Sami Wrote A Thing

Three pages of Birdsong over two breaks!

This book is probably not actually named Birdsong bc I think there's already a book with that name, but I like single word working titles

A little on the year long diary project thing that so far still doesn't have a backbone, but does sure have some entries

A little on the space aliens that aren't really dragons thing

Unfortunately, the people who are pushing the technology for such now, are the same sorts who think we should be putting AI into everything.

And I get frustrated enough when I search for "Ziploc 16oz Twist Containers" (To stack with the ones I already have, so I'm particular about brand) and get a lot of not-Ziploc containers. Because I specified, and it went "Nah, I'm gonna ignore what you ask, this is what we want to show you".

I had to swap cars with step dad last weekend, so he drove my dumb 2017 BMW X1 and I had to drive his brand new Zeekr 7x smart electric car, and that thing is now TERRIFIED of me..

the longer I'm around it the more it glitches, to the point it stops the doors working, the driver seat goes up and down on its own (when it's not supposed to), the lights start flashing and it plays its "startup noise" (I swear the car is an absolute spectacle) on an error loop.

The second we swapped back it stopped glitching.

The ADHD is strong today!

A few paragraphs of an essay

Two pages of Beacon, the otherworld urban fantasy

A wintery poem

My most recent pic of Stella and her half-void and their beach vacation*

Me? I was looking for the ancient spring that was supposed to be under the foundation somewhere, so I'd intended to arrive during the day. Except ... Except the roads around here don't really make sense, and the map didn't seem to match up with any of the actual roads I was seeing in the real world, and late morning became early afternoon became dusk before I found the place. It just sort of /appeared/ out of the gathering nightfall and rolling fog like a ship moving too silently through the sea.

My knock on the door echoed like a tomb and no one answered. Not even when I pushed on the door and it creaked open, and that echoed too.

Some sort of gothic revival nightmare, but it was warmer than the fog outside, and the candelabras and chandeliers had electric lights. Flickery ones, but electric all the same.

A cold breeze from outside reminded me the door was still open and I turned to close it -- and almost slammed it right into the face of the ghost hunter this place looked ready-made for. The guy caught the door, except the door was huge and heavy and already moving, and it took both of us to keep it from closing anyway by that point.

"That was much cooler in my head."

More wind, and the fog was getting thick. Another ghost hunter emerged into the puddle of light on the porch. "Shit, it's getting cold. Middle of nowhere ass ghost."

The first guy grabbed the second and they closed the door without needing my help. Or without letting me help. Hard to tell.

The first one, introduced himself as Hal and shook my hand vigorously, looked halfway like he expected to hunt large game in the 1800s and half like he mostly played a lot of video games. His tools mostly looked home made. The second one, taller, thinner, seemed to have wandered out of a lab somewhere and directly into this massive and gaudy, if a little shabby, foyer. The fog had made his hair a little frizzy, and his hands were gloved. He didn't shake my hand or introduce himself, just took one of Hal's beeping widgets and immediately started pointing it all over the room.

"Jorge! Rude!"

"Busy!"

"That's Jorge. And you are?"

"Cam."

"Lots of ghosts to go around here, huh?"

"Oh, I'm not here for the ghosts."

"No?"

But Hal was already distracted by one of his beeping things. Honestly, so I was I. The floorplan I had said the spring was probably accessible from the root cellar or the wine cellar, or somewhere near them. I turned the plan sideways; a subcellar? Do cellars have cellars?

I turned the map again, then turned myself, turned back, lowered the floorplan to try to match up why the lines there didn't make anymore sense than the roadmap coming in did --

-- and found a girl standing between me and the two ghost hunters.

A translucent girl.

In a Victorian dress than seemed to be sopping wet, leaving a widening puddle under her.

The girl and the puddle both about two feet off the floor.

"Wow," Jorge said.

The girl spun around like a hunted creature, crouched, her hands poised like claws, and all the lights flickered so hard they almost went out.

/"LEAVE"/ She said, in a voice that seemed to come from all sides, that pulled at them like wind and wild animals, and flung open the huge front door to let in a wave of fog and cold damp air.

