Duck, Duck...Whoops.

Okay, there are words in my head, so I'm going to put them down before me and weigh in on this whole Duck Dynasty thing.  I don't want to.  It feels like a waste of time, but I also feel compelled.

Let me begin by saying that I don't watch Duck Dynasty.  I don't hunt.  I don't like guns, and I'm not a big fan of excess facial hair, so it's never even been on my entertainment radar.  Frankly, I've got enough problems keeping my own whiskers in check...I don't need to look at someone else's.  I didn't know who Phil Robertson was until last week, and frankly I just don't care who he is.  He is of absolutely no interest to me, and I don't give a damn what he believes or what hate he spews across the airwaves.

Oh, wait...I do care about that.

Not about him specifically, but about all those like him, about the millions who are influenced by him.  About the "Christians"--and practitioners of other religions--who believe as he believes and who pass those beliefs on to their children.  It's an epidemic, a virus that gets under the skin and into the mind.  It poisons the very fabric of the world to the point that India has re-criminalized homosexual sexual activity.  Uganda has made it punishable by life in prison.  Russia has made it illegal to even mention the existence of any relationship other than a heterosexual one to minors, and a number of countries reserve the right to execute their homosexuals simply because they ARE homosexuals. The foundations who have failed to have same sex marriage outlawed in the U.S. Constitution (It can't happen now, folks.  Thirty-seven states would have to ratify it, and the 17/18 states who have legalized same sex marriage clearly won't, giving them a max of thirty-three.)  have started making their moves in more vulnerable countries such as the ones I mentioned a moment ago, using millions of "Christian" dollars to enable gross human rights violations.  Russia is threatening to go so far as to take the children of homosexuals away from them, terminating their parental rights.

Now, personally, I tend to believe Robertson was suspended by A&E more for his racial slurs and his insinuations of Christian-superiority-to-any-other-religion than anything else.  I mean, it's 2013.  At this point, we should all acknowledge that blacks fought damn hard for their civil rights and that they bloody well deserve them.  He also implied that non-Christianity is responsible for every major conflict in the last few hundred years, forgetting (I guess) all the major wars Christianity DID influence, and that (contrary to his belief) Christianity played a huge role in the Third Reich (Geez, Phil, can't you do a little research before you judge?).

Even if his anti-gay comments did play a role in prompting his suspension, however, it's not a free speech issue.  Freedom of speech in the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom from government persecution for stating a belief, and it was actually largely enacted to protect the rights of minorities (gasp!).  It doesn't guarantee protection from punishment by employers, or from backlash by the public.  I'm a Grey's Anatomy girl (much more my speed than guns and beards), and as such I know that the actor who played Dr. Preston Burke was fired in season two for anti-gay slurs.  Now, the public didn't get up in arms about this and defend HIS "freedom of speech" (probably because they were too busy watching Duck Dynasty), but the truth remains that it happened.  He spoke his beliefs, and the network canned his ass because stating said beliefs went against his non-discrimination contract.

My employer has similar guidelines that we were all made aware of when we were hired, and we're made aware again every time there are updates to those policies.  If we violate them, it's our own damn fault and my employer has the right to fire us.  Since I live in Alabama and don't have equal protection under the law here, they can also fire me for being a lesbian.  Thankfully, however, they don't seem inclined to do that (possibly because it would take six months to train my replacement).  It's business, and that's how business works.  He was suspended, not for being a Christian, but for using racially demeaning and discriminatory speech in a public capacity.  You represent your employer, wherever you are and whatever you are doing at the time.  Violate this at your own risk.

Now, I believe Duck Dynasty makes A&E a lot of money, and money is what they ultimately love.  Therefore, good ol' Phil will probably get his job back in short order, and he'll probably make A&E even more money than he was making them before, and his whole family will probably get a raise on the $200,000 an episode they're already making.  In a few weeks, this whole thing will be as forgotten as Paula Dean and whatever she may or may not have said about black people.

Except by me, and by the millions like me, because there IS a problem with the Robertsons of the world which has absolutely nothing to do with their right to say whatever it is they want to say and everything to do with their choice to exercise that right.

The "Christians" of this type (and I place this doubt on the word because I know real Christians.  I know beautiful, God-loving Christians who spend every day working to make this world a better place, and these people are NOT them) zero in on sexuality and gender identity like they are the end-all, be-all and source of all sin in the world.  Granted, it's not just "Christians".  It is the practitioners of many faiths and religions around the world, but I'm focused on the Christian aspect of things because I grew up (and still live) in the deep American South, in the heart of the Bible Belt.  Christianity is huge down here, and homophobia comes to children as easily as breathing (Well, maybe not breathing.  Breathing is instinct; hatred is taught).  Some of them misguidedly believe this hatred is actually love.  They subscribe to the "love the sinner, hate the sin" philosophy of living, and I believe these people know not the harm that they do even with this gentle kind of hatred.

The first of the problems with the Robertsons of the world is that they are preaching words that were written thousands of years ago and have been translated a dozen times in a dozen different ways.  The original language was Hebrew, and unless you can read that, you actually have no idea what it originally said.  Even if it was translated with exact efficiency, it reflects the values of people who lived so long ago that their prejudices shouldn't apply to a modern society who has so much more scientific information about the world around us, such as the scientifically proven fact that sexuality and gender identity are completely innate, deeply rooted in the human psyche and cannot be chosen or changed.  The Robertsons also seem to forget that (from what I remember of my Bible studies) all sins are equal in the eyes of God, and there are many, many more sins that are outdated for today's life and that we tend to disregard without thinking, if we ever knew about them at all.

Here's a short list of other things listed as a sin in the Bible, most of them punishable by death, either by stoning or burning alive (Does that sound like a society whose laws are actually still applicable today?):

