Judy

Aquila says: It could be worse. There was this one game I got-also Square-where I never actually figured out how to work the battle system at all. Despite hours of effort and reading the guide pamphlet thing. In the end I said bollocks and returned it to the store.
Ash says: Unlimited Saga?
Aquila says: That's the one. I'd forgotten the name till you said it.
Ash says: I had the same problem.
Ash says: Shame, cuz it looked good.
Aquila says: My theory is it's another xenophobic world. The characters are like, 'WE DO NOT WANT PEOPLE LOOKING AT US. GO AWAY.' So they are Obstructive, and Complicate Simple Matters in a successful bid to make people storm off in frustration.
Ash says: Or maybe they were dying for their story to be told, and the developers fucked up, and they're sitting around waiting for visitors and wondering "why doesn't anyone like us?"
Aquila says: I like your version better. That little witch girl seemed sweet, come to think.
Ash says: Yeah.

Judy walks the labyrinth. Her location is not marked on any map.

The labyrinth is an egg that she failed to hatch from. The labyrinth is the womb of a dead mother. The labyrinth is a school with no pupils but her, and it is the endless silvery dimensions behind the mirror.

Grandfather was trapped in a mirror, Judy thinks. I have to save him. But grandfather is not here.

Maybe if she walks the labyrinth long enough, she will find him. Maybe if she walks without stopping, checks every door and passage, she will reach the way out.

She is very tired, and her little hands are cold.

Judy walks the labyrinth. Her companions are three familiars that patter behind her in the dust. They do not speak, and they are cold to the touch. As she is cold.

She has a memory that this is not what she was promised. Things have not always been like this. Once she was warm, and sheltered, and a mother-voice whispered to her of games, and adventures, and other children all in sunlight. It told her stories that made her laugh, and dance in anticipation. They were not fantasies. They were truths. Prophecies.

Prophecy is dead now. Stillborn. Miscarried.

Her existence now is not Life. Neither is it Truth.

Judy walks the labyrinth. Sometimes she sobs, but tears never fall. She thinks that tears might make her feel better. They would be hot, she thinks; salty and hot and wet. She might be warm, if she could cry.

Maybe tears would wipe clean the dust that clings to her, her hair, her clothes. She is covered in grey. She cannot remember the colour of her skin. She has a few vague ideas about it; are people brown, or pink, or blue? And what did colours look like, anyway?

Purple was nice, she thinks. She thinks she remembers wanting to be purple.

Judy walks the labyrinth. Sometimes she remembers things. She remembers a breaking, a hot, bright world glimpsed for a few, precious seconds, and then, the labyrinth again, cooling slowly.

She is a genius, she thinks. Is that right, that word ‘genius’? She’s quite sure that she is one, as much as she is sure of anything. But she can’t quite remember what a genius is.

Perhaps ‘genius’ means grey, and cold, and solitary. Perhaps ‘genius’ means dust that falls into her mouth and nose, unfocused vision, and slow, muzzy mind.

She isn’t sure that she likes being a genius, but she has got to be something. She clutches to the word, because it describes herself, and she does not have many words that describe herself. If she cannot describe herself to her, then maybe she does not exist. And she does not have many words at all.

She was going to have words, she thinks. Words, and numbers, and colours. They were in the promise. But the promise never came true.

And unkept promises fade.

(A/N: No, I have no fucking clue where this came from...)

The rewards of exploring

I have found an absolutely wonderful place. A magic place. And it's so close, it's on hospital grounds!

Not that I'm meant to be there, I think the padlock on the gate was a bit of an indication I'm not allowed in, but when I saw it through the wire fence...I just had to get in. And lucky me, there was a hole in the fence that I squeezed in through! Looked like some sort of animal made it...

The Place is this smallish fenced-off area next to one of the carparks, bounded on the other side by a stretch of grass with some sycamore trees. Once upon a time there was a building there, and the concrete of the foundations pokes up from the ground, in big flat broken-table plateaus.

It must have been ages ago that the building stood, because there's long grass all over, and plants and flowers-there's buddleia and lilacs growing wild, smelling gorgeous, and attracting so many butterflies. Tortoiseshell butterflies, and cabbage white, and once I saw a shimmery blue and white one, though it was gone so fast I only glimpsed it. And sweet peas and a bush covered in rosehips-I think there must have been a bit of garden there once-and the tough weed-flowers, fireweed and those yellow ones like stringy dandelions and some reddish ones I didn't recognise, that had fluffy silver clouds of seeds.

And stones. Smooth round flints, embedded in the concrete and lying around loose, little ones and big ones. Rusted iron pipes, about the width of my thumb, long and spindly-some loose, some stuck in bits of concrete. Rubble, and plants growing up through it...

And it was a special place. An extra specially alive place. A sunshiny feral growing calm place, a place with warmth and stillness all about it. A magic place.

One smallish plateau was particularly special. It was more or less in the centre, and shaded by buddleia bushes, and I knew as soon as I saw it that I had to make an altar there. I made it from flints and a bit of rusty pipe-bigger than most of the bits of pipe lying around, more drainpipe size-and consecrated it with the milk I had brought with me to drink and put a sweetpea on top.

And I scratched out a name, on the concrete, in front of the altar.

Once I googled the name Tikal and discovered that as well as the name of Pachacamac's daughter, it is the name of an ancient city. A ruined city of the Maya. I saw some pictures of it-stone pushing up through grass-read a little about it. One site called it 'the incomparable Tikal'.

That phrase stuck with me.

So I named that Place, that special place, The Incomparable Tikal. And I sat there, and felt more alive and at home than I have for ages.

the Tarot of Tellius

If I was a better artist, I would be planning to draw these. But I'm not. So I won't.

More will be added to the list as I think of them.

The Fool-Ike
The Magician-Bastian(no duh)
The High Priestess-Volke
The Empress(reversed)-Almedha
The Emperor-Sanaki
The Hierophant-?
The Lovers-Greil and Elena
The Chariot-Tormod
Strength-Rhys
The Hermit-Stefan
The Wheel of Fortune-Naesala
Justice-Reyson
The Hanged Man-Ena
Death-?
Temperance(reversed)-Nasir
The Devil-Micaiah(also no duh)
The Tower-?
The Star-Mist
The Moon-Soren
The Sun-Rolf
Judgement-Elincia
The World-?

I wonder if you could be my therapy~?

So recently Knux has been doing stuff in my head. Good stuff.

It's...subtle, and complicated, and hard to describe. But it's about boosting self-esteem. It's about allowing myself to feel comfortable in my body, it's about not feeling guilty, not mortifying the flesh, not practising self-denial. It's about untying my hopelessly tangled shoelaces and letting myself walk barefoot over the grass and get dirt inbetween my toes.