A little more iridescent than pigeons usually are.

I don't consider myself superstitious, but I'm not about to mess with unusual spirit creatures coming in from the desert. That's on me. I should have been more careful, putting out an offering that tempting in a place like this. Aw well, they don't bother anyone, except when I take too long in the morning and their cooing starts to get Weird and makes the dogs bark, and that's easy enough to avoid.

--

Usually we're good. I feed the birds, I grow a little garden when I can, in the evenings we cook outside after the heat fades. It's a slow, sleepy life.

Sometimes people aren't nice. This isn't a rich town, there's not a lot to draw resources out here. Sometimes people crack a little under the high hot skies, the same way the ground does, the same way the roads do. Everything turns to dust sooner or later.

Someone tries to rob me. Jams something into my back, says it's a gun, demands my phone, my wallet, empty my pockets. The sun is too bright, my blood is too loud, I'm babbling, hands shaking as I try to do as he says -- and something shadows me for a moment, like the sun blinks it's great eye.

The guy yells and the gun goes off and I throw myself into the hot dirt. It takes me a while to realize I haven't been shot, a while longer to open my eyes and get up. To turn around.

The guy is on the ground. My stuff is in a pile next to him.

And something big is leaning over him.

Something feathered. Three heads. Blurry outline. Iridescent.

There's not much left of the guy already.

I fall back on my ass and scrabble for my cigarettes and lighter, scrabble to light one. By the time I manage, the guy is a pile of tangled clothes and dust, and the feathered thing has shrunk down to more familiar proportions. I don't know why, but I hand the lit cig to the not-a-pigeon, and one of the beaks darts out delicately to take it from me while another of the heads bobs in thanks. I bob mine back. Light another for myself.

We sit there on the curb for a few minutes, little trickles of smoke trailing up to the sky.

And my cholesterol is still high, and

My diet has to change; I'm still eating

The way my dad ate, even tho he's been gone

Five months, and it was how he ate

That took him. Getting older is

A bizarre daydream: a friend from college

Is getting a new knee next week; most

Of the girls aren't girls anymore,

And I've outlived four cats, each one a whole

Life curled in my chest. The world is hotter

Now, and the storms stronger, and everything

Is a worry: my blood, the weather, who's

President, who's behind the president,

How the future unfolds. I never thought I'd

Live so long for all these worries.

Despite it all - despite everything - I'm glad

They won't help her.

When the girl runs from the house, she will flee on foot down the long dark road that should lead to town, but she will not see the town, because every light will be out. Every window will be closed and every curtain drawn, and when the little boy tries to peek to see if he can see her pass, three adults will catch him before his hand pulls back the drapes.

When the girl runs from the house, the house runs after her. The road stretches long and longer into the dark, far longer than it should, and the trees of the forest move closer and closer on either side of the way, blocking the moonlight. The only way away from the house is also of the house, and the house knows that even if the girl doesn't. She has executed her plan perfectly, has escaped the dozen doors and latches that tried to stop her, gotten through the six gates, her feet are on the road, freedom seems so close --

The house is still behind her. When she looks over her shoulder, still it stands, looming, though she has turned so many sharp curves since she broke out.

When the girl runs from the house, and the house follows her, the woods notice. The chill wind shakes the black branches and they rattle together like a wooden wind chime, like old bones moving for the first time in years, like a voice that doesn't know the language and can't get the syllables in the right order. The woods shift, and every crow in the forest looks toward the house.

The house pauses.

The girl runs. The road turns. The woods close in behind her. The house wails with the creaking of every door and gate, and the woods answer with the sound of trees freezing until they shatter in the winter. Once, before there was a road, all of this place belonged to the wood. Once, there was no house to eat girls and kidnap travelers on the road. Once, the road was a deer track, unknown to human feet.

The woods want it all back.

The girl runs from the house and the village wakes to find her sleeping exhausted in the square, twigs and leaves in her hair, every house and shop moved leagues overnight from the old wood and the road and the house--

The house is no more. No one finds anything but woodland where it once stood, though they identify where their village was moved from, where the road once was, where the trees grew taller and thicker and straighter to choke it all out.

