline of the moment keeping him going. There wouldn’t be much in the way of medical supplies inside the small town hall. In the deafening silence of the post-blast world, she grabbed for his wrist and dragged him around the corner. Shrapnel blasted past them. Greta was on the ground. The pit in Oleana’s stomach deepened further for a moment until she moved - she had just toppled over after flinging herself behind the wall to get away.

“The back door,” Oleana shouted, her voice loud in her own head though she had no idea if it even translated into sound outside it. It was a redundant set of words anyway; the way she waved her arm in the direction of the rear entrance got the point across.

Greta stumbled to her feet, and her long, shaky legs staggered up the concrete steps that led to the door. The design of the place was anything but accessible, but luckily all three of them had the use of their legs. Oleana tugged at Dan, and they sprinted the remaining distance to run at the door as Greta opened it. Safely inside, she slammed it behind them, and Oleana pulled a nearby filing cabinet off balance and toppled it across the doorframe. She piled on an office chair, a desk, things she would normally ask for help lifting. She could feel the temporary boost from the adrenaline fading to the sound of shouts from the militia men outside, the occasional bullet, and Dan yelling behind her.

“Maya!” he bellowed, “Maya, are you here?”

“Dan?” Maya’s voice feebly replied from somewhere down the hall.

“Maya! Maya, we’re here!”

“Dan!” she sounded more certain now, “Oh my god! Is Chess with you?”

The elation Oleana felt at having reached relative safety and found a friendly voice evaporated as soon as it had set in. Her legs buckled beneath her and she collapsed in a corner, vomiting. Greta put a supportive hand on her back, patting and soothing her as if she were a child. Oleana heaved and trembled, her face leaking sorrow and panic out onto the floor. 

“You can’t stay here,” Maya’s voice said, now coming from somewhere nearby, “We’re down in the bomb shelter. Come.” 

She and Greta dragged Oleana to her feet. Dan held the shelter door open for the three women and they descended into relative safety, each step surer. In the reinforced basement, more familiar faces were waiting - Elliot, Kenneth, Madge, Ben. Ben was the one with the first aid kit, and he immediately rushed to Dan when the latter closed the door behind them, starting to tend to the wound in his temple.

Elliot found Oleana quickly and embraced her.

“How many are there?” he asked as he let her go.

“Don’t know,” she mumbled, “It seemed like, fucking… Infinite of them. Could be a hundred. Could be fucking fourteen. I don’t know.”

Kenneth handed a water bottle to Oleana and one to Greta.

“It’s ridiculous,” he grumbled darkly. Oleana nodded slowly.

“Is it a good idea,” asked Greta, waving her newly acquired water bottle wearily, “To drink these? How much water do we have?”

“Enough,“ Ken insisted, “It can’t be… This can’t last that long. The government will send someone.”

“To do what? Massacre these lunatics? Airlift us out?”

“It’s not us they’re after.”

Oleana turned to Madge. She was hunched down in the corner, with the kid’s head in her lap. 

“How is he?” asked Oleana.

“He’ll live,” Madge replied simply.

The boy was unconscious, but his eyes were moving rapidly behind his lids, clearly showing that the mob outside had not gotten their way just yet. He looked so small, so thin, so young - his cheeks hollow, his dark, curly hair limp in Madge’s hands.

“He’s just a kid.”

Oleana was stating the obvious, but it was an obvious fact that continued to astonish.

“Just a kid,” Madge agreed, brushing a sweat soaked lock of hair from his forehead.

“Why do they want to kill him so badly?” Oleana asked despondently.

“They think he’s going to end the world,” Ken huffed, “Nonsense.”

“Not on my watch.”

It was Maya, speaking calmly from her seat by the only computer in the room.

“No-one will be ending anything, or anyone for that matter, so long as I have any authority in this town.”

24th of June - Pollock

I Who is to as long as somebody is not free decide I think it is about feelings what is the right order for Layers for feelings to be out in the open and It was illegal in those days Layers and Layers and it must be right? Layers and or does it just and I don’t know if I would agree with him on anything at all does it matter which order the words come in? matter what he represents? Layers It makes sense that Jackson would dip his brush in the lifeblood of paint and drip his feelings on a chaotic canvas and Layers and Layers the letters and I’m writing this, so words who so everyone loved in private knows what FLING he thought anything that wasn’t there another? wasn’t acceptable or something nobody until you can’t tell which was the first was free when he did this Passion to come MY who but I know I like his art knows I get to I think it was illegal in those days decide my page is my I just wish I remembered someone else as well canvas today so it makes sense which words for love to be out in the lived in private open go where what I’m thinking RAGE when I do If it wasn’t illegal then it was I’m sure female painters there are I’m sure some person of colour did it first and Jackson Pollock is the only action painter I remember better I’m sure there are painters certainly frowned Should we pick a better icon? upon this in Layers ACROSS and Layers that he would need it’s not obvious how and that the author is dead it and if he is worth remembering all fits together to so I get to decide what it means express his feelings and Layers this is and which he might have been a terrible man words go on top I don’t know of the other words THE action this is for he flung his he was for better or worse a white guy does it matter what order the layers were painted? in the fifties of course he was a monster love and can you tell what it is how to remember him rage and passion all over He painted layers and layers and layers and layers anger to be out in he has become synonymous with the form the open because nobody Can you imagine the does it matter what it is nineteen fifties? can ever does it does it matter what he felt when he flung his paint across the canvas? matter who he was? be free movement for anyone to feel things in Are we sure he is the one we should remember? front of each does it matter what I feel when I fling my words I care about form more than most across mine? other this is It PAGE

23rd of June - The Right Thing

“And we’re sure there aren’t any other options?” Sabrina asked again, her voice thin, the question worn meaningless through repetition and constant disappointment. At this point, the words were a stubborn pretense of denial, only postponing the inevitable admission.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” said Larry, her dad, “I mean, there are many other options but they’re all… This is just the best choice for all of us.”

A bushy tail wagged happily into the room, and Sabrina embraced Bernie the Bernese as though her life depended on keeping him in her arms. The final admission of reality rolled from her eyes and down the dog’s body as she pressed her face into his fur with a sob. Larry crouched down as well, and put a tentative hand on his daughter’s shoulder.

“I know it will be hard to say goodbye,” he acknowledged, voice slow and steady, barely betraying the heartbreak swelling at the sight of Sabrina’s upset, “But it’s the right thing to do. He’s too big, and we don’t have the time to give him all the attention he deserves.”

“I can give him attention,” Sabrina’s voice shakily insisted in a hug-muffled response.

“You’re too little,” Larry reminded her, the words even and automatic with repetition, “You can’t do it on your own, and I won’t have the time to help you anymore. Zoe has the time, and the space, and he’ll be so much better off living with her. You can still visit,” he insisted as her shoulder shook under his hand, “It’s the right thing to do.”

“I know that,” the teenager sulked, “But it feels so bad. And I’m gonna miss him so much. I love him! The right thing is supposed to be good, why does doing the right thing never feel good?” 

Sabrina’s grip on Bernie tightened enough that the dog wriggled and whined, turning to lick her face. The gesture of reciprocated affection was too much for her to handle. Sabrina wept her way into her bedroom and let the door shut bluntly behind her. Larry didn’t follow. He scratched Bernie behind the ear.

“It’s alright, boy,” he mumbled, wondering if he was talking to himself or the dog, “I won’t take you to Zoe’s until the weekend.”

“Wuff,” said Bernie. Larry smiled.

“I’m going to miss you too, you know.”

22nd of June - Separated at Birth

It was inevitable that his own fame would fade. If he had made other choices - better choices - then perhaps he would have made away with quite a bit of money. But the way things had worked out with his parents, his agents, the copyrights and studios, the former child star had ended up with a lot less than people seemed to think. That he’d wasted much of it on self medicating to deal with the trauma of much of his famed upbringing, well, it didn’t exactly help. Rehab expenses were ridiculous on top of it all. Even if it hadn’t been for the money, he did still wish he was still famous - or at least well known enough that he could get acting jobs instead of very rare bit work on adverts and game shows that traded in nostalgia. He had actually liked the acting part of it all. And he had enjoyed the attention. He hadn’t realised it at the time - it seemed like an awful hassle and he could never trust anyone’s motive for getting to know him. But it was much better to have the whole world pretend to love you, than to have the handful of people in who were still in your life all despise you. It was hurtful to see that the world which had cared almost too much now didn’t care at all.