 1.) A woman being raped.  Yes, the WOMAN shall be executed for being raped if it occurred in a city, since if she had objected (by screaming for help), her screams would have been heard and she would have been rescued.  Hence, if she didn't get rescued she clearly didn't object.  (Um...yeah. Okay.)
2.) Divorce.  Also, marrying someone who has previously gotten divorced.
3.) Raping a virgin woman who is engaged to someone else.  (If she isn't engaged, all you have to do is pay her father a small penalty and then marry her...and gee isn't that just wonderful for her?)
4.) Lying about your virginity, if you are a woman.  (Guilty until proven innocent, and boy is that innocence just impossible to prove, especially if a man is judging your virginity on whether or not you bled on your marriage night.  Not all women bleed, and of course once he's slept with you, you no longer have proof that you were a virgin beforehand...)
5.) Incest, and I only mention this because it includes marrying your brother's wife after your brother has died.  So if you take comfort in your loss and find love again together, you shall both be put to death. 
6.) Perjury.
7.) Ignoring the orders of a judge.  (As in, trying to fight against a decision like the one the New Jersey or Utah court made to legalize same sex marriage...)
8.) Trying to convert people to a different religion (Sorry, missionaries...).
9.) Being a drunkard.
10.) Murder, unless you beat your own slave to death.  In that case, you'll only be punished, not executed.  If the slave survives the beating, you'll only be punished if you damage his teeth or eyes.
11.) Not being circumcised, if you're a male.
12.) Engaging in sexual activity with a woman who is on her period.
13.) Consuming blood, which includes eating rare meat.
14.) Cutting your hair or shaving your beard (guess the Duck guys are okay on this one...).
15.) Cutting or tattooing your skin (I'm going to guess that piercing is equivalent to cutting, since it divides the skin, so say goodbye to those ear piercings, ladies.)
16.) Having the audacity to go to church if you're disabled. (He who has a blemish, is blind, is lame, is broken of hand or foot, etc...)
17.) Wearing cloth woven of two different fabrics.  (Poly-cotton blends, anyone?)
18.) Eating shellfish, pig, rabbit and many other delicious meats.
19.) Arrogance.
20.) Breaking the secular laws of your land. (Presumably this includes non-discrimination laws.)
21.) Love of money.
22.) A woman wearing a man's clothes, or a man wearing a woman's clothes. (It's a credit to the misogyny of our society that we think nothing of the first and everything of the second.)

Boy, I included only the ones I think are frivolous or ridiculous (and mind you, that's definitely a matter of personal opinion), and I still ended up with a pretty long list.  This isn't my way of saying everything in the Bible is total crap, but it IS my way of saying maybe we're taking some of this a little too seriously, all sins being equal in the eyes of God.  Jesus personally never said anything against homosexuality (not that I could find, anyway), and what he DID say is that the most important of all the laws is to "Love thy neighbor as thyself".

Also, "Judge not lest ye be judged."

Jesus kept company with prostitutes, beggars, lepers, and "sinners" of all kinds.  In fact, the only people Jesus didn't like keeping company with were those who were filled with self-righteousness and believed they were above any kind of sin.  He also wasn't a really big fan of preaching or of praying in public, making all the public sermons Phil Robertson has engaged in over the last many years (and I've read the transcripts of dozens of them over the last week, and listened to them as well, so I can say with certainty that his anti-gay slurs are not at all limited to simply paraphrasing scripture, and that he's also been pretty guilty of promoting both racism and misogyny in his sermons and Bible Study classes as well) questionable at best.  Jesus was a socialist.  He believed, above all else, in loving people, in helping the poor, the hungry, the needy, the downtrodden and the persecuted.  These things were most important to him, something the "Christians" who spend their time espousing the evils of the LGBT community seem to forget.

I'll move past what I consider to be either the knowing or ignorant hypocrisy of people like this and move on to the actual damage inflicted by these lessons and this viewpoint.  Discriminating against homosexuals, bisexuals, transgender and agender, and asexual, individuals--about 6% of the world's population when you include the asexuals in the statistic--is harmful because they can be nothing other than what they are.

That's right.  They cannot change.

Legitimate, objective science has proven a dozen times over that sexuality and gender identity cannot be changed.  We may not know the exact origin of sexual identity yet, but we know it is developing from birth and even before.  We know it is deeply, deeply rooted in the human psyche, and we know that there is no such thing as an "ex-gay".  "Ex-gay" therapy does NOT work.  It is not actually possible to change someone's sexual orientation or gender identity, through religion, psychology, surgery or any other means.  We are who we are, and if you don't believe that, then ask yourself one simple question:  When did you first decide you were going to be straight?

Did you make a decision when you turned eighteen, or fourteen, or three, that you were going to be attracted to the opposite sex, and that you were going to make a life with a member of that sex?  Or was being attracted to the other gender simply a part of who you were, of who you became as you grew and developed?

It is not any different for a gay person or a bisexual person, or for a male mind in a female body.  These concepts may be confusing for you to understand.  They aren't what you know; they aren't what you are.

As confused as you may be, you have no idea how much more confused or anguished someone is who actually goes through the experience of realizing these things about himself, or herself.  Take me, for example.  I grew up in south Alabama.  I still live in south Alabama, and I heard about the abnormality, the sin, and the disgusting nature of homosexuals a thousand times before I entered high school, and a thousand more before I graduated.  The only people I was brave enough to come out to in high school were two friends of mine, twin girls who were also LGBT and came out to me before I came out to them.  Sex and sexual attraction are only a small part of sexuality.  It encompasses everything about you, and everything about the way you view and interact with the world around you.  When I came out to him and introduced my girlfriend (now my wife) to him, my father told me he'd suspected I was a lesbian from the time I was three.  There was just something about me that seemed different to him.  Not bad, not depraved or wrong, just different. 

I was lucky.  My father was supportive.  My sister and brother, they supported me.  My mother...she was embarrassed and thought it reflected badly on her parenting skills.  She thought it was a phase.  Eventually, though, she came around and now she supports me as enthusiastically as my other relatives, from aunts and uncles to distant cousins I've never met.  I have a wonderful family of open-minded and, yes, largely Christian individuals.

In the South, however, the whispers against homosexuals and our rights are largely propagated by the Christian community.  Many are not so lucky with their families as I was.  Only 5% of the world's population is homosexual, bisexual or transgender, but conversely 33% of the homeless teenagers living on the streets in America are LGBT.  One third, because they've been kicked out by families who believe they are condemned to the depths of Hell simply for being what they are.  Societal stigma and the constant commentary about how we're going to Hell (no matter in how loving a voice the words are said), how we're abnormal and God can "fix" us, results only in psychological damage and anguish, depression, mental illness, and disproportionately high rates of suicide and suicide attempts by LGBT individuals.  We all learn eventually what many churches refuse to believe or to teach--we cannot change.  And believe me, many of us try, with or without the aid of those "ex-gay therapy retreats".

We are who we are, from birth, and we cannot change.  Telling us we are damned for something we have no control over damages us internally.  It breaks children, destroys millions of fragile teenagers and pre-adolescents the world over, and it causes irreversible damage. 