It's about not feeling like I'm under a moral obligation to give away every bit of security I can get a hold of, not having to be the one who saves the world, being allowed to be one of those characters with sub-par stats that never gets used for the boss battles, being allowed to be the human equivalent of my Platinum-version Weavile, who has no surefire big-hitter moves and whose stats are only average, but who is pretty and has a lot of character and is named after a good friend of mine, and who keeps up with the other five members of the team, more or less. It's about not panicking, not rushing or hurrying, staying calm, keeping it together, living in stone time.

(Water-name notwithstanding, Tigris is fire in my head; hot and quick and impatient. In fire time, every second, every nanosecond counts. Tigris always has a sense of energy about him; always poised to jump up and do something. To roar and fight or laugh booming-deep-golden and romp like...well, like a cat chasing sunbeams. Do Something. Time's a-wasting. This is the time, now is the time, every moment is the most important moment, the decisive moment, the moment of the fight, so do it, get up, do something, make something, fight something, change something, whatever you do, don't stand still. If you're standing still, you shouldn't be.)

Stone time is geological ages and patience. The slow, slow movement of mountains rising and tectonic plates shifting. They'll get there. There's no rush. No need to get in a lather. There is world enough, and time. Everything in its time, and a time for every purpose, if you only wait. Stone time is the green soft glow of the Master Emerald. It's meditation in a cool still room, and walking a meandering path through the Marble Garden, smelling the flowers, picking fruit, playing in the dirt, doubling back on yourself, lying down to sleep under a shady tree. Granite calmness, basalt wisdom. Stone just is.

Acceptance.

That's stone time.

Further evidence that(surprise, surprise)the Eagle is nuts.

So I'm working on a Fire Emblem fic.

Sort-of working on.

Problem is, it's a Soren-centric fic.

And problem is, Soren's company does very bad things to me. Five minutes thinking about that guy while I'm in a good mood and I want to call him up and spend the day with him putting jelly in the toilets and decorating trees with Silly String and sidewalk chalking filthy jokes at the entrance to the hospital and generally pranking the world.

So I generally end up giggling to myself and coming up with mad plots that would never really work instead of, you know, writing.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Because of a phone conversation yesterday

So from now on the anti-Micaiah campaign will wear cowboy hats!

*Puts on a blue one*

The universal opera; Aquila's internal dialogue

Most people have an internal monologue. I got an internal dialogue.

These guys aren’t figments(save Caity, who straddles the border). They are me; they are also complete entities unto themselves. I don’t know how this is possible but it clearly is, and the world was never under any obligation to make sense to me.

And you can call it crazy if you like, but having them around and personified has helped my mental health, as far as I can tell.

That said, here’s the roster.

Caity: Impossible to define with any accuracy, other than as himself. He goes by the name Devin these days when hanging with figment folk; on Sygnus years ago when he shifted skin and introduced himself to someone else’s figments he asked for a name to be called by, and was given that one by one of them.

He originally came into my head from outside, but you could say he’s a naturalised citizen by now. He’s kind of an ambassador or messenger between the figment folk(mine and other peoples’), the independent little spirits(story people or talking stones or anything else-whichever), and the rest of the internal dialogue.

Tigris: Shoulder angel. Inner angel. Holy Guardian Angel. I’ve mentioned him before. He’s a personification of strength and virtue-specifically my strength and virtue-the best self I have.

He’s been around for absolutely ages, but I only personified him, figured out his name and face, a couple years ago now(maybe just one year…I have a crappy memory for timeline stuff). Tigris is the Latin word for ‘tiger’, a spur-of-the-moment naming on my part for this huge, marmaladey-orangey-golden-tabby beast with his saber fangs and clear gold eyes and Professor of Literature voice. As Athene reminded me, though, the Tigris is also one of the rivers that flows through Eden. I’m sure he was thinking that, even if I wasn’t. Caity and Knux call him Tig or Tigger sometimes, which is another thing that’s Athene’s fault; Demyx usually refers to him as Big Tigger, when he isn’t doing his Organisation name thing.

I vaguely expected him to be more distant and humourless than he is; boy, was I wrong! Though he takes a hands-off approach a lot of the time, it’s all about practicality, not to mention integrity and respect; his job is to teach, not coddle. And he is not humourless by any stretch of the imagination! His sense of humour is actually a good deal more robust than mine, probably because he’s a stronger person.

And then he’ll go and totally knock me for a loop by responding in kind when Stefen makes innuendo(I didn’t even understand what he was doing at the time, because it didn’t occur to me that he would!)or declaring that Franziska is his daughter, or becoming very close friends with Knux…

Tigris, these days, lives on Angel Island with Knux, in a cave near the edge of Marble Garden Zone that strangely resembles Tumnus’s home in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.(That is, when they're not being their otherselves, which I'm still finding out about so watch this space...)They had a big row recently over Gold(see earlier posts for details on him)and it looked for awhile as though Tigris might move out, but by now they have made up.

Franziska: Shoulder demon. That nasty little voice saying how weak and stupid and pathetic you are…or else goading you into being a total bastard. She’s from inside, like Tigris, and like him she’s been around for ages and her shape and name are just qualia. Unlike him, they are pinched directly from a spirit woman called Franziska von Karma, of Phoenix Wright: Justice For All fame.

When Franziska first got personified I expected her to be more or less straightforward nasty, all the bits of me I could really do without and need to get rid of as soon as possible; not quite a boggart, more along the lines of Screwtape(‘he can’t really love-nobody can-it doesn’t make sense’ wailed that demon on one occasion). Life is rarely simple however, and Franziska turned out to be rather more complex.

Christianity has it that devils are fallen angels; that badness is goodness fouled and twisted, rather than something autonomous in itself. The worst demons are the ones that fell the furthest-Lucifer was an archangel once. Franziska, I discovered recently, was also not always what she is now. Once she was the rightful wielder of the sword that rests between my shoulderblades(all people have one there). She was a desire for justice, for fair play in all things.

She fell, though. Somehow or other, she fell. Now she’s all muddled up with anger and spite and self-flagellation and hollow pride that hides burgeoning, breeding inferiority complexes. Now, she can’t or won’t touch the sword, and she’s a thousand miles away from dispensing justice. Quite the opposite, actually.

When I described her to Athene, she said It sounds a bit like she set herself an impossible task - to prevent anyone getting away with evil - and is mad at herself for not succeeding at it. I hadn’t thought about it that way before, but it seems pretty accurate.

