The Writings and Creative Ramblings of a Mad Woman

There are times when she can spend hours dwelling on what she could have better. She loves every single one of her children, loves how unique each of them are. But there are times she wonders if perhaps she could have spent more time with them, quality time, not time dedicated to familial duties and obligations. She knows that the time they spend out in the world as independent adults isn’t because they are avoiding home, and yet...two of her eldest never seem to make it to the house more than once per year if she is lucky. 

Her first seems to spend an almost inordinate time close to home, but never for a casual visit. Her son is practically the poster child for fulfilling familial duty, which is probably why she can’t bring herself to criticize too harshly when he becomes too strident in expressing his traditionalist views to his...well, less-than-traditional younger siblings, even though it breaks her heart just as much as not seeing her other children. 

At times like these, she finds herself burying herself into her husband’s vast chest, lulling herself with the physical contact. She knows her dear, sweet husband must have similar worries, having found him more than once pouring over old mementos with misty, clouded eyes, and no smile that might hint at tears of nostalgia rather than regret. And then she must hold and reassure him as he does for her. 

so I was thinking about parallelism in the countless stories I have sitting around in my head. I think I’ve kinda decided to move things around a bit. I originally wanted to have my western-style dragon and djinni, hadrian and illaria, located in trilby’s universe. But the more I thought about them, the way Hadrian was a lot more prone towards solitude and avoiding genpop, it didn’t make much sense, but when I thought about him in the psychics universe, I got a good feeling that he’d just be great for interacting with delilah. 

I also was thinking of my Japanese fox family and how much I’d miss having them interact with the relatively interesting demon culture I had cooked up, mainly for usage in RP, but would be wasted in a more science-fiction driven story like Turner, Bea, and Misha’s verse, and very suitable for Trilbyverse. But switching these people around would nix some semi-important plot-threads, I thought, until I realized I had already come up with a solution--people have counterparts in pretty much all of my different worlds. 

I’ve been re-reading Bruce Coville’s The Unicorn Chronicles and about to start The Last Unicorn with my audible because I’m on a unicorn kick lately, and it really makes me want to write about unicorns. I have an OC that is a qilin, but I haven’t thought as much about the western “counterpart” (I dunno that this is a good way to refer to them but they share common traits, so I think maybe they are semi-analogous to one another, if we draw some cross-cultural comparisons). I realized that if I had unicorns in my fantasy realms, I don’t think I’d want them to all be white (in all senses of this word). I mean, what about paint or roan unicorns? Zebra and donkey unicorns? I think I would want those as well. I think I need to research cloven vs. uncloven hooves and their evolutionary purposes, but I think I would want some unicorns to have the traditional cloven hooves and some to be more horse-like. I’d definitely place cloven-hoofed unicorns in the more mountainous/craggy areas as they’d fare better balance wise.

I think a unicorn character would be a great way to explore gnc and genderfluidity stuff, at least the ones who are popping up in my head seem to think so. Maybe I could do a story where the mains are basically reverse animorphs, as in, none of them began life in a humanoid body and have, for one reason or another, have had to make use of one while the story takes place. I mean, imagine a kumiho, a selkie or kelpie, a unicorn, a wyvern, maybe even Quetzalcoatl/a plumed serpent, a phoenix, and a cait or cu sidhe all hanging out and bonding over how odd the confines of human bodies are? Having to come together and work towards a common goal? I think it’d be fun, and I think I may have found something for nanowrimo. It’s between this and three or four others. 

Once again she stares at the panels where the windows used to be a few days ago. 

Sometimes she thinks she can see the sun’s light through the panels, but it’s not likely the things are translucent, because that might mean they were thin enough to cast a silhouette to the outside as well. 

Allowing her to make herself known or have hope of getting out? Perish the thought.

She lets herself slide against the wall her cot is set against, coming to rest on her side. Her hair, long tow-colored strands, falls over her face and blur her vision slightly, which is just as well. 

The whole room is monochromatic, with varying shades of white and gray that blend together as she lets her eyes unfocus. The only bits of color come from spines of various books and journals that sit on the shelves next to the cot, but even those are muted, faded from age and use. 

It isn’t likely she’ll receive any new material, though the digital reading tablet does make up for that in some ways. And either way, reading and writing were her only means of escape anymore. 

Her other media privileges had been taken away after that last attempt. 

She wonders if her friends think of her. They hadn’t met in person, but they too had been a thread connecting her to the outside world, made her feel like she had something resembling a life. 

But right now? 

Breathe in, pause, breathe out. Repeat.

Morgan stands in front of the vanity, hands planted in what little space was not covered in curios, makeup brushes and faded ticket stubs. They have trouble sometimes, recognizing the person in the mirror. It isn’t that the mirror is cursed to warp perception (they had it checked over when a friend of a friend’s cousin who is a cursebreaker from Faery was passing through). Days are just like this sometimes. 

Breathe in, pause, breathe out. Repeat. 

Morgan blinks slowly so the world unfocuses for a moment before sliding back into place. There they are again. Sort of. It isn’t that they dislike their body or face, or that they couldn’t change things up if they wanted. But they wanted to recognize themselves without having to meditate some of the time. Do other halfsies have this problem? Is this because being of Faery and of Mundane puts the subconscious at war with itself? Is it because they aren’t fully mature enough to be sure of their own identity? Is that even a thing attainable for them? 

Breathe in, pause, breathe out. Repeat.

Yes, they are here. They can see themself in the mirror. Bright eyes and brighter hair jewel-toned hair, which matches their nail polish today, an indomitable manic grin that dares people to just try (and fail) to ruin their day. They recognize the mischief that sparkles in their own eyes because they have already thought of 13 terrible puns and counting that are guaranteed to get eyerolls from their favorite cousins. This is definitely their own reflection. And they didn’t even need to sing a certain song about reflections from a popular animated film from the 1990s. 

Well. 

They curl their fingers around a hairbrush with one hand, and swipe to a playlist on their phone with the other.

forgetting to sleep before you’re about to go out and do fun Oktoberfest things with your gf/queerplatonic datemate/whatever and stress reading the entire Texas Driver’s Handbook after renewing your license at 5 in the morning because you know you’ll forget to do that and how pathetic would it be if you died on or around your birthday and your license is about to/has expire(d) because you aren’t fucking responsible enough to adult in this world, also simultaneously wondering if it’d be interesting to get licensed to drive other larger classes of vehicle and/or motorcycle if only as a form of escapism and romanticizing what running away from your current life --which does not suck btw-- in tractor-trailer, rv, or moped and just living on the road and shifting listlessly across the country and the liminal spaces that are basically every truck stop at night. Then remembering oh yeah, you sometimes get  panic attacks and dissociate while driving a regular car, this whole train of thought is A Terrible Idea Brought About By The Twisted Coils Of Mental Illness That Still Try To Strangle Your Brain When You Look Away: Also This Is Long Enough Of A Title To Be For A Doctoral Dissertation, Nice Going There Buddy.

Also when you pause writing the post to put on a frenetic display of normalcy when your mother emerges from her room because you don’t want anyone to notice how fucked your brain is, but of course they notice because it’s not like you’re some great actor or whatever. And it literally feels like you are a marionette being pulled around on strings because your are also mildly dissociating again oh great, please pay no attention to the depressed woman behind the curtain.

Bleh. Maybe penning this down will help actually get the negative energy out of my brain, but I know for certain that acknowledging it helps. And I won’t let it stop my day. Maybe I’ll crosspost this on my main when I feel confident enough, but also I feel that it’s good to remind myself that journalling is writing, especially since I have a flair for melodrama.