Even quick research can determine the position of the legitimate scientific community on sexuality and gender identity.  Homosexuality was taken off the list of mental illnesses in the 70's, over forty years ago, and there are only two major studies (and these two are widely cited) that even support the "theories" that homosexuality is depraved, immoral and largely caused by childhood abuse or overbearing mothers, and that homosexuals are abusive parents who teach their offspring to be gay, and both of these studies were biased, non-scientifically conducted, paid for by anti-gay foundations and have been completely discredited.  Objective scientific studies have actually found that family cohesion is higher in families with same sex parents because of the open-minded nature prompted by the parents' social situations and that, as I have said again and again, and will continue to say, we cannot change.

There is no such thing as an "ex-gay".  Even several of the "ex-gay" organizations themselves have come out and admitted this recently.  Their most "successful" individuals are men and women who still struggle daily with what they cannot change and simply avoid most contact (even innocent) with members of the same sex, and most people (largely minors forced into it by parents who have all the control) spend years attempting to recover from what they were put through in these programs.

Even if we never go into one of these programs, we can be damaged.  I was damaged.  I came out in college, and I--a meek, terrified, non-confrontational young woman--was verbally attacked (though thankfully not physically, as my brother was beaten into unconsciousness at his college over his sexuality) by a dozen students there, on multiple occasions.  At the job I worked all through college, I had pamphlets put into my locker daily.  Some of them were advertisements for a local "ex-gay" group who claimed they could cure me of this affliction.  Others quoted all the Bible scriptures that condemned me.  Others were simply inflammatory sermons that quoted nothing and condemned everything about me, even while preaching about how much they loved me.  When I finally figured out who was doing it, I reported the abuse to my boss, who eventually fired the employee.  I wasn't the only gay individual working there, you see, and I wasn't the only one being harassed.  It was an uplifting moment, especially since I live in a state in which sexuality and gender identity are not defined as traits that are protected from discrimination.

Worse than the tangible abuses, though, are the insidious societal implications.  From early childhood we are taught that this is not normal.  This is not desired.  This is not acceptable.  This is a sin.  This is something to be embarrassed by.  This is something to be kept hidden, and this is something to change.  This is something about us that God hates, even though he loves US.  These things are taught in many churches, and are a large part of the reason I became disillusioned with church, and disenchanted.  I haven't been in years, and in many churches down here I simply am not welcome.  My family is not welcome, and many people don't consider us a family at all, just a gross parody of what is true and righteous.  These things are taught by the language we use, language that has kids laughing at something they consider stupid and saying, "Man, that is so GAY."  It's taught through whispers, sideways glances and facial expressions when a same sex couple is brazen enough to hold hands in a supermarket down here.  It's taught through the simple words of people who say, "I don't mind people being gay, but I believe they should keep it to themselves and not shove it in our faces."

It is taught by the law itself.

I am a second class citizen.  I do not have the same rights as my neighbors, my friends and relatives, my coworkers.  There are a thousand rights that go along with the right to get married, and I have none of them.  I have a wife, and we have a daughter together, a child we struggled to have and who we love like nobody's business, and I have no legal rights to her.  My wife and child are not protected under my health insurance, and if one of them goes to the hospital, there is no law saying I have to be allowed into the room.  After all, I'm not family.  And that IS the basis my former employer used against me during my wife's pregnancy.  I was not family, and therefore I could use none of my paid leave (or even unpaid) when she went into labor.  I exercised my right to free expression, and I quit.  My next job gave me a week off when she went into labor, no hesitation.  I still work for them.

My employers aside, what do these laws teach me, or teach my children, or teach ANY children?  We live in a country that promises equal rights and protections for all, and yet I do not have all of those rights, or those protections.  These violations of the U.S. Constitution are the reasons our nation's founders worked so hard to keep religion and law separate from one another.  Make no mistake, this country was founded not on Christianity, but on both freedom OF religion and freedom FROM religion.  The arguments people make about the inclusion of religion in the foundation of America are largely fabricated.  The phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance was added in the 1950's, for instance, just like "in God we trust" on the money we print.  The truth can be verified with a simple internet search.

One person's religious beliefs, by the very foundation of our society, are not supposed to affect the rights of another person.

And yet they have.  They do, and they will continue to do so for some time, though I believe not forever.

"Christians", men and women who are supposed to love all people, who are supposed to help the poor and feed the needy, who are supposed to refrain from judgment and leave all of that to God, these "Christians", these Robertsons of the world, are the ones who are contributing so heavily to the death, destruction, physical and mental anguish of their fellow human beings, of my brothers and sisters.  My brother literally, since he had such emotional trauma from trying to come to terms with his sexuality that he didn't come out until his mid-twenties.  He went through depression and drug addiction, and though he has recovered and grown into an amazing man, these traumas would never have happened to him if people were loving, were compassionate and non-judgmental, were all the things their religion teaches them to be and that they refuse to embrace when it comes to simple sexuality.

If sexuality other than hetero is a sin, it is one that harms no one but the "sinner".  There is no gay agenda.  There is no recruitment process.  Just as there is no such thing as turning a gay person straight, there is no such thing as turning a straight person gay.  It's not a disease; you can't catch it.  It has always affected about 5% of the population--and it spans dozens of mammalian species, not just humans--and that number seems neither to rise nor fall, no matter the society involved or its laws.  It is what it is, and what it is affects no one but the individual involved.  Children raised by homosexuals are no more likely to be homosexual (or bisexual, or trans or agender) than any other children.  Sexuality and gender identity are things that are completely apart from the situation in which a person is raised.  They simply are.  They don't decrease the world's population or impede procreation.  They don't spread disease.

They harm no one.

Why then are so many people so determined to destroy us?  What threat do we pose to them? Make no mistake that the violence is one-sided.  The so-called "militant" gay movement is a myth.  We seek only equal rights and protections under the secular law.  Some of us are Christians, and those who are have already made their peace with God.  They need not the approval of the church, only His, and they believe they have it.  They will find churches who believe the same.  There are no hate crimes committed by homosexuals on Christians because they are Christian.  There is no law preventing Christians from worshiping or from being Christian.  There is no impact on the institution of marriage caused by allowing same sex couples to participate in it.  It has no impression on the rights of others and does harm to no one.  

There is no threat from the LGBT community, whether overt or covert. 

There is a threat, however, to me and mine.  Because of the beliefs rampant in society, I have reason to fear my daughter going to school.  I have reason to fear the bullying she could suffer for having two mothers.  I have reason to fear for the safety of my family when we go out in public together.  I have reason to fear my family getting sick or injured since they have no health insurance despite my legal marriage to my wife. 

I have reason to fear, and that alone should be a shame to the Christian community, since their ultimate aim is to promote love and peace.

Peace and equality are all I want. 