Tigris says she’s his daughter. He refuses to elaborate on that. But he does seem to care for her, though he doesn’t stand for any of her demonic attitude.

Knux(Knuckles for long): My Knight of Swords, with shades of Strength and The Tower. He could be from inside, he could be from outside; I honestly do not know and cannot tell. He’s…well, if I say ‘ego’ that sounds wrong. He isn’t a selfish person, or a cruel one. But he knows what he likes and is prepared to get it, he knows what he is and is prepared to be it, and he doesn’t give a damn for anyone’s arbitrary categories, hence the t-shirt he sometimes flomps around in; on the back is a bunch of green ones and zeroes, on the front the words BINARY IS FOR BADNIKS, with a little picture of a seriously trashed robot underneath.

He can be kind, and wise, but is definitely not subtle; a good knock-down fight is always his first and preferred option. He picks fights, but never at random; it’s just that he won’t walk on by when he sees something he can’t accept. He’s smart about knowing when is the time to attack, though, and when is the time to wait and sharpen his spikes. He’d rescue princesses from towers, not for the glory or the romance of it(because he frankly hasn’t got a romantic bone in his body)but because they were there and they needed rescuing. He’d also rescue dragons from knights, for the same reason. He and Tigris bonded pretty much immediately; they share something of the same sense of humour. Quite often Knux can be found using Tigris as a sofa or pillow(which Tigris does not seem to mind in the slightest), or lying between the big cat’s front paws and being thoroughly washed(which Knux does not seem to mind in the slightest).

He lives on Angel Island, which floats about above the clouds on the power of the Master Emerald and goes just about wherever he wants it to go. I sometimes think he is Angel Island, somehow. I’ve heard before of people who are places, so it follows that some places might be people, and the impossible geography of the Floating Island sometimes looks to me like a depiction of his own mind and heart…

Demyx the Demon DJ(D3 or D-cubed for short): Probably the weirdest of the lot. Another one who uses qualia unashamedly-his form is ‘borrowed’ from one of the Nobodies of Organisation XIII.

The original Demyx is a musician, and my Demyx is the music in my head, the invisible orchestra that no-one can hear but me. It all comes out of his magic sitar-everything from classical to J-pop by way of rock and roll. When he isn’t singing along with it, he generally talks obliquely, in circles. He’s probably the most mysterious of the dialogue-nobody can ever get a straight answer from him on anything. He has a habit, too, of referring to people not by their own names but by those of members of Organisation XIII. Knux generally gets called ‘Lexaeus’; Tigris is ‘Xemnas’, or ‘Saix’. Caity is ‘Luxord’.

He is also in love with Franziska. He endlessly flirts with her, which she reacts to with alarm and confusion. I’ve a suspicion she actually likes it, though-even when he’s calling her ‘Larxene’.

He spends his time in his own version of the Castle That Never Was, the Castle That Always Is-a shimmering confection of crystal walkways and pearly towers, under a moon shaped like a heart and a million shining stars. That is, when he’s not following Franziska to her home, and singing under her window…

Playing Path of Radiance again. And loving it!

So I smuggled my Gamecube into the hospital. I'm glad I did. Tellius is better than any happy pill by far!

(But Rioh, stop cheering for the Daeins when they're targeting Ranulf! It's really offputting. And if you keep it up I'll have to tell Ike why, and you don't want that, do you? :P)

Addendum: It's funny, the things names can mean. Isaac; 'he laughs'. I was laughing all right yesterday, doing my clumsy mage-dance round the courtyard, first to the Fire Emblem theme, then to Bon Jovi. I laughed, then. I laughed.

I've just realised that little correspondence, and it makes me smile inside.

Fire Emblem memories

I played Path of Radiance(a name which makes me think of the moon or the sun rising over the ocean, the silver or golden light on the water making a road to heaven)first while I was at Condover. That was really the reason why I acquired a Gamecube in the first place.

I didn't have my own TV, then. So, instead, I used the one in the common room, which was common in name only. It was meant for students to socialise in, but it was a cold, unwelcoming room, in the basement of the main hall, with nothing really to recommend it-my fellow students preferred to socialise in the warm living rooms of the flats.

Thus, I had the room to myself, at lunch-time and after classes for a few hours each day.

White-painted stone walls, an old, boxy television set, and an ugly, uncomfortable plastic-covered armchair. Nobody ever interrupted me.

Me and the story. Me and the spirits.

It was our kingdom-mine and Soren's-tactician brother monarchs. He beat back the ghost, glared it into leaving us alone as we played; I brought down chocolate and gingerbread and tea, which we shared. We talked, and we listened, and we argued-he had a terribly annoying habit of saying 'Don't do that!' one millisecond after I had made my mistake and pressed the button to confirm it. I suspected he was doing it on purpose.

It was slow progress, since I never had long to spend down there at any one time. When the holidays came, it was only Chapter Nine. Chapter Nine: Gallia. I can't remember any other chapter titles. Just that one.

After the holidays, the common room that nobody used was closed down. A common room that people did use was opened in one of the empty flats, and I used it myself for only a small amount of time before managing to scrape together the money for a TV of my own, in my bedroom.(Expensive but necessary. Certain boys had decided to pester me while I played; I needed privacy, and in the common room I just couldn't get it. There was no joy in playing like that, no freedom to talk.)

It was a very short-lived kingdom, that cold little basement room.

Still, it is one of my strong memories. Chapter Nine was not the most exciting or difficult or easiest or most interesting of chapters, but it will always be dearest, I think, to me.

I'll remember it forever, I think; Gallian sunshine spilling into a cold English room, a beach where Rolf wanted to make sandcastles and Mist earnestly explained through a closed door to a person who wasn't listening that it was bears you played dead to avoid, not beorc; where Lethe shouted Idiot human tacticians! at us as she and Mordecai made mad dashes hither and yon and always ended up in exactly the wrong place, as I tried hopelessly to get the hang of issuing commands, and as Soren smiled his small, wicked smile and commented drily that surely I knew the saying about trying to herd cats?

And I laughed, and laughed, hunched over the controller, and Lethe made a rude noise through her nose at me and said something fittingly catty(pun intended)about how glad she was that somebody was finding this amusing. And I had had half of a Twirl bar, and there was the taste of chocolate in my mouth.

I'm not sure why I post this now. Maybe just because recently I've been thinking about Tellius again, and because this memory is so clear and bright that it deserved to be written down. Just because.

The back-from-dad's place update

A thumb-sized plastic Squall Leonhart is a surprisingly comforting thing to have in one’s pocket, even if his gunblade is broken.

_

My father is still impossible to talk to.