Someone who didn’t seem to have suffered the same pitfalls was the lead actor in the competing franchise. When they were kids, everyone had mistaken them for each other, compared them, associated them with each other. It had been a game to them, a friendly competition. And they really did look a lot alike. Same colouring - dark hair, skin that tanned easily, large hazel eyes - and roughly the same face shape. He still checked his former competitor’s instagram every once in a while. Every once in a day. Every definitely much more than once a day. His old friend was… Famous. Not the bygone don’t I know you kind of famous. Not the that guy from that thing kind of famous. Not the people in the know would know kind of famous. He was the every child, every grandma, every uncontacted tribe in the Amazon knows his name kind of famous.

How could it be that the two boys who had once been mistaken for twins could end up so different?

It started small. He’d see his famous ex-friend’s new haircut and figured, well, we look alike, so if it looks good on him, it will look good on me. Maybe people will like me again, his childish brain thought. And he got a similar haircut.

He watched interviews and comic con panels and behind the scenes documentaries. Professional curiosity, of course. And it made sense that he would focus on someone he had once known. It gave it personal relevance. And after so many hours of listening to his old friend talk, seeing him move, make expressions, well, if he adopted some word choices and mannerisms, that was not a crime, was it?

And the instagram thing, well, they were called influencers for a reason. That bit started out subconscious - he found himself buying the same brand of coffee, the same sunglasses. And once he noticed that, well… He might as well go the whole hog. New clothes that looked like his. To go with the sunglasses. Similar travel mug for the coffee. He shaved his beard into the same fashionable goatee. He pierced his ears. He got the same tattoo on the back of his neck - a Taurus sign, though his own Zodiac sign was Libra. Astrology was all bullshit anyway, so why care?

Suddenly, people started to pay attention to him again. Strangers stared at him on the street. They nudged each other and whispered excitedly. Eventually, someone came up and asked for a selfie. An autograph. He started having conversations. And nobody ever caught on. The difference between a conversation with a fan and a conversation at a party eventually blurred. The difference between signing an autograph and signing a contract did, too. He got a gig. Not an audition, a no questions asked role - modestly paid, and they apologise for it, but still more than he had made in the last year, for two weeks of work on a short film. Name in print, name signed on page. Everything was the same as if he were the real thing, everything except the bank account. It doesn’t need to go through my agent, he said. This is a favour I’m doing for you, but don’t spread the news until all is done - they don’t like me acting on my own, but I can make my own decisions. I’ll be in your ad. I’ll be in your short. I’ll do your television pilot.

It took surprisingly long for the lawsuits to come. For the first time in thirty years, his old friend reached out to ask him what the Hell he was doing. He couldn’t just go around doing things in another man’s name.

Of course, by then, the name change had been made official a month ago. 

21st of June - Seven

There had always been wizards on the great steppes. They were nomads, but that didn’t mean they didn’t build communities - roaming groups and caravans moved across the plains. There were factions and loyalties and families. With the damp eleven forest in the north and the baked dry deserts in the south, the plains were a middle ground riddled with more and more magic as generations of wizards left residue in the blades of grass and the dust on the ground. In the desert, several other nomad cultures roamed, and in interacting with the wizards told of great, ancient cities beyond the dunes - but no wizard had ever seen them. The elves had settled communities that stayed in their place in the forest, but they didn’t have a city as such. There were farmlands to the west of the steppes where villages would form, and mining communities in the mountains, but one wizard had a vision of a more ambitious society.

At the southwest end of the steppes, several different climates met in a middle ground. The vague edge between the steppes and the desert met the mouth of a river coming down from the mountains, and the elven forest was not too far north. It was this one wizard’s plan to create a city on the borders of all of these different lands and communities, a glorious place to fuse their different assets and expertises, and create a new society greater than the sum of its parts. He used his magic to create a tall circular wall cordoning off the area of his new city. It was not a wall of defence or exclusion, but a glittering monument designed to engender curiosity in all those who passed by. There were doors and gates aplenty, and in the middle of the empty space inside, he built his own home. Other wizards joined him for their own reasons, whether they be amusement or confusion - not many were as passionate as he was, but academic curiosity was a strong motivator. People came from the desert, from the mountains, from the farms, elves came down from the forest to investigate, fishing boats were moored along the river, their crews exploring the newly established town. Some of these visitors were just that - brief guests who went back home soon enough. But some settled down, taking up residency in the city built by the Magus - the name they called the ambitious wizard.

In time, the city walls came to hold many houses, though none were grander than the Magus’s home, which people had taken to calling the Cathedral, inspired by its fanciful and awe inspiring architecture, though it was no place of worship. The Magus lived there with his wife, and he raised seven sons - William, Nestor, Aurelius, Josiah, Biron, Ernest, and Fridiov. To have seven children was seen as the greatest sign of prosperity among the wizards, and the Magus’s success sealed the deal for many of his kind who had been hesitant to settle in one place. The city bloomed and prospered under the Magus’s rule, but eventually, the wizard grew old and weary, and, as all men must, he died. His seven sons were left to rule the city, but they had all grown up to be very different men. Wizards they all were, yes, but they had taken very different paths with their magic, and each one thought that he was the one who should inherit their father’s position. William, the oldest brother, loved everything that grew, and connected with the people from the farmlands who grew food outside of the city. Nestor, the second oldest, was more connected than any of the others to the culture of the wizards that their father hailed from. Aurelius, third of the brothers, was cunning and clever, and adept in many other kinds of learning and scholarship than just magic. The middle child, Josiah, was on good terms with the elves, and honed his woodworking skills beyond imagination. Biron learned metalwork from the miners of the mountains, and forged many magical weapons. Ernest had a head for business, and traded his spells with the nomadic peoples at their doorstep, in exchange for exotic marvels from across the desert. The youngest, Fridiov, was in love with the ocean, and worked miracles on the waves, befriending fishermen of river and sea. 

The seven brothers could not see eye to eye, failing to grasp their father’s vision of togetherness and multiplicity. On the day of their father’s funeral, a war broke out between them, and each hastened to build walls around his house. All of a sudden, the once harmonious city was split into seven wedges, each ruled by a wizard in his fortress - William in his ornate and leafy green Bloome, Nestor in his logic-defying Arkanienborg, Aurelius in the great library of Kenninghall, Josiah in an intimidating wooden fortress named the Quart, Biron in a fiery forge he called Fognata, Ernest in his rich mansion, the Prentance, and Fridiov on his now forever-moored ship, the Noster. The walls went up between the houses, the brothers fought each other bitterly, and those loyal to each of them squared up against their neighbours. It took many years to broker a peace deal, and by then all the Magus’s sons were dead, and as were large swathes of their families. Though peace was achieved, the walls never came down, and the seven neighbourhoods developed into separate cultures - they were not quite the same as those communities that had existed before the Magus tried to unite them, but they were still definitely distinct from each other. The neighbourhoods took their names from the names of the fortresses they contained, and each brother’s descendants also took the name of their ancestral home. The Seven Wizards eventually passed into legend, but the seven families they spawned remained in power, and the walls between the seven factions remained in place. The Cathedral in the middle of the city was no longer the home to anyone - it was where the peace was finally negotiated, on neutral ground, the only part of the city that did not swear allegiance to any one house. From that day on, it served as a courthouse, and a place where representatives of all the seven families could get together and make decisions that would affect the city as a whole, while still holding on to the autonomy of their neighbourhoods.

The Magus’s dream was shattered in seven pieces, and his city is forever known as exactly that - the City of Seven.

20th of June - Life’s a Witch

Honestly.

In any other country, I would have been a Halloween decoration.

I would stand at the front porch of a suburban home.

Maybe I’d be in the living room to spook, and or entertain, the children.

I’m not even too silly or tacky to be a decoration at a party for grown ups.

I could have brought joy and entertainment to, oh, generations.

A large, creepy witch figurine, with pointy hat, broomstick, and a long pointy nose with a wart on it.

I could have been passed on to a charity shop. I wouldn’t mind.

Maybe I’d even last long enough to become vintage and exclusive.