I am furious at Phil Robertson, not for expressing his beliefs but for holding them in the first place.  I am furious at a society who rises up to protect his right to spew hate speech but who fight against the exact same rights when it comes to women like the Dixie Chicks or Pussy Riot (who have been in prison in Russia for over a year, simply for exercising "free speech", a right NOT protected in that country).  I am furious at a society who defends him and others like him, who flocked to Chik-Fil-A last year to spend millions of dollars in support of their CEO's similar hate-mongering.  These so-called Christians are spending their money and their time not in food banks, not in ending war or supporting the rights of women who are arrested and executed for being raped in dozens of different countries, not in ending the sale of children into slavery even in this country, but in buying cheap chicken sandwiches in support of discrimination.

I am furious at a society like I saw in my hometown this week, who rose up in anger and hatred against a dance group called the Prancing Elites, a group of men who did nothing illegal, nothing hateful and nothing to be ashamed of.  They simply danced in a Christmas parade wearing dance uniforms typically worn by a woman.  For that they have endured physical threats, jeers and cursing, vile commentary about their sexual depravities, their influence on children and their right to life itself.  After the parade they danced in, they were also banned from a second parade to be performed on New Year's Eve, for no other reason than who they are.  And I know it's for no other reason because they even agreed to wear gender nonspecific jogging suits throughout the entire parade, and they were still cut from the lineup. 

Where is the societal fury at the trampling of their right to free expression?  Are they not supposed to have the same rights people are screaming that Phil Robertson has?

Oh, that's right.

Free speech only protects against government prosecution, not public backlash.  I said that already.  Oh, the hypocrisy of humans, though.  You see, the same people who defend Phil Robertson's rights to free expression are the ones who are screaming for the censorship of the Prancing Elites, who are demanding they be pulled from the lineup of all local events because they wear effeminate clothing and like to dance, a perfectly legal thing to do and far less harmful than spreading hate speech. 

I am an American, and as such I will defend Phil Robertson's right to state his beliefs, and I will defend the Prancing Elite's right to dress as they wish and dance like anyone else.  I will continue fighting for my own rights, for those of my family and those of people I have never met.  I will fight for a society who will one day realize Robertson's beliefs are damaging, that they are UN-Christian and extremely antiquated.  I will fight for children and teenagers who want to know why God hates them (and I do NOT believe that He does) for something that they cannot change, for something that is simply a part of who they are, for something that has nothing to do with their personalities and the good they may do for their fellow human beings.  

I will fight for humans, for that is what we all are, and that is how we all deserve to be treated.  This post represents my opinion, and I did not provide links to research or verification of the very, very few statistics that I used because I encourage you to do your own.  Learn.  Grow.  If you believe in humans and in human rights, then look up the truth about sexuality and gender identity, not the tripe spewed by men like Phil Robertson.  Don't fall into the trap of parroting doctrine that has remained the same for thousands of years and even doctrine that has changed (Same sex marriages, for instance, were performed by the Catholic church up until about the 14th century) over the years to become discriminatory. Five percent of the world is LGBT.  That's one in twenty.  One in twenty children are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.  It's so easy for your child (or children, in my parents' case) to be among them.

What will you do?  Kick them out?  Tell them God loves them, but hates what they are?  Love them, but be embarrassed by them?  Urge them to change, to just TRY to be different?  It's so easy for an LGBT youth to fall into depression, into drugs, into suicide.  All it takes is one parent with one disgusted look.  One bully at school with ignorant parents.  One brush with the beliefs of so many people, so many people who think they should go voiceless, who think it would be better if they didn't exist.

How does that feel, to be told you shouldn't exist?

It feels cold.  It's a violation that cuts through your soul and leaves you gutted.  Dying on the inside.

Unwanted.  Unloved.  Unaccepted.

Inhuman. 

Don't fall into the trap of telling someone they are less than human.  Please.

Believe in human beings.  Believe in this country that promises equality to all its citizens.  And if you do believe, share.  Share this if it makes sense to you, and share something else if this isn't good enough for you.  Counter the damage of words that preach hatred and discrimination by spreading knowledge, by spreading equality, by spreading love. 

Use YOUR right to free speech, as Phil Robertson and his supporters have used theirs.  Use your voice, and use it to teach love and acceptance.  Use it to teach peace, yes, but above all love.

Love, after all, is the most important law for any Christian to follow.  I know, because I read it in this book people seem to put a lot of stock in. 
      

Secrets

I've had a busy week.  An amazing, and amazingly busy week.  There's been work and play and sleep, and lots of secrets.  You have to keep secrets.  My daughter has a secret, and if she could read well enough to read this, I wouldn't be telling you about it because she'd kill me.

She's a superhero, you see, and she has a secret identity that only her mommy and I are allowed to know.

Her superhero name is Learning Girl, and I'm no longer allowed to say it even when we're alone together, for fear someone else might be listening.  She's very protective of her secret identity.  Superheroes have to be.  She needs a mask and a costume, so I guess we're going to have to help her put one together at some point.

Uh...

If you know me and you know her, when you see us again do NOT under any circumstances mention the Learning Girl.

I'll be toast if you do, because Learning Girl has magic powers, and she knows LOTS of things, and she's always learning new things, so I could be in real trouble if she finds out about this post.  How can she save the world if everyone knows her secret identity? 

Her words, not mine.  Maybe she watches too much television, or I read her too many superhero books, but I don't think wanting to be a superhero is at all a bad thing.  There are a lot of real life superheroes.  Nelson Mandela was one, an amazing man who changed the lives of millions, and inspired hope and change around the world.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is another.  Rosa Parks. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.  Sojourner Truth. 

Malala Yousafzai, who is both a child and a hero.

Every doctor or surgeon I've ever met, every nurse, every emergency dispatcher and first responder, every soldier, and every person who has ever put another person's welfare above their own, or who has made an effort to better the life of another person for no other reason than that it was a good thing to do.  

So Learning Girl watches and studies and learns everything she can so she can fix the bad things in the world.  Last week she fixed my tangled shoelace (which she tangled up in the first place), and this week she struck again.  She ripped the cushions from the leather couch in my dining room (so we like to chill after dinner...so what?  That couch is perfect for reading books...), and revealed all the dark things hiding beneath the surface.  She rescued spoons, cookie crumbs and--to my complete bemusement--a potato!  She even tossed the crumbs in the trash bin and washed the rescued silverware herself, restoring order and balance to the universe.  

She comforted a crying boy on the playground and made him smile again, and she fixed Rainbow Dash's injured foot.

The Amazing Learning Girl--a hero of many talents and many faces.