_

Captain Carrot and Lloyd Irving are possibly very nearly the same person. I must research this.

-

My faithful DS is dead. It died of internal bleeding, and I am much annoyed about this. I’m saving up for a new one.

-

My aunt and uncle and cousins came through big time with regards to presents. SERGEANT PEPPER’S!

-

I’ve put on weight. It’s probably all those duck legs. For some reason it all seems to go to my belly, nowhere else. Some of you are probably making pregnancy jokes on reading this. All I can say is, if it is pregnancy, we are probably about to witness the birth of a new religion. Someone should phone the Archbishop of Canterbury.

-

I hate politics. Hate hate hate.

-

Ian is still a prat. Why does he have to act like he’s lord of the manor all the time? AAARGH!

-

Tomorrow I have another appointment about getting psychiatric help. It looks like we are actually getting somewhere soonish.

-

All in all, things could be worse.

Utterances of the Menagerie of Doom(which is what they decided to call themselves now that FDB is no longer wholly appropriate...)

Because Athene did this with Pesky Stefen Rhymer. On the basis of 'why not?'

This will be updated erratically. Whenever they are particularly on form.

__________

“Fuck biology, we’ll just buy you a pair of kitty ears. On a headband, you know. No-one will notice the difference!”


“Puppy.”

“Puggle.”

“…you two are conspiring against me.”

“We’re conspiring for you, and don’t forget it.”


“You can’t see the Floating Island with those eyes.”


“I’m not going to tell you what I believe. You’ll only try to imitate it.”


“The Universe can always use another pair of helping hands, especially if they have spikes on and are not above dealing out a few punches.”


“There’s always something worth guarding.”


“What?! You’re my guardian angel not my libido! Are angels even meant to get-”

“Ahem…Geburah, dear.”


“Being different is one thing, being unique is another. Being unique sucks, so it’s a good thing no-one really is.”


(while dancing about at the bus-stop to a song they were looping in my head, and trying to get me to join in) “Dignity? I’m a cartoon animal! You can’t get much more undignified than that.”


“You can and should feel guilty for anything you did that made the situation worse. But feeling guilty for there being a situation at all is ridiculous. It’s just being masochistic. And not in the fun way.”


“You can’t ask a demon why it destroys stuff-well, you can, but you won’t get a straight answer and you probably won’t get a truthful one either.”


(I have a skin allergy that makes trouble if I don’t take medicine for it regularly. I’d missed a few doses, and I was sitting at the computer and scratching my belly.) “You’ll scratch off all your fur if you carry on like that.”

“I don’t have fur!”

“…Which proves my point!” (yeah, I walked into that one…)


(discussing Athene’s cohorts)“All [Vanyel’s] plans sooner or later come down to ‘blow stuff up’. Usually sooner.”


“Also, we killed binary. I think Knux stabbed it.” (Knux, I should mention, has taken to wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the message BINARY IS FOR BADNIKS. He doesn't need to wear t-shirts, so I assume he is only doing it for the lolz.)


"It never was, because it always is!"


(in response to the line ‘hanging upside-down like a bat and playing the ocarina’, in ‘out’)“Add that to the list of ‘things we haven’t done yet, but must do someday for the shock value’.”


(while talking with Athene about the fact that half the world freaks out if you Believe in anything, while the other half freaks out if you don't Believe exactly what they do)"So basically there's no room in the world for people like me. But I knew that already."

*headshake*"It means that if you want space you have to carve out your own."


"If packing is such a fucking depressing chore, what is unpacking?"


(when I got the idea that the Master Emerald must Never Be Touched In Any Circumstances)"That sounds like the sort of 'cosmic' bullshit Tigris would come up with."

Some random rambly shit about bodies & sexuality, & my weird head

I have pretty eyes. Big and deep brown, with long eyelashes. Bambi eyes. People have complimented me on them before now. Sometimes they say I should swap my glasses for contacts(no thank you; the thought of floating something on my eyeball just grosses me out and anyway I’ve worn glasses so long they feel like part of my body now)so as to render my eyes more visible, make the most of them.

I remember looking in a mirror, aged about thirteen or fourteen, and not liking what I saw. This was of course commonplace. But it wasn’t always about imperfection in my face and figure…Sometimes I’d look, and see those big Bambi eyes. They looked like they belonged on some baby creature. They looked vulnerable.

And I thought, ‘I hate that. I don’t want to look that vulnerable.’

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, sometimes, be in that space, be the small thing held in warm arms, and be comforted. But I didn’t want it all the time, and I didn’t want it to be the thing people saw when they saw me-regardless of what I wanted.

I was hanging out with some of the Final Fantasy spirit folk at this point in time, so I had no shortage of pretty girls to observe. I never really thought the thought in so many words, but I sort of formed an assumption-sexiness is something your body does to you. If your features add up in a certain way you’re ugly and there’s nothing you can do about it; if they add up in another way you’re pretty and there’s nothing you can do about that.

That girl I talked to back then, for instance; my friend in the blue wool cardigan. She’s pretty; by her world’s standards she’s what everyone would think of immediately if someone said ‘pretty’, slim dark-eyed and dark-haired. That’s always there, whenever anyone looks at her. It’s like she’s always in some sense on show. Not that she flaunted herself or anything, or revealed anything much. Her clothing was otherworldly of course, since she was too, but basically it was a cardy and bike shorts and a top no more revealing than the sort every Thulc girl in town was wearing. But her prettiness was always on display, even if her tits weren’t. She was an attractive woman, and people could see that straight out whenever they saw her. Her attitude didn’t have anything to do with it. Didn’t matter whose pants she actually wanted to get into, didn’t matter what she thought about people looking at her. She was on show, and everyone could see. She could have dressed in sackcloth and ashes and she’d still have been pretty, and she’d have gotten a lot of ‘what the fuck?’ comments on top of that.

Of course prettiness didn’t make her a weak person-and anyone who thinks beautiful women have to be weak should go to a dozen worlds I could name, make an observation like that to a hundred deadly and determined ladies. Go on, I dare you-but it did inject a quality into her strength, a kind of defensiveness. Don’t look at me like that-I’ll show you what a pretty woman can do…But that didn’t stop them from looking. Touching, yes. But not from looking.

She was a powerful being and a sexual being. She could offer or withhold as she liked. And she was with folk who respected that she had the choice of it, decent folk. And she dated, and the relationships went their way, and lasted for a while, or not, though sometimes she was turned down, and sometimes she turned other people down, but for the most part she had a pretty good time…

…but that prettiness. That bit of her that was there for anyone to see, a free sample of her. That vulnerability. A bit of her given away before any interaction even started. And yes, with some people she wanted to give that away, there’s one boy I know she wanted to give that to, wanted to give him the sight of her, wanted him to want it-

-but she didn’t get the choice about that bit, and nobody asked.

