20: The Girl who Can - pt.2

(WARNING: This story contains Doctor Who season 7 spoilers, specifically from the first episode, Asylum of the Daleks. Read at your own risk. Unless you don't care. Then don't read at any risk.)

   Oswin spun on her heel, thrusting her whisk forward.

   There was no one there. She could have sworn it was the Doctor. 

   She gripped her whisk tighter, dismayed. She knew what kind of forest this was, and the revelation filled her with dread. 

   Every step she took pressed the ground, releasing vapors into the air - vapors that, when breathed in, caused lifelike hallucinations.

   Just as this thought crossed her mind, a dalek sprung up in front of her. In its harsh, cold voice, it said, "I am not a daaa-lek!"

   Oswin backed up. "No!" she screamed at it. "I know you're not real!" 
   Her back jolted against something hard and cold. She whirled around. Another dalek turned slowly toward her. "Egg-egg-egg-egg-"
   "NO!" shrieked Oswin, and she turned and fled, but daleks continued appearing all around her. She was being hemmed in. There was nowhere to go, nowhere but through the thickening forces of the terrible daleks. She could hear their voices all around her, raised to an desperate, eardrum-bursting pitch. 
   "Save us! Save the daaa-leks!"
   "I am not a daaa-lek!"
   "Exterminate! Exterminaaate!"
   "Rescue me, chin boy, and show me the stars!"
   "I AM HUMAN!" screamed Oswin at the top of her lungs. Her voice broke, and she tasted blood. She kneeled to the ground as the daleks closed in around her, and she braced her arms over her head, sobbing and rocking back and forth, her whisk forgotten on the ground.
   Silence pervaded the forest.
   Oswin let out a sob and looked up. The daleks were gone. Entirely gone.
   She shut her eyes tightly and stayed curled on the ground, trying to find her grasp on reality, on her sanity. She lay there until her sobs were reduced to hiccups. That single phrase continued racing through her head - I am human. I am human. I am not a dalek, I am human.
   But how did she know this was not all a dream?
   And as the thought passed through her mind, the entire forest faded around her.
   "NO!" she screamed, clawing at the earth as it disappeared and she found herself curled up pathetically on her hammock.
   In her spaceship that didn't exist.
   In her head that didn't exist. 
   She was a dalek.
   She screamed and screamed, her voice tearing out of her throat, breaking her. She grabbed the nearest souffle bowl and smashed it on the ground. The pieces skittered across the floor. They weren't real. This wasn't real. She wasn't real. Everything the Doctor said had been true, and he had left her here, left her here to drown and to die in her own insanity. All that was real was the cold shell outside of her, the chains that held her down, the alien hardware and wires that were now where her body and soul used to be. 
   "I HATE YOU!" she roared at the ceiling, at the Daleks, at The Doctor, at herself. She pounded her fists desperately against the wall, creating a dull reverberating sound that hurt her ears. "I AM NOT A DALEK!" Her throat hurt, and the slick taste of blood touched her tongue. 
   She slid down against the wall and lay curled against it, tears running down her face. "I am not a Dalek. . ." she whispered. "I'm Oswin." 
   She found her eyes focused on the shattered pieces of souffle dish on the ground. One small piece had buried itself in her thumb, and she stared at it, barely seeing. Pain. Blood. Wasn't that proof that she was human, that she existed? But it wasn't. She was in a dream world, a place that her mind had created, and her own subconscious had made it as realistic as possible. That was why she had never suspected that nothing was real. Not until The Doctor came, of course.
   Why hadn't he taken her with him?
   Why had he broken her heart, shattered her world, and left her to die?

19: Half - pt.2

   By the time she got to high school, some of her classmates' clocks had run down to mere days or months. Some of them were even at zero, and they sat with their apparent soulmates at lunchtime, blatantly freaking out over each other.
   But Eve sat alone. She didn't really like it and didn't really dislike it. It was just one of those things.
   The general population - with their olive skin, dark brown hair, and nearly black eyes - seemed to be afraid of her, and she couldn't blame them. She had dodged the civilization's constantly recessant genes and received pale skin, light blue eyes, and fiery red hair, as shiny and bright as copper. It had come from her mother. She loved looking like her mother. She just didn't like being different.
   She picked at her sandwich, but she wasn't hungry anymore. She stood up and dumped it into the garbage with disgust. She began walking towards the exit, gaining speed, almost feeling like she was suffocating, and she didn't take a breath in until she reached the cool spring air outside.
   She fled from the lunchroom to her hidden spot, nestled in a corner of the grounds. It was an old wooden bench swing, a rickety wooden structure that threatened to give more splinters than it gave her comfort. But she didn't care. It was her special place, and she didn't believe that it would hurt her.
   She sat down heavily on the bench, not caring if the skirt of her airy floral dress snagged on the old, rough wood. She bent over for a while, catching her breath and enjoying the sun on her back.
   It was a beautifully sunny day, and the overgrown grasses and flowers that were interspersed around the swing waved in the breeze and brushed her legs. But she barely felt it as she stared at her clock. Sometimes she felt a sudden, sharp spurt of pain from it, spasming up her entire arm, as if it had begun to eat her flesh. But today it was normal, painless, average.
   She rolled her eyes and tore her gaze away from the clock, resting her elbows on her knees. The numbers read thirteen years.