It's never too early to be a hero.  Maybe she can even teach the comic book and movie industries a thing or two--women are way, way under-represented in the world of superheroes.  Hell, even the female superheroes who ARE in the comics rarely make their way into the movies, like every female Avenger ever.  

Wake up, Hollywood.  Girls totally rock, and not just when they're wearing lingerie on screen.  What's up with that, anyway?   

What's in a Song?

When my daughter was newly born, I had a song that would sway her into sleep.  I was never big on nursery rhymes, and "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star" isn't long enough to lull a dog, much less a baby, so I sang the only song to which I knew all the lyrics, the first song to come to mind, "Sun and Shadow."  There's no band, no music and no melody, just lyrics on a page.  It's a song from a fantasy book by one of my favorite authors.  It's sad, a desperate love song about two people who can only see one another for a few minutes at dawn and dusk, for one can live only in sunlight and the other in darkness. 

It's hardly a typical children's song, but I had always found it to be darkly lovely, and my girl loved it.  I sang it to her at bedtime and nap time, or any time she wanted me to sing.  She's bigger now and less inclined to cuddle for bouts of impromptu and off key singing, but she still crawls in my lap and asks for it when she's sick, hurt or scared. 

And sometimes, when I'm sick or scared, she pulls my head into her lap and sings it to me in her babyish voice that still can't quite pronounce words like 'perilously' and 'retrace'. 

When she does that for me, I think of my mother. 

When we lived with my stepfather, we lived an imperfect life in a picture perfect house.  It had a hunter green door and huge oak trees standing tall in the yard.  In the fall, the leaves were raked into piles we could jump onto, into and through before they were shoved into bags and hauled off the property.  There was a rabbit hutch and a hammock in the backyard, and an entire room filled with birds.

In the front yard, there was a swing, one of those wide southern ones meant for wraparound porches and pitchers of sweet tea.  My mother and I would sit on it together when she was scared or sad, or when she was trying to sooth me after my stepfather had gone on one of his rampages, ripping pictures off the walls and mattresses off the beds, yanking clothes from drawers and snapping toys into pieces before tossing all the debris into a pile on the floor and forcing us to clean it up within a half hour.  When it was over and he'd left the house in a flurry of slammed doors, she would take me outside sometimes, and we would swing, soft and slow.  She would cuddle me in her lap, wrap one arm around me and run the fingers of her other hand through my hair, and she would sing "Leavin' on a Jet Plane." 

My bags are packed; I'm ready to go...

Her voice was low, almost a whisper in my ear, and we never talked.  She just rocked me and sang, sang and rocked. 

Baby, I'm so lonesome I could die.  And I'm leavin' on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again...

I was seven, maybe eight years old then, but I still hear her voice in my head when I'm scared.  She's still singing to me, even if I'm fifty miles away from her.  I don't know if she ever sang that song to my brother or sister, and I haven't asked because I'm kind of possessive of it. 

I keep thinking about a second baby, if my wife and I are ever lucky enough to have one. 

What should be this child's comfort song?

I can't give my daughter's song to another baby.  She's a lot like me in some ways, all DNA aside, and I don't think she'd like it much.  It'll have to be a good song, though--some sad and some sweet.  Like life, full of beauty and adversity. 

There are three songs about Sun and Shadow, and I've only ever sang one to Starren.  Maybe I'll use one of the other two.  Yes.  I think I'll sing the one in which Sun and Shadow use the magic they've gathered to save a kidnapped boy instead of using it to break the curses that keep them from being together.  And I'll tell this child what I tell Starren, and what the author tells all her readers--these songs are legend.  Sun and Shadow lived hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago, and while the songs are sad, they aren't the whole story.  Sun and Shadow will be okay.  They will break the curses, live their lives together, and then they'll go the way of all other legends...into memory, and history.

Oh, Babe, I hate to go-oh-oh.

Mothers are epic legend.  Some days, I still can't believe I am one. 

Go Fund Me

Visit my GoFundMe to help me get caught up, get a car, and cut down on some of this overtime that's draining me so much I can't write my books:  http://www.gofundme.com/5hcwks.

Penny for my Thoughts?

I hate to say it, but I'm broke.  Today, I am completely and totally broke...well, I think I have some pennies in a jar in my kitchen.  If I'm lucky enough to have quarters, I'll do some laundry tonight when I get home.  Now let me say that I make about $45,000 a year, before taxes, which isn't too bad.  A lot of people live on a lot less than that, and I'm usually not totally broke.  Right now, though, I'm still struggling to recover from my honeymoon.

We never go on vacation.  I think our last real vacation was when Starren was two, and it was a weekend trip to DragonCon in Atlanta.  Not a long trip, or one that was particularly tough on my wallet.  But a couple of months ago we went to Arizona, and it was amazing.  I loved it, and I want to go back.  If I could go to Phoenix every year, it would be bliss.  If I could live there...

Yeah, no...I'd probably die from the heat.

Still, it was epic.

And it was epically expensive.

And our car died.  Tragically and suddenly.  There was a lovely memorial service.  So to rent a car and still make the trip, we had to take donations AND borrow money from people.  (Thank God I don't know a loan shark, or I might have been sorely tempted...I wanted to go that badly.  Wait, are loan sharks a real thing, or just a television thing?  I might be watching too much Leverage or Law and Order or something...).  Plus we got behind on bills, skipping this one here and that one there for a month or so just in order to be able to make the trip.  Why?  Because we were presented with an opportunity and we took it kinda hastily.  Well, really hastily.  If we'd had a year to plan and save, I wouldn't be having these problems right now, but we didn't.

So now I'm broke.

As of this paycheck the bills are finally ALMOST caught up, but I still owe some people money, which I need to pay back before I do something crazy like take on a car note.  Plus I've been stuck on this loop since the trip, this loop which is forcing me to pay my rent about three days late, and that leaves me paying the rent plus about $100 in late fees.  My apartment manager is thrilled, I'm sure, because it means he still gets his money, almost on time, plus extras.  Yup, extras.

I hate it.  I mean, we don't do extravagant.  Phoenix and I don't do shoe shopping or pay hundreds of dollars for purses.  Hell, we only buy clothes once a year or so.  Starren has cute clothes and we keep hers updated, but then, she also needs a new size every few months right now, so it makes sense.  Kid grows like a weed.  We don't have flat screen televisions or expensive game consoles.  We don't even have cable.  Right now, we share a cellphone because we realized we just never really use more than the one so paying for two didn't make much sense.  We don't spend money on cigarettes or even wine because we drink alcohol so rarely it's laughable.

But we're broke.