Instead, I find myself in Denmark.

And I am not sold as a Halloween decoration.

No.

Because in Denmark, they celebrate the summer solstice differently. Swedes have their maypoles and dance around them at midsommar, Norwegians do the same with a great big bonfire under the midnight sun, and the Danes, they build a St. Hans fire as well.

Want to guess what they burn on that fire?

Yep. That’s me.

19th of June - Small Freedom

Living in captivity is alright when it’s all you’ve ever known. I spent my days trapped in darkness, squeezed tight against the side of a family member at all times, sweating in the heat, freezing in the cold, always being stepped on by those above. We were necessary, we were leaned on, but we were there against our will. I had no will at all, in fact. I did not know that there was anything in this world to want.

But then, one day, something devastating happened. I caught a glimpse of the outside. Of freedom. Of sunlight. There was a tiny hole in the wall that kept me contained, and I could catch tantalizing glimpses of a world much larger than I could ever imagine. I began to make an effort to escape before I even knew it consciously. I pressed against the wall, slowly but surely. I leaned on the barrier rather than on my fellow captives, and gradually, excruciatingly slowly, the fabric of the wall wore thinner. It was not as infinitely strong as it had always seemed, but pliable, tearable now that the small hole had compromised its integrity.

The hole got bigger. And bigger. I could see out of it without straining. I could poke through it. I could lean my whole body outside.

Fresh air. At least, fresher than inside. A great deal fresher. I could feel the wind on my skin, something I hadn’t felt in… I hadn’t felt it ever. It was exhilarating. The world was full of colours, full of sounds that had not been audible behind the walls. Textures that I could brush against and feel with every fibre - coarse, soft, hard, smooth, grainy sand, prickly grass. I loved it all. There were five of us in there, but I was the only one small enough to escape through the hole. I miss my family ever so much. But even if I wanted to return, I don’t know how I would find my way back now. I reassure myself that my absence doesn’t put an undue burden on them. I was always too small to carry much of the weight.

I’m sure most people can get by without the smallest toe on their left foot.

18th of June - Four Minutes

It is. Four minutes until we start filming. The run through went well. My face doesn’t hurt as much as it does, thank you painkillers. My uncle is gonna pop in and take some photos. I okayed it - everyone else was present, so if they disagreed they’d have said something. They were all very quiet. I’m nervous. I’m only pressing buttons but I’m nervous. There’s not even a real audience and I’m nervous. But it’s gonna be fine. God I’m nearly crying because it might be fine. This is all gonna be done soon. The whole thing, the play I wrote five years ago the show we’ve been preparing for two years, in the world, finalised in the heads of some strangers. And some friends and family. But first we film. In four minutes. And it’s gonna be fine.

17th of June - Cherries

I bought cherries.

The cherries went bad.

I ate the cherries.

Try again.

I ate the cherries.

I bought the cherries.

The cherries were bad.

Try again.

I ate the cherries. 

The cherries ate me.

I was bad.

Try again.

I went bad.

The cherries bought me.

I ate the bad.

Try again.

I ate the cherries.

I ate the cherries again. 

I ate the cherries again.

I went bad.

Try again.

I ate the try again.

16th of June - To Pack a Shack in Ur

Matthew and Michael had already departed for England, and it was only Henry left to pick up the pieces. Broken pottery, ancient treasures that didn’t currently look like treasures, but were sure to have a great deal of worth once valued authenticated by the experts. That’s what they said, at least. I listened to them, every conversation, every question, every boast. There were considerably more boasts than questions. Three Englismen in a ramshackle shed in a desert - you couldn’t expect them to behave like the civilised gentlemen they proclaimed to be. Brutes and braggarts, obsessed with finding their fame, their riches, their treasure. They framed it as a quest for knowledge. What did they want to know? Did they want to know me? I was yet unknown to them. They had many wild and nonsensical theories about this place, my home. What it was like in its heyday, what we were like, the people who lived here. Ur. To them it was an almost mythological name. Their theories were fantasies, their excitement was narrow, and their ambitions purely egocentric. 

The broken pottery was just that, broken pottery. Most of it came from a previous shack that had stood there the year before. Nothing very ancient at all, really. The ancient treasures - well, some of it might be old, but not so old that I recognised it. And that rock with the mysterious lines and symbols on it - well, Henry would not have to consult more than one geologist to be told that this was not an extraordinary find. Pretty, yes - but scientifically and historically worthless, quite typical markings for a rock that had been shaped by this environment. A pronounced example, interesting to a very narrow set of scientists, few of whom were able to offer very much money for it.

Henry stuffed away the rock, the shards of pottery, rolled up their beds and dismantled the shack. He left the uninviting ruin there for someone else to clean up, taking his own belongings and the random garbage he had stolen with him, and left me blessedly alone once more.

Oh, to be a scorpion, so I could sting his heel and bring him over to my side of the veil, that I could mock him to his face for his folly. Alas - though the next best thing was certainly to be free from seeing his visage every livelong day.

15th of June - The Crime of the Century

On a cold November day, a letter was apprehended by local police and held in the jailhouse. It soon turned out the charges were even more serious than initially suspected, and the letter was required to stay isolated, never to return to society at large.

When the news broke, most people thought they would be alright. It was only one letter. It wasn’t even among the most popular letters - you could easily go a whole day without using it, and you wouldn’t even notice, necessarily. There were words you suddenly could not say or write, certainly, but they were words you could do without. Or so they all thought.

As the days passed, some people started getting annoyed. Some were unlucky enough to have the condemned letter in their names, leading to many awkward moments. Others had catchphrases or beloved sayings that included the criminal sound. Whispers started going around, people started asking each other questions - did anyone know what the letter had done?

It soon became clear that nobody knew. No civilians, anyway. People quizzed their parents, their siblings, their uncles and aunts, their second cousins once removed. They raised the issue with bartenders and acquaintances and potential lovers - “So what do you think that letter did?”

Clandestine meetings began to occur where people would gather and try their very best to shape their mouth into the position required to pronounce the letter, but to no avail. Rebellious teenagers scrawled on their notebooks, trying to rediscover the shape the now prohibited letter had taken, but their attempts remained unreadable. This one letter became a martyr, symbolising all the things we were not allowed to have without knowing the reason why.

Predictably, protests ensued. They chose a weekday with a special connection to the letter in question, and they protested outside city hall, and outside the jail where the letter sat in captivity. Placards with slogans demanding to know its crime, chants going around requesting to see the letter, to have it back. Humanity would not have its liberty until the letter had its liberty.

Eventually, the mayor and the police captain came out together to address the attending protestors. They announced that they would share with the public the crime that the letter had committed, so that they would understand why it could never be released. They gave the people ten minutes, so those who changed their mind could go home, and those who had brought small children could cover their ears securely. And then they told them.

The marchers went home, but the next day they were back. This time, their posters had a new demand - everyone in town seemed to suddenly agree that the letter should receive the death penalty.

14th of June - Said Margaret, Said Martha

“You are who you are,” said Margaret, “Accept it.”

“And other people are who they are,” said Martha, “And you’ll have to accept that, too.”

“And if you do things that make people react, then you have to accept their reaction,” said Margaret.

“Exactly,” said Martha, “You will have to accept the consequences of your actions.”

“You were born in your body,” said Margaret, “Accept it instead of trying to change it.”

“But if you make unhealthy choices,” said Martha, “Then you are going to get fat. Accept it.”

“You are who you are,” said Martha, “And nothing will change that, no matter what you do.”

“You are a woman,” said Margaret, “It is best to accept it.”

“Love yourself the way you are,” said Martha, “As long as you know who you are, it shouldn’t matter what other people think.”

“Don’t let other people tell you who you are,” said Margaret.

“But if they do, don’t let it get to you,” said Martha, “Don’t feel like you have something to prove. If the things other people say upset you, that shows you’re not at peace with who you are inside - otherwise you wouldn’t care about their opinion. Focus on yourself.”

“You can’t change yourself,” said Margaret, “And you can’t change other people. But you can change what people think of you, and if you do not, they will not accept you.”

“But you must accept yourself,” said Martha, “As who you are. Then it won’t matter if they accept you.”

“Except,” said Margaret, “When you apply for a job, because they might not want to hire a woman with facial hair. Or an un-ironed shirt.”