She was sexy. It was the way her body was. It was a fact that she simply could not get away from.

She didn’t seem to have any problems with this, didn’t even think about it probably. Like I wasn’t consciously thinking about it. But I was noticing. Somewhere, I was noticing.

And time passed, and my hormones kicked in, and I begin to notice something that puzzled me a little. The thing that seemed to make the difference about whether I was attracted to someone or not wasn’t physical. It was…well, it was a whole lot of things, different in every person, but all mental. Mind, I could appreciate physical beauty just fine, but it was just…stuff. Like how a waterfall or a sunset is beautiful. It was when I noticed an interesting mind in a well-formed body that I would start getting interested. And I don’t mean interested in a relationship, I just mean horny! I could not, and still cannot, muster up any attraction for a physically good-looking person who I know nothing about.

Hmm, I thought. Interesting.

Recently I’ve been puzzling this out a bit, and it’s been prompted by noticing a spirit or two(most of my friends are spirits)who seem to do this whole sexiness thing differently to how I saw it.

Spirits who, on pure physicality and according to my tastes at least, are not attractive. Just plain, or even a bit ugly or grotesque.

But I’ve seen them being sexy…It’s strange. I wasn’t turned on myself, but I could see the intention and the power that they could call up, an attitude, a way of moving differently, a look about them that’s just impossible to pin down…It was sexy, though it wasn’t aimed at me, wasn’t meant to be, and didn't register on my internal radars. Does it make sense to say that I could see the sexual power that they had even if it wasn’t one that touched me? And even though they weren’t doing anything overtly sexual, like stripping or whatnot?

I’ve seen them, and for them sexiness isn’t something their bodies do to them. It’s something they do to their bodies. Or with their bodies. And there’s no defensive air, no feeling of vulnerability-though they weren’t always doing it, calling up that power, for someone who they wanted to see them! Sometimes they seemed to just be doing it for the sheer joy of it.

It’s hard to put words round all this. I keep typing and then deleting things, trying to capture the concepts shifting in my head.

It’s just, sexuality always seemed to me to be a sort of vulnerability.

But I’ve read stuff people’ve wrote, about sexuality being power, being empowering. And I never really understood that. Only now I think I start to get some idea of what they meant…

Another lesson in never, ever, ever underestimating Guardians in red

As if getting one life's lesson out of him wasn't enough, another followed on its heels!

...I'll give a little background. For those that don't know him...There's this thing, okay, this relic. A Power item, strong Power. Legendary level. The Master Emerald. And he Guards it. With his life. It's that important, honestly. Important for his world and important to him.

Well...awhile ago I was seething at dinner 'cause Ian was making out like I was stupid. Retarded. It's his favourite insult. We were arguing, and I was furious angry...I wanted so bad to win. Just once, I'd like to! To make him stop saying that stuff about me!

I stayed angry for ages after that. I mean...it's different when some person in town just hurls an insult at you, and you can walk off. When it's your brother making snide snooty comments whenever you see him, and you can't walk away 'cause you're in the same house, and he goes on, and on, and your mother won't shut him up, can't shut him up...so you just have to listen, and you feel so miserable...

Then, in the bath-why is it always in the bath?-I calmed down enough to get partly into ambit again.

And he talked to me.

I can't remember the exact words, but it was something like this.

"Don't you see? You have won.

Look, I guard the Master Emerald. That's why I fight. It doesn't matter how bruised or bloody I am at the end of a fight. It doesn't matter if the other guy is laughing his head off at me. It doesn't matter if I've made myself look like a total idiot, as long as the Master Emerald is safe.

There's always something worth guarding, and you are guarding something. You fight like someone on the defensive. What's your Master Emerald? If it's your sanity, you've won. If it's your ability to talk to spirits, you've won. If it's your creativity, you've won. If it's your life, you've won. None of those are things he can harm or steal. He's lost every battle before he even begins. Nothing he does can make the slightest mark on the Master Emerald.

If your Master Emerald is your pride, it was a false jewel, and needed to be shattered anyway. But I think you're better than that.

I'll tell you what really could destroy your Master Emerald. Your OCD, if you don't get it under control. But you're spending all your energy fighting battles that don't really matter, instead...and trust me, you aren't the first to make that mistake, I know what thereof I speak. Remember how I was tricked into fighting Sonic and Tails, while Robotnik stole up behind me. That's what you're doing now. Fighting things that are really harmless, while the true threat makes a grab for the Emerald."

Of course, all of it is damn true. He's as sharp as his spikes, sometimes.

And knowing it helps. I still get angry and sad, but now I know I can hold on tight, clench my fists, and tell myself 'The Master Emerald is safe'. That helps me get through. It lets me refuse to argue without feeling that I'm losing the fight. It lets me ignore what Ian says. Or my mother. Or her boyfriend.

It helps a lot.

...Thanks, Knux.

Echidna

So Athene directed me to this post; http://takingsteps.blogspot.com/2007/01/seam-of-skin-and-scales.html

Which is something that I’ve read before, but never really understood.

Till now anyway.

It started with-well, you’ll laugh-it started with a game I picked up on a whim and a memory of a glowing review in ONM magazine because I was a bit hungry for the mechanics of turn-based RPG, because I wanted a new challenge, Something to Do.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood.

Never had anything to do with blue hedgehogs and the like before that. And certainly didn’t expect to find a, a character. That’s the only word for it. One of the side characters. Got totally hit from left field. Thwacked between the eyes by a blast of strong personality from this side character, this cartoon red echidna with spikes on his fists.

I was linking before I even knew it, and I didn’t expect that.

So I’m linking, and I’m confused, and I’m turning it over in my head, asking him…why? What’s a person like you doing in a game like this? You’re better than this. You deserve better than a near-sexless ageless anthropomorphic cartoon grotesquerie of a body and a silly frivolous game for a world. Wouldn’t you want a different body? Human and real. Strong and handsome and sexual. Don’t you want a story more serious, a world and a name and a history that better fits your mind?

Don’t you want that?

And I’m linked enough to hear his reply, and he says ‘No.’

Very firmly. And I’m more confused than ever so he elucidates. ‘This is my body, and this is my world. This is my story, mine to me. Do I puzzle you? I’m not under any obligation to change because you think the parts of me don’t match up. I’m happy how I am.’

But people see you as a joke!

‘A joke, a cartoon, let them laugh! Do you think I care? And can you really not see the attraction? Wouldn’t you like to throw the seriousness of humanity to the winds for awhile? I think you’re a tiny bit jealous.’