Magic, being a force of nature, was as unpredictable as storms or wind or fire. Shed been looking for an apprentice for years now, half against her will, but had yet to find one she could work with; the kid in Crest has been too spiky in his power, not flexible enough, and the girl in Riverbend, though sweet, had a sloppy, slippery kind of magic that conflicted with Kanamar’s so badly that they almost burned down the temple. The one in Bend Branch hadn’t wanted training, which she knew was a bad idea without even needing to tap into her second sight, but you can’t force a kid to learn, unfortunately. And the one in Fire On The Mountain had a darkness that was much more Durvin the Shadow’s flavor, so she’d sent that girl his direction with a letter of introduction.

Kanamar didn’t like taking apprentices, honestly. It was a lot of trouble finding them, a lot more trouble keeping them from destroying things or wreaking havoc or waking ancient gods or something. The less said about that, the better. But she was getting old and she had a lot of knowledge to pass on, and magical kids really did need training. Ones left untrained invariably wound up becoming everyone’s problem in one way or another down the line.

So she followed the feel of the magic, looking for the source. A crow caught her eye, and hop-flapped around the village with her. Then a fox, slinking for shadow to shadow despite this being very much not a fox hour of the day. Then a cat joined them, and a handful of songbirds, and a small goat, and by the time she followed the trail to a little garden with a charming little fence around it, she was surrounded by a crowd of curious animals, children, and villagers trying to see what the obvious wizard was looking for.

Kanamar the Wise had excellent magic-sight and knew the second she saw her that the three year old playing in the garden was the source she was looking for.

She also knew that three years old was far too young to have this much power despite the evidence to the contrary, and so this child must be /immensely/ powerful.

So now she was faced with a problem: how was she going to apprentice a literal baby so that she wouldn’t collapse under the weight of her own power, turn evil and destroy the whole world, or otherwise damage the amazing opportunity she was and had been given?

—

“You can’t possibly take our daughter away from us!” The father said, when Kanamar told them she had to be apprenticed as soon as possible. “We know she’s got power, but that’s not an excuse!”

“She’s our only child!” The mother said, tears running down her face, “We had such hopes for more but she’s all we’ve been able to have, she means more to us than anything in the world!”

“And I’ve seen how you wizards live,” the father continued, “ all dark caverns and dank dungeons and drafty towers. No thank you! That’s no place for a child!”

Kanamar wanted to get insulted about that one, it was a stereotype of wizards in general, but her own tower was in fact both dank and drafty and she hadn’t been too sorry to leave it for the sunnier and warmer lands her closer to the coast. It was beautiful here, and her joints much preferred the gentle warmth and generally drier climate.

She sighed, and put aside her staff so she could crouch down before the little girl with much effort and a lot of silent cursing. The girl practically glowed with power; it radiated off her like the sun, and up close like this it warmed her like the sun, too.

“What do you think, little one?”

The girl smiled, and flowers bloomed all over the living room floor as if they were still in the garden outside, and birds looped and sang through the windows. The ripple of power that washed through the room and out over the town was so fresh and pure, Kanamar could only guess what would happen if she pushed her luck and tried to uproot her.

“It’s decided then. The child will stay.”

Her mother burst into fresh tears at this, weeping into her husband’s arms, but happily this time.

“And I will stay too. This looks like as good a place as any to live, and she’s got to get trained. We’ll start as soon as my things arrive.”

“Arrive…?”

Kanamar gripped the edge of the table and levered herself back into a standing position, then one hand on her back and the other on her staff, muttered a quick spell and made a series of complex gestures. The house shuddered, the space in the main room bent inward then outward, and when it returned to normal there was an extra room where once there had been none, and the garden wrapped around it placidly, a new plum tree of just Kanamar’s favorite sort shading the window. She nodded once and headed for her new bedroom.

“Wait a minute, you can’t just –”

But the child was clapping and laughing, and it filled the room with flower petals and sparkles, and Kanamar let her drag one of the bags in, and the little girl’s mother put her hand on his arm to stop him from protest too much.