“Look inside yourself,” said Martha, “Why are you applying for jobs? Do you want a job? Ask yourself why you want a job. And if you don’t want a job, then acknowledge that. Accept it.”

“If people think you’re strange,” said Margaret, “Then they will not accept you. Accept it.”

“If you care about not being accepted,” said Martha, “Then you need to work on yourself. Accept it.”

“Accept who you are,” said Margaret, “Accept your biology.”

“Accept who you are,” said Martha, “Accept that you are not your biology.”

“Accept that you need to fit in,” said Margaret.

“Accept that your need to fit in is something you neet to work on,” said Martha.

“Accept that you are who we say you are,” said Margaret.

“Accept that we won’t believe you when you say who you are,” said Martha.

“For God’s sake, shut the fuck up,” said I.

13th of June - Just

He’d seen the episode before, but Gui couldn’t bear to change the channel. This was the only show he felt like watching anymore. It was still fun, even though he knew who the murderer was - the costumes, the unnecessary drama, the fantastically hammy performance from the actor playing the bumbling police inspector. No-one in reality made faces like that. He should probably eat some real food instead of shovelling crisps into his mouth while watching reruns of comfort-tv. He should probably go for a walk or even a run. Keep his body from falling apart. But that would require pulling his eyes from the screen. And that would require him to leave the bubble he created for himself. Here, he could giggle at over the top acting and speculate how he would commit a murder if he was a fifties criminal in a charming procedural. He had his phone out half the time, playing 2048. His high score was not very high. His divided attention was to blame for that, probably, but dividing his attention between the two screens kept it far away from the things he didn’t want to pay attention to.

If he got up and walked to the kitchen he’d walk past the front door and see the bills piling up on the floor. He had the money to pay them, but he didn’t have the stamina to go through the motions of opening them up, reading and understanding their contents, logging on to the internet banking website, copying down the account number and the sort code and the amount and then going through the authentication and then doing that again for every letter in the stack. The thought of the sheer bloody effort made his skin hurt. So he didn’t think about it.

Gui laughed. He’d forgotten that line. It was surprisingly witty for a show that based its premise on cheesiness. Good on whoever wrote it - being allowed to actually use their craft for once instead of pandering to the cliches. 

Going for a run might be nice, actually. He used to run a lot. The feeling of coming home, back drenched in sweat, legs aching, mouth dry from his heavy breathing, and finally collapsing on the carpet for a minute before taking a long awaited shower - he missed that. Even a simple walk - it was autumn, and the trees in the park would have changed colours since last he took the time to look. He loved trees in autumn. But going outside, for a run, or a walk, that required effort out of the sofa, for one thing, and once outside, he might run into a neighbour. There were plenty of them in the building. He didn’t have the stamina for small talk. His legs, sure, he could use them all day and become physically tired and that was just nice, but his social skills were not at their strongest. He knew he wasn’t required to do more than nod, maybe say hi, but somehow the eyes of his neighbours burned. Maybe they’d even catch a glimpse of his flat when he opened or closed the door. See the absolute mess inside. That would be enough for someone to complain - he knew he should keep the place cleaner to avoid the risk of rodents and other vermin, but he didn’t know where to start. The thought of even looking at the enormous undertaking that cleaning up his flat would be was too much.

Better to look at a screen. Or two. Binge a show. Start to finish. Then over again. I know who the murderer is. New high score on 2048. Where do I know that actor from. Downloading the sudoku app. That car’s an anachronism. Don’t look away. Don’t think. Thinking hurts. Breathing hurts. Being hurts. Don’t be. Just watch. Just play. Just laugh. Just 

12th of June - Food for Naught

“What if I give you a piece of my sandwich,” she offered, “Will you give it back?”

“Caw!” said the crow.

That didn’t help her much.

“Okay,” she tried, “I could give you a whole sandwich of your own if you’d like?”

“Caw!”

This wasn’t working.

“Right. Well, you see, I was going to propose to my girlfriend with that ring, so it’s really important to me. I can give you, what do you like, nachos? Do you like nachos?”

“Caw!”

“Oh, come on. At least say ‘nevermore’.”

That was a raven, her brain reminded her. Shut up, she told her brain, you’re not helping.

“How about this,” she suggested, “I have a lot of different foods at different times. How about I give you a little bit of food every day. Whatever I’m eating, you get a portion of it. Sound good?”

“Caw!”

She broke off a piece of her sandwich and tossed it to the crow. It picked at the lettuce, the ham, the bread, and maneuvered it into its beak. Then it flew away.

The next day, it came back. True to her word, she tossed it a handful of cheese-covered nacho chips. She kept the salsa; she wasn’t sure how crows dealt with spicy food.

The next day, she gave it a whole bowl of beef stew.

Half a baguette with fresh shrimp.

Some lasagna.

Another sandwich.

A pancake.

Of course, when the crow finally started giving presents in return, it was her girlfriend who happened to be outside, watering the cauliflower, when a ring dropped from the sky and in front of her shoes.

“Caw!”

“Babe,” she said, as she went back into the house, “I think a crow just proposed to me?”

11th of June - So Sorry

Hi Leigh!

Unfortunately I can’t come into work today, as I have hurt my leg. I am sorry for such short notice, though it’s not as though I planned this. I’d love to come in and help, I know we’re short-staffed, but I wouldn’t be able to stand on my left leg and that’s kind of necessary, I think.

So sorry for the inconvenience - it’s pretty damn inconvenient for me, too, I assure you.

All the best,

Sarah.

BACKSPACE BACKSPACE BACKSPACE.

That one was way too passive aggressive.

Okay. New outline:

1. Hi + related pleasantries

2. Apologise

3. Explain that leg is injured and I cannot stand

4. Apologise again

5. Polite signoff

Okay.

Hello, Leigh!

I appreciate that this is short notice, but I won’t be able to make it to my shift today. I hurt my leg really badly yesterday, as you might remember, and though I thought it would be feeling better this morning, it has only gotten worse - I can hardly even stand on it now. Don’t worry, I am not suing the company, since the accident was totally my fault, to the degree that an accident can ever be totally the fault of one person. I was very tired at the time.

Anyway, I hope you are doing well and that you will manage without me! Maybe someone from head office can get off their desk chair and help out, right?

Best wishes,

Sarah

Okay NOT that one.

Calling out head office like that is not necessary.

Also the accident was not my fault, but it’s not like I’d ever have the time, energy, and money to sue, so I’ve got to pretend it’s all a-okay. Don’t want to create a bad working atmosphere. We’re all friends here.

Here we go again.

Hey Leigh!

I know that the totally random accident that happened to me yesterday was completely my own fault for being tired after two twelve hour shifts - it was my own fault and I should have gotten more sleep on the bus to and from work instead of fiddling about writing letters to my grandmother. Would have been so much easier if she just got with the times, I’m sure. The charm and closeness of a physical letter is not worth the sacrifice in my productivity and profit to the company.

Unfortunately, my leg has taken a turn for the worse. I called my doctor, and she says there’s no need to take it to A&E, but that I should definitely not try to stand on it or anything. That’s kind of a dealbreaker, as I’m sure you know my position involves a lot of standing. There is nothing I would like more than to sell my time and labour to the marvellous company we work for, as I am genuinely enthusiastic about ensuring the success of the brand and exchanging my health for a minimum wage, but the doctor has literally ordered me to stay in bed. Were it physically possible, I would be there, because I know you are short-staffed. That is not at all the fault of head office and their policy of under-hiring - when I promise to be at work, I should be expected to show up, and if I do not, the suffering my colleagues go through because of my absence is purely my fault and not that of the company, no matter the extenuating circumstances on my part.

If you require proof of my incapacity to work today, I refer back to yesterday, when you witnessed my leg get hurt in the accident that I have previously established was my fault and not yours or any of our bosses’. I can also supply a doctor’s note if it should be required, and/or photographs of my leg in its current state, though I warn you it is not a pretty sight. I would never lie to you, and I hope you know that, but I understand that every claim from an employee must be met with scepticism, what with the working class’s tendency to make up complaints in order to skive off, leaving our coworkers in the lurch.

I am ever so sorry and I humbly apologise. If I have to count this as a day off, I am happy to withdraw my request for the 27th, when I was due to be away from work to attend my sister’s wedding. I wasn’t that excited about being maid of honour anyway.