18: Normal Ranty Post

   Here I sit in the computer lab, writing idly because I have no ideas but I have to finish these blog posts. Today I have a math test that I think I'll do well on and tomorrow there's a Spanish test and then on Friday there's an AP Bio test and I'm just becoming the queen of run-on sentences over here.

   Next week we have three days off, starting with Wednesday. If I'm not mistaken, I'll be getting some bones ripped violently out of the part that food goes in. In other words, I'm getting teeth pulled. I still have baby molars that are stubbornly not moving to make room for my braces, so it looks like there will be no candy apples at the fair for me this year.

   Ah, yes - the fair. Apparently that's beginning again soon. Like the Taylor Swift song, "Begin Again", which is really pretty even though I thought I wouldn't like her newer music. Ah, well. Once a Swiftie, always a Swiftie.

Just listen to it. <3

Oh, yes, that reminds me - both Ellie Goulding and A Fine Frenzy, two of my favorite musicians, are releasing new albums today. One called Halcyon, and the other Pines. I'd love to listen to them, but I'll wait until Friday because this is a busy week in terms of schoolwork. Maybe I'll go out and buy both of them. 8D

I find my normal ranty posts, such as this one, to be . . . well, boring. They're not as fun to write as stories are. I'm just spitting out randomness. Meh.

Maybe this will be my last normal ranty post for a while. :3 Expect more fiction! Huzzah!

17: Half - pt.1

   Everyone was born with one of the clocks on their wrists.

   She didn't really pay attention to it until the day she turned seven. She had been exploring around in the airy field behind her house, delightfully dirtying herself up to the elbows in soil as she excavated a small, shiny rock from the rich dirt. She clutched it in her palm now as her mother used a warm washcloth to clean all the smeared soil from her skin. She watched as the cloth passed a few times over the thin horizontal bar on the underside of her wrist, where a succession of seven numbers existed with only the last two moving at all. "Mummy, what's this for?" she asked curiously, poking at the timer with a dirt-caked fingernail.

   Her mother didn't reply until the girl's arms were clean. Then she knelt down and smiled at her, bright blue eyes full of light. She took the girl's wrist and smoothed her fingers across the clock. "This, my darling, is meant to count down to the very moment when you will meet your soulmate."

   The girl blinked and looked again at the clock. She didn't see how a bunch of numbers could really tell her anything. "What's that mean?" she questioned innocently.

   The mother smiled again and lifted the little girl into her arms. "You're almost too big for this," she said, and poked her daughter on the nose. She giggled as the mother carried her into the living room and plopped her down on the floral couch. "It's counting down to the exact moment when you will meet a very special person. This person will be the light to your darkness, your other half, like an extension of your soul."

   The little girl didn't quite understand. "But. . . why can't I have my soul tomato now?"

   "It's soulmate, darling," replied the mother with a laugh. "And because all good things are worth waiting for." She rubbed her thumb across her own clock.
    The numbers had set themselves at zero.

16: the girl who can - pt.1

   One moment she had been standing next to the Doctor, and the next she was in the middle of a forest, surrounded by huge trees. She looked down at her vortex manipulator, brow furrowing as she punched at the buttons on her wrist. Nothing happened. She remained standing bewilderedly next to a huge tree, her shoes sinking slightly into the carpet of moss. 

Apparently her vortex manipulator had malfunctioned, shooting her off to a random moment in space and time. She released a sigh of frustration and planted one hand on her hip, staring down at the vortex manipulator with a disapproving expression. Usually, that sort of pose made people do what she wanted, combined with her quick wit and charmingly sweet smile. However, the vortex manipulator remained stubbornly powerless.