“What did you do?”

The voice in your head is still yours; the voice that comes out is not yours at all. That voice is calm, pleasant, absolutely even, perfectly androgynous, and comes with more signals telling your about vibrating membranes and speakers and volume and resonance.

He looks uncertain.

You say it again, louder. “What did you do?”

“You’re still you,” he answers, not the question you asked. “You’ll see.”

—

You are still you, after a fashion. You like the same things, dislike the same things, have the same memories. But you don’t eat now, even though you technically can if your energy cells are running low. If you do, you don’t taste things the same way, just analyze the chemicals for the conversion to emergency power, so what’s the point? You could eat rocks and it would be as appealing.

You miss coffee in the morning, and tea at night, and chocolate cake.

This body is yours now, they assure you of that. You live in it, these are your hands, your feet, your face that’s just as mobile and expressive as your first one. But the features weren’t modeled after anyone in particular, and certainly not you in specific, and even though the expressions are all you, you don’t think the face in the mirror looks much like you, though you’re getting used to it. (It was hard, at first, a gaping void between /you/ and /your reflection/, a gut-deep sense of wrongness that made you avoid mirrors for weeks. You don’t need the bathroom much anymore anyway. Who needs a reflection?)

You worry they’ll repossess your body. You worry there’s a secret clause you don’t know about. You aren’t paying for it, they haven’t asked for anything in return other than updates and periodic visits for monitoring and recalibration or repairs or upgrades as they improve the technology – you’re the first success and they’re learning a lot from you – but what if you do something with it that they don’t like? They say it’s yours but you didn’t choose it and it doesn’t feel like you and doesn’t feel like it fits right, so what if you start changing it to make the fit better?

The longer this goes on, this strange new life, the more you think about this. Where is the line where it stops being your body and goes back to being their property? You ask yourself every time you paint a new section of your chassis, ask again as you start experimenting with casing materials.

—

You don’t age now, not really. The doctor you woke up to retires, and his successor is the lab assistant who knows your workings inside and out. You’re not the only one now, but you’re still the first.

“How long do you think I’ll last?”

“Oh, probably as long as you want to,” she says. “We could just keep replacing parts indefinitely, I think.” She has an arm almost like yours to fix a problem she was born with. Both her hands work the same way, as smoothly as if they were both flesh.

“Am I still me?”

“Do you feel like you are?”

You think about it as she fits a new joint into your leg; the old one gave out after ten years of long hikes to see the world. This one is a shiny new gold, so it’ll shine through the filligree of the leg around it, all the lights and wires tracing the curves like art.

Whole new spectrums spread across the walls. The low lights split and prismed over the wide supposedly blank spaces, letting you see the individual brush strokes from where they'd been painted, letting the drywall tape show through, letting you know where the studs and live wires were.

It was /so cool/.

You'd been a little worried that it'd give you headaches or something; your research before you decided on the surgery brought up stories of people who'd had to have it reversed because of intolerable migraines, or because their brains never could make sense of all the new input. You must've been one of the lucky ones because that didn't happen. After a month in the hospital where you relearned how to not run into things -- mostly because it was harder to see the edges of things when you could see /everything/-- and getting used to normal light levels again so you wouldn't get overwhelmed, you went home happy as a clam.

But home is when you saw.../it/.

It was /made/ of all the new colors. /Only/ the new colors and none of the regular ones. It was entirely invisible to normal vision. And it was just living in your house. It startled and fled when it realized you were yelling at it specifically, that you could see it (though it didn't seem to have a shape so much as a presence), but soon you saw that it wasn't the only one. There was one in the stairwell. One in your brother's house. One that followed your neighbor's dog everywhere. When you went to work, the office was just /stuffed/ with them.

And the more of them there were in a place, the less people wanted to be there. Cubicle-farm offices. The DMV. Creepy abandoned factories that had made things that made people sick.

You got a new job, and accepted the offer of the one with the least number of /them/.

Other people you met who'd had the surgery didn't seem to see them, but sometimes they looked haunted and you wondered if maybe you were just the only one talking about it.