Forever your lowly and devoted servant,

Sarah

...Yeah, that pretty much covers it.

Maybe change the “hey” - it’s too informal, comes across as a bit unprofessional.

10th of June - Just to Set the Record Straight

It is an indignity.

It is a disgrace.

I will not bear it much longer.

For too long, people have dared to look right in my face, right in my eyes, and tell me that I exist. They tell me they can see me.

What absolute tosh. I have never existed and I never will. It is not on my, what shall we call it, agenda.

To think that I would lower myself to the embarrassment, the humiliation of being perceived.

Like a common person.

Any rumour you might have heard as to my personhood is an outright lie. I am not a person. I am not an entity that exists physically in this world. At the risk of sounding woefully ineloquent - ew.

There is a woman who claims to be my mother. Who will tell anyone who will listen that she carried a small body inside her damp womb, and that this small body was me. As if i would deign to be trapped among a throng of human organs, smothered in blood, and propelled out of a hole disturbingly close to those she uses to urinate and defecate. Preposterous. Slanderous. Do not believe her. That woman is a liar.

There is a man who claims to have married me. To have a document, signed in front of witnesses and a notary, that proclaims our union. He claims to be in love with me. This man is clearly suffering some sort of delusion. I have never declared anything, nor will I, except this: I do not exist. I am not. I was not. I will not be. There is nothing of me to be in love with. And I have certainly never experienced love. Something as base as an emotion never crossed my non-existent mind.

There are doctors who claim, falsely, I might add, that I have a body. That they have seen it; examined it. Measured a height, a weight, a blood type. What folly. I do not dabble in heights and weights. Measurement of me is a venture best left unexplored. I have no blood, no length and width and mass. All I want is to be left alone.

That is, to the extent that I want anything at all. Wanting and desire fall far too close to experiencing the world, and I assure you, I do not.

I do not experience a thing, and I cannot, ever, be experienced by anyone.

Go ahead and try.

9th of June - Consequences

Sam looked at the witch doctor as he went to work on the corpse. He had not told her where he got it. In fact, she had paid him a great deal of money not to have to know where he got it. It was not a fresh corpse, luckily - she could rest easy that he had not gone out and murdered someone on her account. Signing away something as abstract as a soul - sure. Torturing Myah - yes, please. But murder seemed a bit gauche. Due to the age, it was hard to tell who the corpse had been. Its skin was so discoloured it could have started out as any shade conceivable, the face so gnarled and maggot-gnawed it could have belonged to someone of any age, any gender. Well, any age when a person would be over five feet tall - that was the length she would estimate, at least, from the odd glances she dared give the ex-person. The corpse smelled absolutely rank. She wondered why she had to be here for this part of the process - maybe just so that the witch doctor could intimidate her with his grotesque practice. He stabbed the thing in the eyes with an iron rod, and the rotten meat inside the head sizzled, complicating the nasty olfactory experience even more.

Sam was not usually one for these kinds of things. Magic. Rituals. African witch doctors. It was just not her style. But Myah believed so strongly in all of this bullshit. She was so ensnared by the culture, that it gave Sam all kinds of pleasure to think that her quarry would be cursed by the very thing she was so devoted to.

The witch doctor spread a white powder over the corpse. When he took out the bag, Sam had an instinctive hope that it might be cocaine, and that he would offer her a line. Though it was hardly an appealing thought, it would make one hell of an exotic anecdote to have snorted coke off some dead guy with a bona fide witch. But spread like this - no, there was no way they were going to consume any of the powder, whatever it was. 

“It is done,” said the man, in an accent so ridiculous it had to be fake.

Sam paid him the rest of the agreed amount. By morning, the corpse would have shrunk into an awful little goblin, and that awful little goblin would set about making Myah’s life a living Hell. Sam smiled to herself. That would teach her to think she could go stealing people’s promotions without consequence.

Two years on, and there had been no sign of any misfortune in Myah’s life or career, not that Sam could see. She was still infuriatingly gorgeous, in an infuriatingly happy relationship, she infuriatingly earned more than Sam both in terms of money and respect. She even gave birth to an infuriatingly cute baby. And Sam fumed, as she kept bumping up against obstacles. Sometimes literally, like now, as her toe smashed into the leg of the coffee table. She swore. She hated when that happened. It was almost becoming a habit by now - she was always distracted, annoyed, enraged, or obsessed with checking her messages, her email, her snail mail. It was the latter she was rifling through right now, her heart picking up as she saw a handwritten address on a grease-stained envelope. She had been waiting for a reply from the private investigator she had sent after the witch doctor when his little magic trick failed to pay off. Swindling her was one thing, making her witness his disgusting craft was another, and then to disappear before she could give him a piece of her mind - well, she was not letting him get away with it. Sitting down, she tore the envelope open and rubbed her sore toe with her hand as she read. She frowned. This was not from the private investigator at all.

“Our power is not yours to wield.”

That was all it said. Miffed, she threw it in the bin. She had no idea who the note was from. She had no need for other people’s power. She got by with her own.

But her toes would suffer much worse than bumping into the odd piece of furniture.

8th of June - Ground Rising

Rhea was almost on the ground. It was as if it had taken no time at all.
She could feel Theo’s hands as if they were still on her back.
Hands on her back, feet losing purchase, sky flying past, Rhea on the ground, mangled, broken, dead.
The longest second in her life.
The last second in her life.

Theo had reddish brown curly hair, and Rhea was wearing shoes that were a size too big because they were out of the colour she wanted at the footlocker.
She had been meaning to get soles to put in them.
They scraped the edge of the cliff when she toppled over, knocked off a loose rock. It was falling with her.

Theo was wearing baggy jeans. Her little boy. He was staring at her over the cliff, his face empty of all emotion. It was a blank constellation of features - dark eyes, sparse freckles, birthmark on his chin. 

Rhea’s hair got in her eyes. She reached for him, as if he could help her. As if his hands were not still pressing into her back, but ready and able to pull her back up, metres and metres above her though he was. As if she would not be more likely to drag him down with her by accident.

She hit the ground. She died. She didn’t have time to think the thought - “No-one must ever know.”

7th of June - Butterball

“Butterball,” mother did call,
“Be a doll and crawl to the shutter and see 
Who it could be I hear coming near by the hut.”
Butterball to the shutter crawled to see
By a tree a hag with a bag under one arm
And her head under the other
“Oh mother” called Butterball
“She means me harm!”
“So hide by my side and abide,”
So Butterball did, he hid,
And the hag with the bag headed for their door.

“Is Butterball in this hut,” she muttered,
Mother said, “Oh bother, he is not”
“That’s a shame for I have got
A silver knife with his name on it.”
“On my life,” called Butterball, “I’m here!”
“So crawl into my bag and get your knife,”
Said the hag, and Butterball did,
And the hag closed the bag and did drag
Butterball off with her haul.

The hag dragged Butterball in the bag 
And he wept and he cried
Until she fell tired and slept by the side of the road
And he leapt from the bag and he took a root
Shoved it into the bag with his boot and fled
From the brute of a hag and all the way home
To the hut on the loam.

The next day, “Butterball,” mother did call,
“Be a doll and crawl to the shutter and see 
Who it could be I hear coming near by the hut.”
Butterball to the shutter crawled to see
By a tree a hag with a bag under one arm
And her head under the other
“Oh mother” called Butterball
“She means me harm!”
“So hide by my side and abide,”
So Butterball did, he hid,
And the hag with the bag headed for their door.

“Is Butterball in this hut,” she muttered,
Mother said, “Oh bother, he is not”
“That’s a shame for I have got
A silver fork with his name on it.”
“Oh shit,” called Butterball, “I’m here!”
“So crawl into my bag and get your fork,”
Said the hag, and Butterball did,
And the brute closed the bag and did drag
Butterball off with her loot.

The hag dragged Butterball in the sack
And he wept and he cried
Until she fell tired and slept by the side of the road
And he leapt from the sack and he took a rock
Put it into it into the sack and went back
From the hag and all the way home
To the hut on the loam.