And he withdrew from the link, leaving me with a lot to think about.

In my head all that day I put two and two together, and I ended up with five-and-a-bit. I’ve come up with some ideas. I think I understand that post now.

After all, Echidna was a monster too.

I am Echidna and I revel in my grotesquerie. It’s about dichotomy; it’s about contradictions; human, animal, real and illustrated, skin and fur, a mammal that lays eggs. It’s about not fitting in any box, because any box would be too small. Don’t you dare cage me; I drip poison, I have spines. Touch me and you’ll hurt.

I am Echidna, and I have my weapons; I have bone spikes on my fists. I use them to carve myself out elbow room. I use them to climb up out of all the boxes. I can fight, and I will fight, to protect my own existence. It’s self defence. I’m not about to let anyone cut off my tail, mutilate me so that I can be better defined. I am defined by me and by God; anyone else can get the fuck away!

I am Echidna, and do I look ridiculous to you? A comic muddle of roles, genders, ages, species-I hear your uneasy laughter. I don’t care if you think I look funny. I have my own brand of dignity. I am King of the cloud islands, and in my kingdom I shall do as I damn well please.

I am Echidna, and yes, I can do sexy. Twilight-purple bedroom eyes, and does it come as a surprise that I can dance like I’ve got emeralds at the meeting of my thighs? And I can do sexless. Naked and unashamed, can you Adam and Eve it? Because love is sweet, and sex is good, but there’s more to life than kissing. I can put sexuality on the shelf; it does not become another trap to define me.

I am Echidna, and this is not feminism because it is not about being female it is not about being male it is about being it is about being whatever I can be it is about being myself having room to stretch myself out to be childish and parentlike and wise and gullible and suspicious and scared and scary and animal and spirit and modern and ancient and very near and oh so far and gregarious and a loner and reserved and loudmouthed and stone and water and fire and ice and male and female and both and neither. I do not have to pick just one.

I am Echidna, monstrous Echidna, and I never have to pick just one.

The Letter to Franziska

(This was originally posted on my now defunct Sygnus blog, which was originally a Discordian cabal headquarters until I got bored of the joke.)

The Cabal of Aeris (un)Risen petered out a long time ago, once people got bored of it. It is the end I expected of it-only fitting really. So this blog has lain vacant. I have decided to revive it as a more conventional blog, a space for me to ramble on. I do get Ideas sometimes, after all.

I decided this after receiving a revelation, In the bathtub, as it happens.

I felt I had to get my thoughts in order so as soon as I was out of the bath I went and wrote a letter to the person who was responsible for the sudden revelation. Unfortunately the Postal Service do not deliver to her address. But it helped me figure things out, to write it, at least.

And since it must be somewhere, it is here.

Franziska von Karma

Somewhere In Germany(Or Possibly Los Angeles)

Another Earth

Eight Years From Now

Dear Franziska

You will probably never read this letter and if you do you will not like its contents. I am from the world where you are part of a game and considered unreal. I do not agree with that assumption. That is not what I am writing about. I am writing about something else.

You get mad a lot. Everyone knows this. And when you get mad you hit people with your whip. Everyone knows that, too. You hit Phoenix Wright when you think he is being stupid in court, and you hit him when you think he is being smart in court and will make you lose the trial. You hit him over and over when he has won a trial and you have lost. You hit the judge when he doesn’t agree with you. You hit witnesses when you don’t like their testimony. You hit Detective Gumshoe when you think he is being stupid or talking about something you think is irrelevant. You hit a lot of people for talking about things you think are irrelevant. You hit people for talking about things you don’t want to hear. You hit people when something bad happens to you, even if they had nothing to do with it, because you are angry and want to take it out on someone. Maybe you even hit your brother. I heard him talking to Phoenix once and he called you a wild mare and grinned. I think he might’ve said something like that to your face before now, and you might’ve hit him for it. I think you really might.

But maybe you never have hit him. Maybe you are angry that I think you might’ve. After all, he is your brother. I know you love him. And he loves you. Maybe you are horrified at the idea you would hit him, like he was an ordinary annoying person. If you haven’t hit him yet, though, I think you will. Someday soon he will say something or do something that gets you so mad you hit him and then afterwards you will be sorry but you won’t be able to take it back once you’ve done it and you will feel guilty about it for the rest of for ever!

But if I wanted to talk about that sort of thing, then there are a lot of things I could write and they would take me ages to list. I could write and write about how you are not a good person. I could write how you will not be able to go on this way without tripping yourself up. I could write about karma. It is in your name, so you should be able to figure it out.

And at the end of it you would probably say, ‘So what? I don’t believe in karma. I am karma. I am punishment.’

(I could quote at you then, though. You don’t care if people are innocent or guilty, you just want to punish them anyway. C.S. Lewis said that to act like that is to volunteer for the post of Satan in the divine scheme and that if you do his work you must be prepared to take his wages. Which I assure you are not good. But you would probably not listen to that either.)

You would say, ‘I know I am not a good person. I don’t need to be or want to be. I am not a wishy-washy, bleeding-heart, goody-goody, foolish weakling like Mr. Phoenix Wright. I am a von Karma. I am fierce and strong. I am perfect. I take what I want and the rest of the world has to obey me.’

And there are so many things wrong with this way of thinking that I cannot even begin to list them, but if you really want to be evil I cannot stop you.

There is one thing, though. You aren’t a strong, fierce, perfect von Karma. Nobody thinks you are either. Absolutely nobody.

Everyone thinks you are the crazy girl with the whip.

They don’t respect you. A lot of people are scared of you. Phoenix and Dick Gumshoe and the Judge and practically every witness you ever called to the stand and lots more people too-they are all scared of you. But when you have gone they laugh at you. They don’t think you’re clever or strong. They think you’re out of control. You don’t come across to people like your dad did. Your dad scared people like anything and made them hate him but they didn’t think he was crazy. They thought he was evil, and they were right too, but they didn’t think he was crazy. That’s because your dad didn’t hit people like you do, in front of everyone, even though it doesn’t help a bit. When your dad got angry he controlled it. He thought about what would be the cleverest and best thing to do in the situation. And then he did that thing, even if it meant not getting instant revenge. The one time he didn’t think, the one time he did a revenge without thinking if it was sensible to do it, he had to spend ages and ages and lots of effort covering it up, and even so it eventually got found out and came back and bit him!

Your dad was evil and very stupid about a lot of things but he was right about controlling anger. If he had let anger rule his mind like you do he would not have gotten anywhere ever.