Money has been tight before.  It's been a lot worse than it is right now, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it at the moment.  I mean, we've never been able to do such lavish things as get proper dental work.  I've had four root canals, for instance.  Now, when you get a root canal, they tell you that with your insurance, it's a better option than pulling the tooth because you can save it, and it won't cost you much more.  What they neglect to tell you is that you'll have to have a crown to really save the tooth.  And even with insurance, a crown is upwards of $400.  So I've paid $200 each for four root canals, and I haven't been able to afford the crowns I need.  Now two of those teeth have broken right down the middle and I've had to have them pulled anyway, which means I spent $900 when I could have had them all pulled for $200, total.  Well, I've had one of them pulled.  I don't have the money yet to pull the second one so I still have a broken tooth just dangling in my mouth.  It's even odds whether I'll have the money to save the other two before they break.  Without insurance, it cost $300 to pull one of Phoenix's teeth a while back, a tooth that could have been saved with a root canal and a crown, but that would have been about $2500.  So yeah, money is always a little tight.  We're not going to Europe anytime soon, for instance.

But we've always had enough to pay the bills, and it just pisses me off that right now we don't.  I had this idea that it would only take me a few weeks to catch up, and by mid November I would have a car.

Oh, boy, was I wrong.  Like seriously, bloody wrong.

Vacation was at the end of September.

It'll be January before I'm caught up and my money is back to what it usually is.

It'll probably be February before I have a down payment and am able to take on a car note, and I might be happy to wait until then because I'll be able to use my tax return as my down payment.  I was hoping to use it for wedding bands to go with our engagement rings, but maybe it'll be big enough to swing both.  Or maybe the cash rent payments I get from my brother and his boyfriend will stick me in a bracket that doesn't get a return at all.  If I have to pay in, we'll be screwed.  Okay, time to change the subject because I really don't want to think about that possibility, like for serious. 

I'm not whining, and I'm not desperate.  We'll catch up.  I'll have to rely for a while on borrowing cars from other people and bumming rides when there isn't a car I can borrow, or riding my bike to and from work if I can't get a ride (because there's no bus running between my apartment and my job), but it'll be okay because in a couple of months everything will even out and I'll even be getting a 5% raise.  It was supposed to be a 7.5% raise--5% from the personnel board called an incentive raise due to certain things I've accomplished at my job, and a 2.5% cost of living raise from city I work for--but the city totally reneged on that, at least for now.  "I know we promised you a raise in January, and you totally deserve one, guys, you really do, but now we're not really sure we're going to give you one, even though we know we haven't given city employees a raise in ten years.  Oh, and we're not even giving you a crappy little bonus like we gave you last year.  Happy Holidays!"

That might not be a direct quote, by the way. 

 Anyway, a raise!  Unless I get screwed out of that one because they tell me that instead of the 120-something points I've earned on the scale of 100, only 99 are actually going to count.  They've done that before to other people, so I guess I won't get too comfortable until my 100 points are totally confirmed.  It's why I waited until I had 120 in the first place.

That raise was supposed to be what covered the difference in my insurance cost once I added my wife and child onto it, but the city screwed me on that too, because they say the city government is immune to those federal labor laws that were just passed regarding providing benefits to same sex spouses.  The Affordable Care Act sucks for us too, by the way.  Their idea of affordable is $200 a month for Phoenix alone, and that's with just 60% medical coverage, high co-pays and no dental coverage.

Wait, what was my point?

Oh yeah, I'm not whining.  We'll catch up soon; it'll be okay, and I'm lucky.  I have a steady job with a semi-decent paycheck, and I get overtime pay, holiday pay, vacation days, sick days, and 8 hours of comp time for each holiday I don't work, to be used later if I need to leave for two hours to go to a doctor's appointment or something and still get paid for it.  I make twice the current minimum wage, three times that if I'm working overtime.

What the HELL do people do when they make $7.25 an hour???

I make $45,000 a year, working about 55 hours a week, sometimes more.  Someone making $7.25 an hour would have to work well over 100 hours a week to make what I do, and even when I'm NOT behind like I am right now, I still don't have a whole lot of extra.  I work 18 hour shifts at least once or twice a month, and I'm often short on sleep, especially if I'm working a lot of days in a row and I actually want to see my family on those days.  Sometimes even when everything's normal for us our pantry ends up a little lean, especially if I just feel like cutting down (or off) the overtime for a few weeks because I'm just exhausted.

We were poor when I was a kid, and my mom struggled, really, really struggled, to get us above the poverty line.  It was rough.  She was exhausted and way too thin, and the idea of financial security and food for her children was one of many factors that led her into a bad marriage...a very bad marriage. 

I am grateful I'm not in that situation now, and I'm grateful she isn't either.

But a lot of people are, and I can't help but wonder, if I make decent paychecks and am having trouble straightening my finances out after a vacation that I got a LOT of help going on in the first place, how the hell do the people who don't make this kind of money (listen to me...that makes me sound like I'm just rollin' in cash...) do things like pay rent and keep the lights on?

I love you guys, and I feel for you, and I donate when I can because I know what it feels like to be hungry, or to be scared you're going to lose your power in the dead of winter.  Anyone who doesn't have power is welcome to warm up at my place for dinner tomorrow (which will consist of leftover ham and fresh peanut butter cookies, probably), because it's flippin' freezing out there. 

Write What You Know...and What You Imagine

            I'll tell you my writing secret. 

            Nonfiction is my least favorite kind of writing.  I even hate it sometimes, with utter and extreme enthusiasm.  I write it, and I want to set the pages on fire.  As much as I fight myself, though, nonfiction is my best genre.  Essays and research papers, yes, but especially creative nonfiction.  I write beautiful, starkly terrifying prose about sitting on the bed at night wrapped in blankets and three layers of pajamas, afraid to sleep, afraid to even turn out the lights for fear I might see him again, my dream-stalker and former real-life tormentor.  I chose that kind of writing once, determined to set the demons of my childhood down on paper, and the aftermath as well.  Especially the aftermath.  I wanted to cast the words out onto the wind for other ears to hear because so many people don't realize that "It's over" really means it's just begun.

           

            So I wrote. 

           

            As I did, pain coiled in a black lump in my chest and flowed out on the keyboard.  It was a bloodletting, the act of writing, with the words pouring out from an open vein.  On the final page I was left wounded, drained and oddly relieved.  I had done it.  I had looked in myself and said, "This happened, and it sucks."  Bleeding was good.  Bleeding was life and living...survival.  When I reached the end of the story--the present--I started at the beginning and read what I had wrought. 