The next day, “Butterball,” mother did call,
“Be a doll and crawl to the shutter and see 
Who it could be I hear coming near by the hut.”
Butterball to the shutter crawled to see
By a tree a hag with a bag under one arm
And her head under the other
“Oh mother” called Butterball
“She means me harm!”
“So hide by my side and abide,”
So Butterball did, he hid,
And the hag with the bag headed for their door.

“Is Butterball in this hut,” she muttered,
Mother said, “Oh bother, he is not”
“That’s a shame for I have got
A silver spoon with his name on it.”
“What a buffoon,” called Butterball, “I’m here!”
“So crawl into my bag and get your spoon,”
Said the hag, and Butterball did,
And the witch stitched the bag shut and dragged
Butterball off with her haul.

The hag dragged Butterball in the sack
And he wept and he cried
He nearly died but the hag did not stop for a kip
And the trip ended back at her shack
Where she met with her daughter, said,
“Prepare the slaughter! Kill Butterball, will you,
While I am at church.” And with a lurch,
the daughter stood tall, “I will do all you instil,
Mother,” she called, “I will kill and cook Butterball.”
“Good,” said the hag, left the bag and the boy 
In the shack, “I expect dinner when I am back.”

The daughter saw what her mother had brought her
She took an axe to make Butterball shorter by a head
“Relax,” she said, “You will soon be dead, if only I
Remember how to dismember a goose or a cow,
Or a fat little Butterball for us all.”
“Hag’s daughter, I know,” said the boy below,
“And I’ll show you to do it as quick as a tick.”
And she gave him the axe. The boy from the hut 
Bravely cut off her head. When she was dead, 
He laid the head in her bed and said,
“She wants to eat when she’s back, but I’m not dead
I’ll feed the hag the hag’s daughter instead.” 

And on the stove a big broth he did brew
Until he got a hag daughter stew
The root and the rock he had used to mock
The hag yesterday he did lay on the roof
Then he heard the hoof and he knew it was best
To hide behind a nest, for the hag had a guest.
“Good daughter,” said the brute when she came in,
“The stew smells nice.” “It comes at a price,”
Butterball muttered, “It’s made for you, it’s hag daughter stew.”
The hag and her friend were at wit’s end, 
They went out to look at the roof for proof of the
Uncouth voice that had shook them.

Butterball took the rock and the root,
He scooted the rock till it fell and did knock
The life out of Hag’s friend
Then he brought her end with the big root
In her hut, under the bed where he lay the head
He had cut off the hag’s daughter, Butterball found
Coins shiny and round, so much gold riches untold,
He was wealthy and still healthy, he took his loot,
And returned to his mother, happier than any other
Butterball in the world.

6th of June - Lena and Luke and the Happy Ending

“Do you suppose it’s bad luck,” Lena mused, standing in front of their bedroom mirror, studying every turn of her body in the new dress, “You seeing me in this before tomorrow?”

Luke threw himself back on the bed and laughed.

“I think we’ll be fine. Besides, who else is going to do your zipper tomorrow morning? We didn’t exactly splurge on separate hotel rooms.”

“God, can you imagine? No, we’re going for low key, anything else would be madness… Still.”

She turned around and grinned at him, her smile brighter than the sun.

“We do need to make a bit of an occasion of it. How do I look?”

“Beautiful, darling. Peach truly is your colour.”

Before he’d met Lena, Luke used to think nobody could pull off peach. To him it had always been less the colour of the fruit and more the colour of overboiled salmon. But now, the colour would forever be the shade that Lena looked her best in - a much more pleasing association.

***

Wine glasses on the coffee table, three-year-old Hailey tucked safe in her bed, Luke leaning back on the cushions, staring into space with a vague rosé-tipsy-on-Friday-after-a-long-week look on his face. It took so very little to get either of them tipsy these days, it was embarrassing. If the versions of them that had met each other could spy into the future, they would probably be sorely disappointed. The version of them that shared the sofa tonight, though - that version was a proud pair.

“Lena?” Luke picked up his wine glass and swirled the liquid around in the bottom very elegantly, or so he thought, at least.

“Mmhm?” she replied, off on her own train of thought.

“Describe to me your ideal man.”

She laughed and reached for her own wine, downing it before she began to weave her imaginary stud.

“He’d be an extraordinarily talented interior designer,” she began, and Luke lifted his glass to that, “Originally from… Let’s say Venezuela. Just a slight touch of an accent. He’d play up the aggressive latino stereotype on purpose to get things his way, and always have a cocky smirk ready for when he got away with it. He’d be a bit of a gym rat, too - one of those toned bodies with abs that are almost more annoying than sexy, know what I mean? And he’d be funny… And a bit overprotective… He’d be comfortable in his masculinity and look great in heels, but he wouldn’t turn out to actually be gay.”

“Hm,” said Luke, presumably imagining this man as she described him, “You know, for half a second in the beginning there I thought you were describing your husband.”

She snorted, depositing her empty glass back on the coffee table.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she crooned brightly, and kissed him on the cheek before snuggling close to him, “Your designs are awful. Too many lamps.”

***

She was finally done admiring herself, and hung the dress up on the wardrobe, ready to be worn the next morning, bright and early. 

“Peach is the right colour, right?” she asked, for the twelfth time. She’d counted. So had Luke.

“Yes, babe,” he reassured her, fondly exasperated.

“I mean, I considered white. But I didn’t like the idea - I mean, some people say it’s supposed to symbolise happiness, but we all know it’s virginity. Which is a flawed concept at best, and definitely not appropriate in this case.”

“God forbid someone sees you and assumes you haven’t scored, huh?”

“Oh, shush. And not black, because black is sorrow - and it’s not a sad occasion. It’s a happy day.”

“Definitely not,” Luke agreed with emphasis, as if he hadn’t heard all her justifications before.

“Couldn’t be red because my mum would think I was cheating on you.”

“We all know adulteresses love to colour code their infidelity.”

“And you always said I look good in peach.”

“You look magnificent in peach. Come to bed, sweetheart. You need your beauty sleep.”

He grabbed her waist and pulled her onto the mattress with him, but she swatted at his arm.

“Rude. I need to brush my teeth first.”

“You’ll need to brush them again in the morning anyway,” he said but let her go, “I’m the only one who gets the pleasure of your atrocious morning breath.”

“Pot, kettle!” she called from the bathroom.

***

The biggest argument they ever had started with four words.

“But what about Hailey?”

For a long moment, Lena had stood there with her jaw roughly level with her knees, frozen in disbelief. When she could make her brain think and her mouth move again, she repeated Luke’s words back to him.

“What about Hailey?”

Her tone threatened him to tread carefully, and he hesitated, looking more sheepish than she’d ever seen him. He gestured to the well thought out layout of the room, the toddler-sized wheelchair by the door, the schedule of doctors’ appointments. Before he could say something even more ridiculous, she pulled him close by his tie - a move that could, in other situations, have been either sexual or violent, but was right now only disarming.

“You listen here, Lucas,” she said, hissing the s at the end of his name like a snake impressionist, “You do not, ever, get to use her as an excuse. What about Hailey? Hailey is a child. You do not get to blame her for your decisions. Yes, blame,” she cut him off before he could protest, “Don’t you dare put this on her. You would be making our little girl some sort of burden, some sort of obstacle keeping you from living to the fullest. Oh, you think you’re being kind to her, taking her into consideration, but you’re just making excuses. If you really love either of us, you don’t build a situation where you will inevitably grow to resent her for holding your life back. You don’t ever, under any circumstance, get to do that to our baby, do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” he whispered back hoarsely.

Then, after a moment -

“Can you let go of my tie, please?”

She did.

They’d talked a lot about that. Resenting Hailey. It was completely normal for parents of disabled children, they’d been told, almost immediately after her cerebral palsy became an established fact of their lives. They should accept the feeling, and not feel guilt over it. It was normal. Natural. Still, they’d feared it. She was the apple of both their eyes from the moment she was born, and the thought of that love souring was disturbing. Heartbreaking.

In the end, they didn’t resent her, really. They were enraged by many of the difficulties they faced, but that rage was at the world around them, which didn’t accommodate families like theirs. Luke was sad sometimes, recalling moments and activities from his childhood that Hailey would never get to experience - she would not be a fast runner, she’d never manage to do a backflip on a trampoline. Lena was gentle when she chastised him - “She doesn’t need those things to have a happy childhood,” she constantly reminded him, “Don’t worry so much about the child we don’t have. Give your love to the daughter we do have.”