And hitting people like you do doesn’t just not make people respect you. It doesn’t help you feel any better either. It just makes you feel even angrier, and every time you think about what happened you get angry again, and it eats up your mind and you can’t think about anything except how angry you are.

If you are still reading this, then you are angrily thinking, ‘How do you know?’ The answer is, I know because I was like you.

People would pick on me at school. They did it a lot because I was different. I was maybe one of twenty non-white students in the school of fifteen hundred people. And I was a fantasy geek. So people picked on me. They called names and laughed. I hated it when they laughed. I hated being made fun of. So I hit them.

I didn’t have a whip. I hit people with my fists. Or I threw things at them. I scratched them with my nails. I kept the key to my locker on a longish piece of string, and it was metal and sharper and harder than my nails so I took to scratching people with that. Or I swung the string like a very small mace-and-chain. These were the best weapons I could find. If I had had a whip I would have used it. If I had had a sword or a gun I would have used them too. I wanted to hurt the people that picked on me. I wanted them to be scared of me.

They weren’t scared. They just laughed harder. So it carried on for ages.

My mum and the teachers and everyone kept saying what I have said to you. It makes people laugh at you, they said. It makes you look stupid. I didn’t believe them. I thought that the reason they laughed still was because they were bigger and stronger than me and I had never won a fight. I had never managed to really hurt them. I thought if I could really hurt them then they would be scared of me and respect me and never laugh at me again. I went on thinking that way for years.

Then this week, only a couple of days ago, some people who had picked on me at school found me in town and called names there. That happens every time I come back to my hometown. I don’t go to that school anymore but they remember.

I thought I was going to get mad and scream. Maybe not hit them. I didn’t have anything I could use as a weapon, and I was carrying some fragile stuff. But I thought I would be angry.

I wasn’t. Or, I was, but not hot and horrible angry. I was tired-angry. Tired and annoyed and sad that they should be so unfair. I told them to shut up. I didn’t yell it. And I asked them ‘Do you even know why you’re doing this?’ I didn’t yell that either. They didn’t shut up and they didn’t respond to my question. So I just left. I had been leaving the area anyway. They didn’t follow me.

It wasn’t a fluke, cause a bit later on the same day some different kids started picking on me. And I did the same thing. Told them to shut up, and walked away.

I have never been able to do that before. People have told me to ‘Ignore it’ lots of times but I have never been able to till now. I have always been so angry. Too angry to ignore it. Even when I tried a couple of times I was still so hot with anger and I’d start crying, I’d try not to let the tears show where they could see me but I’d start crying and crying as soon as I was someplace they couldn’t get me. Being angry like that spoiled my life. It spoiled the food I ate and the games I played and the books I read and the music I listened to. I couldn’t ever get away from it.

I wondered what had changed, that I could suddenly ignore things. My mum said I must have had a subconscious epiphany. Then I thought of something. I had been replaying your game. I had been watching the trial of Maya Fey. I had been thinking about Phoenix and Maya. About Pearl Fey. And Miles Edgeworth. And you.

The subconscious mind does a lot that we don’t get informed of. I had been watching you.

I think I decided I don’t want to be you.

You are strong with your whip like I never was with my pitiful makeshift weapons. And people are scared of you like they never were of me. But they still don’t respect you. And behind your back, they laugh at you.

What would happen if you weren’t strong and scary anymore? If you still got angry and tried to attack, but couldn’t do it effectively?

They’d laugh at you to your face. They’d call you names. Spaz, they’d yell at you. Franziska the spaz! Needs locking up! Wild cat!

You’d get angrier and angrier. You’d kick and scream…You’d end up being escorted away by the bailiffs.

And people would say; You have to control your temper, Franziska. No-one will take you seriously unless you learn to control your temper.

And people would say; You can’t appear in court unless you learn to keep a lid on your anger. Maybe you should think of some other career, because while you react like this when you get angry you’ll never be a prosecutor.

And people would say; You’re an intelligent girl, but when you act like this you shame yourself. You act like a little child. We thought you were mature enough to be trusted with an important job, but obviously…

And there would be new insults, too. People would try to press your buttons, so that they could laugh at how angry you got. They would have material.

Your hair is blue. On my Earth, that would be impossible; even in your world, that is uncommon. You wear it cut quite short, for a woman.

You wear unusual clothes.

You are German. When you speak English you have a slight accent.

You have a mole near the corner of your eye. It is not very big, but it is noticeable.

You are an aristocrat. You were born in a mansion. Your family are old-moneyed, with a name that goes back generations.

These are just the small things. There is a big thing too-your father was arrested and imprisoned for murder. And during his career there were rumours that he did not play by the rules. Maybe there are rumours about you too.

But even if your father was free, and still practising law to this day-even if there were no rumours about falsified evidence or the like-the small things would be enough for people to use to make fun of you.

I don’t think the small things are good reasons to pick on you. Not just because it’s unfair. But because they are such small things. They don’t really matter in any way. They are things I note about you that are simply brute facts. They don’t strike me as being in any way funny.

Only if-as I have postulated-your power of fear over people was gone from you, and they began to tease-these small things would be things they would make a meal of. They’d try each of them, and others, till they found something that made you angry, and then they’d keep on needling you with that.

I have a very clear mental image of this happening. I can imagine how it would be. I don’t need to imagine hard. I just have to exchange the classroom corridor for a court lobby. The English village street for a wide sunny Los Angeles boulevard. Their insults. Your screams. Your hopeless attempts at retaliation. Your defiant tears.

When I think of that, it makes me want to hug you, hold you tight. But I know in the same breath that you’d hate to be shown pity.

I know also that your reasons for getting angry-your first reasons-are not good ones, compared to mine. You get mad for no good reason at all. You are cruel, irritable and impatient. You are not actually evil, I think, though you have rather tried to be. You could go either way. Your brother, though, thinks that you will figure things out eventually, and he is both the person who knows you best and a person so pessimistic he outdoes even a friend of mine who I recently heard referred to as Worst Case Senerio.

But, again…Effectively evil people know to restrain their tempers. So do effectively good people. So do simply effective people who don’t care much for great charity or great depravity but get along well enough in the world-‘neutrally aligned people’, in D&D parlance.

So maybe this wild temper of yours is just a basic character flaw. Rather worse than mine. But not insurmountable, surely. It doesn’t mean you are a pitiful person, either. You have so much going for you! You are intelligent, smart enough to pass the bar exam at thirteen years old. You are wealthy and wealthy twice over, both from your aristocrat’s status and your own high-paid career. You are beautiful. You are most certainly not the small, impotent person you feel like when you are in the grip of your own anger.