With a dejected sigh, Oswin Oswald leaned against the tree next to her, crossing her arms as she took in her surroundings. It was a very open forest, with huge trees, so tall that Oswin couldn't see their tops as she peered upward into the forest canopy. The overcast sky left the forest swimming in a whitewashed haze, but the colors of the forest seemed brighter than they should have been - deep green leaves and fuzzy moss in an almost neon green hue, with the dark mahogany brown that colored most of the tree bark. The forest seemed off somehow - it seemed forebidding and mysterious. She felt like something moved in the corner of her vision, but when she turned toward it, whipping out her trusty whisk as a self-defense mechanism, there was nothing there but the ancient trees, continuing on in succession as far as her eyes could see. She could have sworn that there were shifty forms flitting among the trees, like so many alien shadows bent on scaring her.

She turned back around, then around again, facing a random direction, and began walking. No, wait - she turned around again, raising one eyebrow as she spun on one foot. Then she continued walking, still in a random direction, but a different random direction than the one she had been about to go in a few moments ago. She was the kind of girl who liked to really think about which random direction she was going to walk in. 

Maybe if the vortex manipulator malfunctioned again, it would take her somewhere else. She looked down at the device and randomly pressed the time coordinates button. The device emitted a tiny beep with each press. She entered the coordinates she had been trying to reach before and poked the vortex button, hoping for that familiar itchy stretching feeling and the sudden wind of the time vortex blowing back her hair. But nothing happened, and the air of the forest around her remained perfectly still and eerily silent.

Sitting down at the base of the tree, she pulled the manipulator out of the leather strap on her wrist and searched her utility belt for a little while before finding the mini-sized screwdriver in a pocket with a paperclip and a folded soufflé recipe. She flipped over the manipulator and unscrewed the tiny screws that kept the polished metal cover over the device's inner workings. When all of the screws were out, she stored them safely in a very tiny pocket in her utility belt and pressed on the cover with her thumbs. It slid off, and she blinked in surprise and squinted at the device's innards. They were perfectly fine. She poked at the wires. They were all connected correctly, and there were no sparks or smoke rising from the organs.

Oswin frowned and put the thing back together, then popped it into the leather case on her wrist. It was of no use to her until she could figure out how to fix it. She was usually good at fixing things, but this time the solution eluded her, considering that the insides of the device were perfectly fine. She returned all her tools to her utility belt and then pulled out her whisk, slapping it gently against her palm. She would have liked to sit somewhere and bake a nice soufflé. 

         "Oswin!" called an urgent voice behind her.

15 - A Day In The Life of Seneca Crane's Beard

   I'm sorry, Mrs. W. I am so, so sorry.

   Seneca Crane leaped happily out of bed in a totally realistic way and went to trim his beard. It had to be perfect so that his perfect beard could be perfect. When he poked the shaving cream dispenser button and placed his cupped hands under it, waiting eagerly for the blob of creamy white foam to fall into his palm, he was dismayed to hear a rather ugly grrrrreeeeeeeffffffff noise from the machine. It had run out of shaving cream.
   "WHAT KIND OF CAPITOL IS THIS?!" Screamed Seneca Crane at a nearby Avox. He smashed a plate on the white tile floor and stormed out.

. . . Wow, was I about to write a fanfiction about Seneca Crane's beard? I'm glad that ended quickly.

   Today I got up and decided that I was going to finish reading Unwholly and draw a thing or two and clean my room and do some homework, but then I read Homestuck and watched Mean Girls instead. It was one of those movies where you finish it and think, "What in the world did I just watch?" Now I'm sitting here listening to music from Homestuck.

   This is really pretty and kind of makes me feel sad.

   In the words of Sally Sparrow: "Sad is happy for deep people."

   MORE HOMESTUCK MUSIC. YAY.

 

home

 'Cause they say home is where your heart is set in stone

It's where you go when you're alone,

It's where you go to rest your bones.

It's not just where you lay your head

It's not just where you make your bed

As long as we're together,

Does it matter where we go?

14: Reichenbach Hero

   In no more than 600 words, create an entirely new character who is having an internal battle with themselves whilst sitting on the edge of a 10-story building. As the crowd is forming below, believing this person will jump, what is your character thinking? Are they really thinking about suicide, or are they just thinking?
  
   She liked the view past her converse, the way the bottom of the city looked in the shadow of the sunset. One shoe was untied, and the laces dangled below her foot, reaching down as if straining towards the pavement far below. Maybe they were trying to tell her something.

   There really was nothing comparable to the view from up here. The sun waned over the jagged horizon, casting its fire across the city. There was something beautiful about the orange light glinting off the urban grey metal and glass structures. 