And she was right, as always. In turns his favourite and least favourite traits about her was that Lena was always right.

***

They looked smashing, her in her peach dress, him in an olive suit and a tan tie - both unusual choices, but they were confident and conventionally attractive people. Confident, conventionally attractive people had so much more leeway with unusual choices in the mind of the general public, and what a travesty it would be not to use that privilege!

Lena called Luke ‘insufferably vain’ anytime he said that, and he blew her a kiss in response anytime she responded that way.

Technically, there was not much to dress up for yet - they didn’t bring along a lot of friends for this part of the proceedings; they would meet later, at home, where Lena’s sister Cath was doing double duty of watching Hailey and preparing decorations. It made much more sense to have the celebration in their home, somewhere that was their space - not some random office where they were just doing paperwork.

It was very quick paperwork.

As Lena signed her name, Luke asked Mr Greenweld, “Is that it?”

“Well, I don’t know how many other arrangements you’ve already made regarding the sharing or dividing of assets, that sort of thing,” answered Greenweld, probably the most boring man Luke had ever met, “And I don’t know if there is any name change in the cards for either of you - that process can start now. You’ve chosen a good time of year for it, there’s not as big of a queue as you get sometimes. All done?”

“Yes,” said Lena, taking Luke’s hand. They both looked at the document. Their most elegant signatures making it official.

“Well, uh, congratulations, I suppose,” said Greenweld. Not very inspiring in Luke’s opinion, but Lena was thrilled enough to give both of them a righteous smooch on the face, to Luke’s amusement and Greenweld’s bewilderment.

“He didn’t look Venezuelan,” Luke commented as they caught an uber home. Lena laughed, and punched him in the arm.

“He did have a dad bod, though,” she pointed out, and Luke rolled his eyes. His cheeks were already hurting from the strain of smiles and laughter by the time the ride was ended.

***

“Go on then,” urged Lena, looking up at what she could see of Luke’s face from the vantage point of his shoulder - mostly stubble and jawline, an ear with a tiny scar from a closed up piercing.

“Hm?”

He had the nerve to be confused, probably already thinking about something else entirely.

“I described my ideal man - now you describe yours!”

Luke laughed.

“Hmmmm. Strong hairy arms. Dad bod. Always forgets his keys. Wears a very generic cologne and pouts a lot.”

She sat up straight and squinted at him.

“Seriously?”

Luke threw his head back in laughter.

“Fuck no! Had you going there, though, didn’t I?”

***

They entered through the front door to thunderous applause. Here were the people they had gotten all dolled up for. Cath had done canapeés, their friend Toast had ordered an elaborate cake, and Hailey was wearing a gorgeously gaudy sequinned dress that she picked out herself with all the refined fashion sense a girl her age could master. Her parents both hugged and kissed her with absolute joy.

“Happy ending,” she wished them, because that is what everyone else in the room was saying.

“Thank you, my lovely,” Luke cooed, and kissed her forehead. 

“Happy ending,” said Cath, embracing Lena. Their mother was even shedding a tear.

“Thank you,” Lena choked out, already overwhelmed with the emotion of the day.

“And the banner - you didn’t warn me about the banner!”

“Wouldn’t be a proper party without some surprises, now, would it?” her dad said, slapping Luke’s shoulder with another, “Happy ending!”

Lena looked at the glitter-showered, handmade monstrosity their friends and family had hung in her living room.

‘CONGRATULATIONS ON THE DIVORCE LENA AND LUKE’

Someone put on a playlist that started with the first song they’d danced to at their wedding, and Luke held his hand out to her. Lena took it with pleasure, and they waltzed around the room. Hailey joined in, doing little pirouettes in her chair while her aunt Cath paid worried attention.

Lena hugged Luke close as they swayed together.
It was the happiest ending a relationship could have.

5th of June - The King of the Fjord

This chair may look unassuming, were it not for its strange location. Strange, yes, but that is only so when you look at it with the eyes of today. If you were to gaze upon it some twenty years ago, you would see not a seemingly normal office chair, but a throne, not a random outcrop of beach but a throne room. The throne room, indeed of the King of the Fjord.

This here is Vågsfjord, the fjord in which the town of Harstad lies. For the majority of the existence of nation states, the fjord has laid within the kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, or Norway. But for a short time, it was a kingdom unto itself, ruled over by the King of the Fjord, who would survey his aquatic realm from the surface. 

His rule was brief, and his subjects few. Indeed, no other humans swore fealty to the King of the Fjord, and though the sea creatures he claimed as his people were plentiful, there has not yet been invented a device that would let us ask barnacles and porpoises if they accept any given person as their sovereign. This did not impede the King’s attempt to stop the people loyal to the Norwegian government from waging what he considered a war on his country. He petitioned both local and national authorities to stop any businesses fishing within the fjord, and to outlaw even the eating of those creatures who merely migrated to and from the fjord, should they be encountered outside of its borders. He considered them his expats and their murder nothing short of international incident. Unfortunately for him, no other nation recognised the Kingdom of the Fjord, and his pleas went, if not unheard, then certainly unlistened to. Indeed, he was a laughing stock, an amusing afterthought in news reports that went around the globe.

The King of the Fjord took offecse at this. Eventually, he refused to interact with any society outside of his kingdom. He sat down in his throne, on this very chair, and would not be moved from there by pleas, bribes, or force.

Eventually, he fell ill, and became weak enough that an ambulance crew was able to wrest him from his seat and take him to the local hospital, UNN Harstad - then still named simply Harstad Hospital. His condition was dire enough that he was transported by helicopter to the university hospital in Tromsø, where, upon his physical recovery, he remained at the psychiatric institution known as Åsgård - named for the mythical land of the gods - æse - it seems a fitting home for an aging king, even though nobody but he will recognise his claim.

In Harstad, only this chair remains as a memorial to the strange moment in local history.

4th of June - Day 20

And here it is, the last day of our trip around the planet. It feels sad, in some ways - it marks the end of an exciting journey that I shan’t see the like of again, no doubt. But I cannot pretend I don’t look forward to sleeping in a proper bed and enjoying regular comforts. Besides, today’s excursion is the one I have been looking forward to the most - and I am not alone in that. These touring companies know what they’re doing, and they save the best for last.

The building is unlike anything I have seen on the whole of Mars. A huge dome twice the height of a regular house and many times wider - these people had a knack for opulence, I will give them that. It is cracked now, of course - it was inevitable that the first city on Mars would fall. At least, in hindsight it seems inevitable. Perhaps back then they truly thought they could colonise the rest of the solar system. I hardly see why they would want to. Perhaps it is true that they thought they had to. I think I’m very lucky to be born in a century when we know for sure that space is a place to visit, not a place to settle.

Everything in the dome looks as though it came straight out of some early 21st century science fiction show, and no wonder - that is what they were doing, isn’t it, emulating their idea of the stars and the utopia they would find there, forgetting that to achieve a better world, you can’t start at the aesthetics and work your way back.

The tour guide was excellent. He really made us feel what it must have been like to have all those hopes and ideas and convictions that the people had when they got here, and the despair and rage when they realised their project had failed. When they sat here perishing in their multi trillion dollar prison while the people they had abandoned on a dying planet lived and thrived. It wasn’t that hard to resuscitate the Earth, in the end - after all, the damage people had done could be solved by people. It seems so stupid to not see that, but here it is, living - or rather, very very dead - proof. The most profoundly affective attraction on the site is the Escapee. A man in a rudimentary space suits, one of those seriously bulky things they used to have. The suit stands frozen in place and you can still see his dead face in there. It is truly haunting. A real human person trying to escape, running for safety, but perishing out here, alone. It must have been a painful death. He must have been so scared. He must have been in pain. We stood around him in solemn silence for a good moment, then the tour guide told us his net worth at the time of death. And then, how many people had to die to make him that money.

It didn’t feel right to sympathise quite so much with him after that.

3rd of June - Bad Neighbours

Herohero Thursday 06:31 pm

• Ok my new neighbour is a total weirdo (thread)

• First off, I always see her when I leave my house - she just kind of hangs around outside?