Franziska, when I saw you I saw my own behaviour magnified. At first I was deceived by the fact that you succeeded in inspiring fear where I failed. Now, though, I see the truth. It doesn’t make the people that picked on me any less deserving of getting punished, because they do deserve it. And it doesn’t mean that what you did was okay, or justified, because it wasn’t. You have a lot of ground to make up. You have a lot of growing up to do.

But I empathise with you, for it is no fun living with rage bubbling in you constantly. And even though they only dare laugh behind your back, they still laugh. You have not gained anyone’s respect…and I think you know that. You’re not stupid. And I pray that you will be able to master that rage-to look at yourself, or at someone like yourself, and realise what you look like to other people. And I am grateful. I am grateful that your example allowed me to examine myself.

As I said at the start of this letter, in all probability you will never read this, or even know it was written in the first place. But maybe. Thus I commend this letter. From my hand-

-to the Fairy Fey(who sometimes walks this world, I know)
-and from the Fairy Fey to the Phoenix bird
-and from the Phoenix bird to the Questing Blade
-and from the Questing Blade to you.

With my love.
Aquila Chrysaetos.

The Tiger and the Prosecutor

Now seems as good a time as any to introduce the world to Tigris.

Tigris is not a figment, not one of the little-spirits. He is me. This is the most important bit, the bit you must understand. He is a part of me that has been around for as long as I have. I have only recently personified him, but he's no newcomer.

He is what is called a Holy Guardian Angel by some.(See Promethea for more info.)Personally I think that's a bit of a misnomer. He doesn't guard me in the sense of stopping bad things from happening to me, he just tries to make sure I'll be strong enough to stand up to bad things myself.

Tigris is always right. This can get annoying sometimes, but that's my problem. He's just and true, fair, and humourous to boot. He is, in short, the best part of me. The goodness on its own, undiluted. That's what his sort of thing is. I like the term 'inner angel', or better yet, 'shoulder angel'. Everyone has one. We don't hear them much. But that's because we don't listen, not because they don't speak.

I think of him as a big old marmaladey-golden saber-toothed tiger, with a very English voice.(The voice, in fact, of the fellow who was reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe on this old book-on-tape thing I had when I was tiny. I remember listening to it in bed, after lights-out...)But this is just a sort of shorthand, a quale. It helps me to personify Tigris like this, is all. It's the image that fits him, in my mind. It's easier to pay attention to him when I think of him as a being in his own right.

It's also easier to identify his opposite number when I personify her.

Her name is Franziska, and she is my shoulder demon. Again, not an actual demon, not an otherworldly being. Just me, in all the worst ways.

Unlike Tigris, her face and name are stolen directly from a character from a video game. Franziska von Karma. An unhappy and almost-unlovable little prosecutor-prodigy who I felt a sort of resonance with.

Franziska is weak and scared and angry about it. She is violent, out of control. Her self-esteem is in negative numbers, and she covers that by making like she's got a disgustingly large amount of pride, and lording it over everyone else. She is lonely and suspicious. She cannot bring herself to trust anyone. She's self-centred, too...can't see outside herself, and hates it. She is stuck in the hell of herself.

She is the voice in my head that is Tigris's opposite number.

She coalesced into an entity shortly after a revelation I had and a letter I wrote because of that revelation.(I shall post that here later; it used to be on my old blog at Sygnus before the site moved and everyone's blogs were axed.)And it's strange.

I don't seem to be able to hate her, now.

Oddly enough, neither does Tigris.

The Ambassador's Turnabout

I spent too much time with the spirits as a kid. I still do.

'Too much' not by my standards, never by my standards, but by the standards of The World At Large. For some reason introverts are frowned upon, particularly introverts that play video games and read fantasy.

These things are my life's blood. They are what makes the difference between living and just existing.(Of course, there's Ash. But she's not always there, through no fault of her own...And the spirits were first.)

Once I desired nothing so much as to leave this world for the world of spirits. Tuatha de Danaan, I called them; the everyoung, the lovely ones, Danu's children. A name borrowed from Celtic mythology.

These days I have things worth living for in this world, old muddy Thulcandra. But still...

...the silent planet doesn't do it for me, really. Too quiet. I want to hear the music of the heavens.

Back then I picked my penname; Ambassador Garnet Leona Alexander. Garnet and Leona from a boy with a gunblade and a girl without a horn, spirit people that I loved. Alexander from the eidolon mighty, defender of men. And Ambassador. Because I hoped to be an ambassador to that world.

Thing is, though, this girl wanted so much to be Tuatha, she got her wish. Yeah, my body's still Milesian...but I've spent too much time hobnobbing with spirits to be totally Milesian. And was I ever Milesian, down in my soul? I am as nervous and uncomfortable and halting with the people of my blood as I am expansive and cheerful and at ease with the little spirits with whom I speak.

(In the context of Thulcandra, within one little world, they used to call that sort of thing 'going native'. They sneered. Maybe some of 'em were jealous.)

Ambassador, I named myself, and ran away to Tir na n'Og, and oh how I hated Thulcandra's soil. Oh, how I hated her people. It was blood hot hate. It was the hate of the smart kid stuck with the mean jocks, taking refuge in pride.(That deadly sin.)It was the hate of a fox fleeing baying hounds. It was the hate of the panther with the collar chafing his neck. Ambassador, I said. But was I?

Ambassador brings part of England to France, part of France to Germany, Germany to America, and so on, you get the drift. Ambassador speaks for his country and brings it to the foreign place. Ambassador has a tiny, tiny bit of his native land to live in, a detached speck, and as soon as he steps out the front door he's Abroad again.

I didn't do that. I didn't want to bring any of Thulcandra into Tir na n'Og. I wanted to purge Thulcandra from myself. Let no speck of it taint the faerie world.

Which was really not fair to any of the parties involved. Thulcandra, Tir na n'Og, or myself.

Anyway. I was no Ambassador. Not then.

But now I look at that pen name, and I think. Maybe it's time I turned it about, flipped the situation on its head and did the (w)right thing by all parties.

Why shouldn't I become Tir na n'Og's Ambassador to Thulcandra?

It is right. I can tell. It is.

But it will be so hard. For an Ambassador is a diplomat. I must be fair and just and polite and understanding with Thulcandra, with the Milesians, with the world and the people who I still have to remind myself not to hate. I will have to make allowances for them when they don't understand me! I am not allowed the luxury of blind hate!

But then, no-one is, ultimately.

This is the right thing to do, and I must do it, and keep reminding myself to do it.

I am Ambassador of the fairy realms to Thulcandra.(Embassy still pending construction.)