            I had to put it down and walk away, sometimes not returning for days.  Twice, I threw up.  It was beautiful and hauntingly triumphant--after all, the girl in the story had survived.  In the end she thrived.  I tried to edit it, to get it ready to submit to agents and publishers.  I'm still convinced I could publish it, and it would sell.  The words, though...the more I read them, the more I realized I didn't want anyone to have to experience this, even voluntarily and third hand, even for reasons of coming to a greater understanding, even in the interest of standing up for all the others like me. 

            It was too real, and I was too vulnerable. 

            I hate nonfiction sometimes, and I'm jealous of the bravery of others who have put their stories on the shelves of bookstores worldwide.  I didn't burn the manuscript, though--believe me--I was tempted.  It lies dormant in a temporary tomb, stuffed into my locker at work alongside half-filled legal pads and standard operating procedure manuals, waiting for me to decide what in Dante's nine hells I should do with it.

           

            Fiction, now...fiction I love.  Fiction is laughter and pain and utter decimation, but it's not mine.  It's not real, and I'm not nearly as good at writing.  I labor at fiction, toiling over words and emotions and how to move from plot point A to plot point B.  Fantasy is my true love, and we've danced together a dozen times.  

            Step together, part. 

            Step together.  Part.     

I have three novels, all of them half-finished, and at least ten more in various stages of outlining and scattered snippets.  I love them.  I love the atmosphere of the various worlds.  I love the maps.  The characters are my friends and my family, my illicit partners in devilish misadventure.  As much as I love them, there they lie--half-cocked, far from finished, and definitely abandoned. 

I have the usual excuses, of course--work, marriage, children.  Video games and books...the move theater.  A thousand distractions that are easier than writing.  Brush aside the distractions, though, and the truth rests at the bottom of the crate.  I love the fantastic, but I was born to write reality.

It was seven in the morning, the sky blue and serene.  I'd gotten to work an hour before, and my first call was a woman whose teenage son had taken a knife to his arm, slicing it from wrist to elbow.  As I was typing the information the responding medics would need, I realized reality could overlap fantasy.  There are heroes in fantasy, and in reality.  There is devastation and magic and mystery.  There are men and women who have survived terrible things, and there are those who have been destroyed by them.  There are destroyers.  There is an overlay. 

My book is fiction.  My hero--I reject the word heroine, as it always seems to describe something altogether different--is not me.  She is herself, but I am there.  My pain flows into hers, and she learns from it.  She grows, and she suffers.  The story is both familiar to and alien to me.  Eclunae'via is a world unlike anything I have ever seen, and yet it is intimately linked with one I know far better than I know my own mind.  Navelle is twenty-one.  Her father is dead.  She's a college dropout and afraid of developing the illness that killed her father.  She hears voices and sees things in the shadows, and she has vivid dreams.  Her best friends are a bird who is also an autistic man, a teenage mother, and a woman more than twice her age.  Something hunts her, and she's in as much danger from herself as from anyone else. 

Her truth--and her book--begins with an old man in Baton Rouge, and the sin he committed as a boy: 

             

The woman inside him stirred, restless.

*It's time, Scilas.*

Scilas Evanson jerked awake, his body screaming with the effort of moving from slouched to jarringly erect in the space between two heartbeats.  He was in the study.  Scilas grunted.  He was old, damn it, and he'd been retired from service for over fifty years.  His body should have learned to appreciate laziness by now, instead of reacting to every wakeup call like it was a drill sergeant or a blast of gunfire.

That wasn't really the problem, though, and he knew it.  Scilas trembled, not quite daring to believe what he thought he'd heard.  He'd had plenty of dreams that were similar, after all.  Wishful thinking, or desperation.  He pressed his hand against his chest.  She always felt more alive when he did that.  "Mariko?"

*She's here.*

Scilas sucked in a breath, his hand falling away.  He hadn't been dreaming.  She was here.  Not Mariko, of course.  Kai Mariko was dead, and had been for seventy years.  She was here.  He'd been wondering if he would ever find her, or if his sin would wrap itself around someone else after he died.  Scilas cleared his throat and tentatively touched his hand to his chest again.  He felt the indentations there, radiating out like a star.

*Eclunae'via.*

The voice was a wind whisking through his body, a seed planted in his soul.  Mariko had done this to him, had planted eight tiny shards of her soul inside of him, to ensure he would do what was needed.  It had been an elegant punishment--forcing him to fall in love with something, and to watch as it died. 

*Go where you can hear her calling.*

Scilas let out a the breath he'd been holding for decades.  It was time, finally, to fix this.  He grabbed a pen and bent low over the battered spiral notebook on his desk, flipping through the pages until he came to a blank one.  He needed to get this book in order before he left.  He paused, his pen poised above the blue-lined paper.  "When?"

*Now.  Maybe never.*  Mariko's dead whisper was dripping sorrow, tightening his chest.  *There's a hunter on her back.*

"No," Scilas growled, and the pen snapped in half, the plastic pieces twisted and splintered.

*If she dies...*

Scilas swallowed.  "I know."

His muscles protesting every stretch and bend, Scilas pulled another pen from the top drawer and held it to the paper.  There was no time to finish the book and make it pretty, but there was time for this.  There had to be.  'Eclunae'via has had no soul,' Scilas scrawled, biting his lip until it bled.  'That's why it's dying.  Protect her.'  It didn't make enough sense, but what else could he say?  All he knew was what Kai Mariko had left him with.

"I was a cold bastard back then," Scilas spit the words out--harsh, guttural--and rose from the desk, heading for the attic.  He needed the shadows there.

He'd been twenty years old when it happened, new to the army and barely old enough to piss in a straight line, but that was no excuse.  Orders weren't an excuse either.  People had been kept in pens like dogs because he, and men like him, had been following orders.  People had died.  Kai Mariko had died.  He'd told himself what the entire country had been saying:  "We have to keep ourselves safe."

"Shouldn't I be safe too?" Mariko laughed.

The little whore was laughing at him.

She planted her hands on her too-round belly.  "If I was safe, this would never have happened."

Sergeant Jones had warned him she was a liar.  She was a mongrel whose mother had had the indecency to spawn with a real American.  She was just like her mother, too, spreading her legs for any man who wanted a go.  She'd even been making passes at soldiers.  There had been no rape, of course.  There was nothing but a little bitch scrabbling to keep from getting tossed back into the cage she'd crawled out of.

"She didn't much take to being caged," Scilas snorted, wincing as he fumbled with the door to the attic stairs.  He was closer to ninety now than twenty, and he didn't move with the grace he'd had before.  He shut the door behind him and felt his way up the stairs in the dark.  It wasn't difficult.  His footprints were worn into the wood.  He'd spent too many years cultivating the shadows in the attic to bring a light with him now.