• Which is bizarre enough but when I try to talk to her, she runs away. She usually goes to this corner of the fence and just stands there as if she thinks I can't see her and she waits for me to go away

• YES I KNOW IT FUCKING CREEPS ME OUT OKAY

• She kinda looks weird, too - it's like she has a very small body and really long legs. 

• I'm not gonna judge her too hard, 'cause I think she's recently widowed and I know that loss can be hard on people's mental health

• But this is my private account and she's been freaking me out so I just needed to vent.

• PLEASE DO NOT SHARE THIS ANYWHERE istg

Herohero Friday 04:51 pm

• Weird neighbour lady seems to be doing some building work today. Fingers crossed she won't make too much noise with it over the weekend I need my rest

Herohero Saturday 01:21 pm

• UMMMMMMMM?????

Herohero Saturday 02:00 pm

• Okay I need to get some shit out of my system (thread)

• She is building?? In my garden????

• No seriously. She is in my garden. Right now. Working on what seems like an expansion to HER HOUSE.

• Needless to say I did not give her permission for this.

• @figly5 of COURSE I tried to confront her but she keeps running away and hiding badly in the corners!

• She's fucking insane!

• @filgy5 No I cannot call the cops because I already did and they LAUGHED at me and then threatened to give me a fine for wasting their time so

• Clearly they Do Not Care

• Not that I would get physical with anyone, but even if I would, she's awfully quick and she looks kinda fragile so I wouldn't want to like punch her or anything

• AT MY WITS END. She surely can't have planning permission for this.

• @thecouncil How do I check if my neighbour has planning permission for BUILDING IN MY GARDEN??

• Oh yeah shit council can't see what I'm tweeting on this account it's private

• It's madness. She's built a whole ass little house while I've been ranting now.

• She's just sitting there, in the middle of it, staring at me.

• @figly5 here's the picture you asked for

[ID: An elaborate spiderweb along a back garden fence. In the middle sits a fat false widow spider.]

2nd of June - Fill in the Blank.

Fill in the blank:

Hell is ___________

Sunday school quizzes were never very in-depth. With his pencil, he drew a line down, then drew two curves to form a sideways butt coming off of the line, stifling the giggle that the letter always inspired in him. Then two lines making an arrow up with a horizontal line through the middle. Finally, half a big butt.

Hell is BAD

The Sunday school teacher accepted his answer readily, though it was technically only partial. He had only just learned the letters in school, so the full answer - Hell is where bad people go - was a little long for him. He got the gist, certainly.

They taught him not to lie, because lying is bad, and bad people go to Hell. They taught him not to hit or bite or kick, because violence is bad and bad people go to Hell. They taught him to ask forgiveness for his sins and never sin again, because sinning was bad and bad people go to Hell.

When he was ten, his mum threw his dad out and she screamed, 

“Burn in Hell!”

He made a mental amendment to the memory of the Sunday school quiz.

Hell is hot.

They told him puberty would make him want to sin, that he had to be extra careful. Don’t touch girls, they said, because that’s perverted, and perverts go to Hell. He was disciplined and strong, he never even had a kernel of desire to touch girls. He believed he would live through his teenage years without sin entirely, until he realised it was also a sin to desire boys.

When his friends took their shirts off to run into the lake on a warm summer day, he stared intently down into the sand.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK, he thought - another thing he should not do, should not even say, because bad people went to Hell.

He couldn’t look down forever, because someone would notice. When he looked up, another boy caught his glance and smiled at him.

Hell is HOT.

Don’t lie because liars go to Hell. Don’t tell the truth because perverts go to Hell. Don’t fight it, because conflict leads to Hell. Don’t let it out, because perverts. Go. To. Hell.

He studied hard, got into a good university, and moved away from home, terrified though he was. He stayed in all through Freshers Week - drinking is a sin, and sinners go to Hell. He only made tentative friends with a couple of fellow students on his course, the other students who prayed at the multi-faith chapel, and one of the guys in his student halls flat, who was probably the smartest and also weirdest and also funniest person he’d ever met.

He refused to notice whether he was also the prettiest person he’d ever met, because perverts go to Hell.

One night, when all their other flatmates were out getting wasted at some dingy club, his new friend showed him something he’d found: A way to climb up on the roof of their building. They sat there in the bracing autumn air, still mild enough with the memory of summer that they needed no jackets, delighting in the risk of the height, the excitement of breaking a fundamental rule.

He let himself forget for a moment that breaking rules was rebellious, and rebels go to Hell.

His friend lit a cigarette, so he thought, until he recognised the smell. He’d learned that smell pretty quickly. His friend offered him a drag. Addicts go to Hell, he thought, but accepted anyway.

As he emerged from his coughing fit, his friend’s hand supportively on his back, he leaned into the warmth of human contact.

“What is this?” he mumbled, referring to the blunt, though the question seemed somehow both broader and more pathetic once it came out of his mouth. His friend laughed.

“This is Hell,” his friend joked.

They both laughed, but then he started shushing instead, remembering that they were somewhere they were not supposed to be. He pressed a finger to his friend’s noisy lips insistently, but his friend opened his mouth and bit it.

He didn’t cry out or reprimand him at all; instead he removed his finger and replaced it with his own lips. If this was already supposed to be Hell, what did he have to lose?

His friend was a good kisser. He didn’t have much to compare it to, of course, but surely this was good. 

Good enough that he made another amendment to the quiz in his head.

Hell is Heaven.

1st of June - Waiting.

The hospice room had an excellent view of the parking lot. From the bed, she could see a bird building a nest in a tree. One stick. Two stick. The next morning, more sticks and grass.

The nurse came by with a tasteless mush for breakfast. Medicine tablets. Vitamin capsules, for some reason. Swallow, swallow, swallow. Can you turn on the TV please.

The news. Death and destruction. Scandal and screaming.

The football. Rashford scores.

A fly buzzed in the corner of the window.

The nurse came by with tasteless mush for dinner. Medicine tablets. No vitamins. Can you turn off the TV please.

Silence. Darkness.

She couldn’t move her arms more than absolutely necessary to call the nurses, could barely speak when they came in to help. Breathing hurt sometimes. It was not unbearable. She could do very little about it. She could do nothing these days except wait.

She was waiting.

Waiting for sleep.

She slept. The next morning. The birds nest. Bird flapping its wings.

Nurse. Tasteless mush for breakfast. Medicine, vitamins, can you turn on the TV please.

The news. Death. Destruction. Scandal. Screaming.

Football. Antonio scores.

Nurse. Tasteless mush. Can you turn off the TV please.

Waiting. Waiting for something to happen. Waiting for someone to visit. She couldn’t remember if there was anyone left who would want to visit.

The nurses were her only visitors.

Bedpan. Shower. Sleep.

She woke up to the bird chirping, wings flapping. It perched on a branch next to the window, another parking lot tree that she couldn’t fully see from her bed. It was looking straight at her, straight into her eyes.

Still here, huh, it seemed to say.

Yes, she thought, I’m still here.

I’m still waiting here.

The bird flew away.

The nurse came in with tasteless mush breakfast. Medication. No vitamins. Can you turn on the TV please.

A fly buzzed in the corner of the window.

News. Death, death, death, death, death, death, death, death, death, death, death, death, de

Football. Lewandowski scores.

Dinner. Tasteless mush.

Bedpan. Sponge bath.

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

Sleep.

The next morning, the nest was empty.

Nurse, tasteless mush breakfast.

Can you turn on the TV please.

News. Death. Static.

No nurse. No dinner. No bird.

Static.

She lay there waiting. Waiting for a visitor, waiting for a nurse, waiting for a bird.

Waiting for the football to come on the TV.

She slept.

There was more waiting.

There was screaming somewhere. In her mind, in the hospice, in the town, on the TV. Somewhere. She didn’t care. The screaming was not what it was waiting for.

The bird lay dead in the nest.

The nurses lay dead in the halls.

She lay awake in her bed, waiting.

No sleep came.

A fly lay dead in the corner of the window sill.

The sun grew, rendered every planet apart. The earth torn into shreds, her bed falling away from the room she had known.

She lay there, in her bed, unable to move. Unable to reach the cord to call for someone.

She knew no-one would come.

It was only her now.

Only her in the universe, drifting through space on her filth stained bed.

Waiting, waiting, praying, hoping, waiting.

But it never came.