His foot thumped against the door at the top.

Scilas grinned.  Urgency thrummed in his veins, laced with dread that he was too late and his usual fear of the pain that would hit him when he crossed the Shroud.  Even all of that, though, couldn't suppress the schoolboy delight he felt every time he slipped into the mist.  Eclunae'via was a savage world, a clashing of want and will, danger and beauty.  His grandson was the only thing he loved more.  He'd been terrified his first time, driven by Mariko's voice in his bones.  He'd felt the snap in his chest as her body, fragile and too young, had given way to the birthing, two states away and three months after he'd last seen her.  He'd felt her death, and then with a sickening twist he'd been in Eclunae'via.

Scilas closed the door behind him and stood in the dark room, breathing in the shadows and the hot, still air.  There were no windows in the attic, no cracks in the floorboards or chinks in the walls.  There were no lights, and no places for light to creep in.  He'd driven Mariko to Louisiana and left her in the new camp, and then he'd made the too quiet drive back to his post and forgot he'd ever met her, a difficult task with eight scars as a reminder.  "Mariko..."

She'd been mouthier than a woman had had a right to be, and clearly half-mad.  It had been easier to look down on her as a grasping bitch than to admit that she had escaped for more reasons than madness.  He had heard the whispers about her temper and her attitude, and he had heard the elbow-jostling snickers about how Sergeant Jones had put her in her place.

"My mother was mounted by a white dog too, her welcome gift to America," Mariko growled.  Then she paused, her eyes solemn and dark.  "It isn't the same, though.  She had a husband.  He loved her, and me too."

"So she had a husband.  What do you have, little whore?"

"I have Eclunae'via, and honor.  What do you have?"

Scilas spread his arms and looked out at nothing.  It wasn't a spell.  It wasn't even magic.  It was just a different way of looking at the world.  He'd seen nothing before Mariko.  He'd been brash and cocky, but he hadn't had any balls.  He'd called her a liar.  He'd scoured the woods for her, dragged her by the hair and thrown her in the jeep, and he'd taken her away from her family, to a different state and a different camp.  The man he'd been then would never have noticed the veil itself, much less seen beyond it. 

Parting the Shroud was easier than breathing for those who knew the way, and Scilas did know the way now.  He was a better man, and he'd had a lot of practice since Mariko's death throes had tossed him to Eclunae'via the first time.  It was a simple shift in focus, like seeing the picture hidden behind a magic eye puzzle.  Scilas concentrated his will on where he wanted to be, and shifted. 

The blackness in the room blew about like mist at his feet, and there was the Shroud, the veil separating this world from Eclunae'via.  He reached forward, parting it like cobwebs, puffs of shadow blurring the border between here and there.  Steeling himself against what he knew was coming, Scilas stepped through the passageway.

Pain slogged him in the gut like a bullet, ripping through bone and muscle and singeing every nerve along the way.  The attic was gone.  His half-clean, half-cluttered brick house was gone.  The marshy heat of south Louisiana had been replaced by dry wind that whipped his hair into whimsical snarls.

No...not hair, not anymore.  Feathers.

Scilas gritted his teeth against the pain, closing his eyes and allowing the strength of want and will to flow through him.  Focus was the key to this world.  He could still feel Eclunae'via's slow death inside him, could feel the world's strength bleeding out drop by drop, but it was no longer at the forefront of his mind.  Pain was the backdrop, and flight was his will, and his desire.

Scilas mantled his gray wings and dug his talons into the branch of the twisted tree clinging to the top of Kolvaryn, the whispering mountain.  From here, he could see the desert that ringed the mountain’s base and the endless forest to the northeast.  He could even see the vague, cloud-wrapped border of the avarie’s floating city, painted against the sky above the forest.

He hadn’t come here for the view.  Kai Mariko had been fourteen years old, thin and far too pale.  She hadn’t cried; she hadn’t begged.  She had known he wouldn’t save her.  There had been grief in her eyes, and regret at what she was about to do.  She’d touched his chest, lightly, and the blossoming pain had left him weak and shaking, breathing far too fast.

“What did you do to me, you bitch?”

“I planted a seed.  If I live, nothing will grow.”

“I…why?”

Mariko smiled, her fingers brushing against his wrist in offered comfort.  “I’m carrying a son, and a son can’t be a sieve for the dreams.  Without a sieve, Eclunae’via will die.  If you feel the dying inside you, you’ll look for her.”

“For who?”

“For the sieve.  If you’re lucky, another will be born.”

That was why he was gripping the branch of this tree and struggling to stay at the center of a near-maelstrom even his will couldn’t soften.  The winds were always fierce was strong enough, desperate enough, if it needed enough, then it didn’t matter where in Eclunae’via the call came from.  It would be heard on Kolvaryn.

Scilas closed his eyes and became the calm in the storm.  He breathed in the heat and let it flow through him, and he sent out his own call, allowing it to tear out on the winds and find the soul he wanted.  *Featherhead, are you there?*

Surprise, and warmth on the air.  *Scilas?  I though you were taking the week off.*

*I had to make sure you weren’t making a mess of it.* Scilas let out a screech and mantled his wings again, anxious.  *Listen, boy, I need your help.*

*Where?*

*No, I can handle it.  It’s just…I heard a rumor there’s a girl being hunted.  I’m going to help her, but if I don’t survive it--*

*Scilas…*

*If I don’t survive it, I need you to keep an eye on the Borderlands.  She’s human.  That’s probably where she’ll show up, and soon.  Keep her safe.  She’s the hope.*

*Don’t get all cryptic on me, old man.  I’m coming now.*

*Don’t you dare.  I’ve been waiting years for this, and I don’t have time to explain it.  We need her, so protect her.*

*But--*

*No questions.  She is everything, and that’s all you need to know.  Understand?*

Silence on the wind, and resentment.  Then, *Yes, sir.*

Scilas closed his eyes, relief flooding his hollow bones.  *Good.  Then I’ll say goodbye.  Everything is yours, of course, but especially the house.  There are things in there for you to see when you’re ready.*  He opened his eyes and looked down at the heat waves rising up the mountainside.  *I love you, featherhead.*

Fear and confusion, anger and fierce affection.  *Watch your back.*

Scilas swallowed thickly, tucked his wings against his body and clung hard, letting the wind whip furiously around him.  There was no eye in the maelstrom now.  There was only the wind and the heat, with nothing between him and the life of the realm.  He was old.  He didn’t mind dying, so long as he saved her first. 

Scilas closed his eyes and listened for her call.