   She wiped away her tears. Yes, beautiful - that's what it was. Beautiful. Everything about the world was so beautiful. She closed her eyes and held her face in her hands for a moment, hiding herself from the cool wind. Her fingers were cold, and she balled them into fists and pressed them into her lap, looking out over the city once again. The cars moving below passed occasionally through narrow bars of orange sunlight, then back into shadow. If she turned and looked at the sky behind her, she could see darkness beginning to creep into the orange and pink hues - a deep, mysterious, bruiselike purple. 

   She took a sip of her water bottle and, in a moment of impulse, tossed the cap out over the empty air. It sailed downward, gaining speed until she could no longer see it against the backdrop of the black pavement.

   She wasn't actually going to jump. This wasn't another Reichenbach Fall. She was steady-minded, never having suffered from any sort of mental illness. She was totally sane. Yes, totally sane. She had only come up here to think.

   There were some people gathering below, though, squinting up at her, pointing. She briefly considering standing up, just to scare them. 

    She thought about things. About what they had said to her, how they had laughed. About how they had screamed at her, had lashed out, sending her running away to hide. And about his face, anguished, calling out her name as her feet carried her away, and then she had found herself up here, crying her eyes out while the sun and the people below watched her with amusement.

   She stood up and moved her toes past the edge of the building, just a little bit, so that they barely jutted out over the empty air. It looked symmetrical, organized. She liked that. 

   She raised her arms so that they were parallel to the wall that she stood on, parallel to the ground. The wind picked up, and she smiled. She felt like she was flying; like an angel about to take off. She could hear people down below screaming as if they were calling to her. She didn't understand why. 

   After all, she had only come up here to think.

   A hand snatched the back of her hoodie.

   "Don't," said the familiar voice, and in that one broken word she could feel all the anguish, all the worry, all the pain. 

   So she let her arms fall to her sides.

   She took a step back from the edge and fell into their arms.

13: INHERIEXCITEMENT.

   The font that I use most often on this blog is called Goudy Old Style. The reason I love it so much is because it's the typeface that my favorite book series, The Inheritance Cycle, is set in. Yes, I'm that big of a fan. No lie. You may have noticed by the whole dragon-themed blog idea or those fanfictions I'm working on about Anwyn the dragon rider.

   Now guess who's coming to a bookstore in my vicinity on October 26? Christopher Paolini. The author of the Inheritance Cycle.

 I AM SO EXCITED I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO I'M SO EXCITED THAT I'M CURRENTLY REJECTING MY AFOREMENTIONED GRAMMAR OBSESSION JUST LOOK AT ME OH MY WORD

   The Inheritance Cycle is my favorite book series because it's what launched me off into this obsession with reading. I liked to read before, but the worlds that I read about never became as real to me as they did when I read the Inheritance Cycle. I found the first book, Eragon, in a secondhand bookstore when I was twelve, and I bought it because I was stricken with a sudden dragon fascination (after seeing Dreamworks' How To Train Your Dragon). I got the second book, Eldest, as well, because I was about to embark on a trip to England with my mom and I figured I would want reading material. Welp, it ended up becoming my favorite across-the-ocean-journey reading material ever, and to this day I still take one of the books with me when I go on a long trip and end up reading it all the way through.

   The Inheritance Cycle has become a part of me more than any other book series ever has. It's what made me love fantasy, and now I write stories about characters who grew up in a world that I didn't invent, I read sci-fi and fantasy more than I read any other genre, and I dream about being the kind of author who makes people feel for my books the way the Inheritance Cycle makes me feel.

   All because I read a book about dragons when I was twelve.

12: You will never meet anyone who is more obsessed with proper grammar than I am

   

   Who mentally corrects the misplaced comma on that sign in Barnes & Noble every time she walks past it? Me.

   Who winces internally at badly-constructed sentences on a college brochure? Me.

   Who gets two pages into a friend's book draft, twitches because of the terrible grammar, grabs a pen, and singlehandedly corrects the entire book? This girl right here. 

    I am such a Grammar Nazi. All of my texts and e-mails and Facebook posts have perfect grammar and syntax. There is nothing that irks me more than when people who have a proper education - such as people in my grade or people who work at Barnes & Noble or the friend who published a book - don't use proper grammar. There is nothing that will drive me more insane. If you want to torture me, place me in a room with a work of fiction that is riddled with grammar errors, and I swear that I will go crazy. I don't know why bad grammar is my biggest pet peeve, but at least it helps in making me a better writer.

   I correct my mom's essays that she writes for her Human Resources course and even her texts and e-mails. My brother asks me to proofread his essays for him. We'll be driving along in the car and I'll point out something and go, "GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT!"  

   Now let's hope that I actually have used proper grammar for all of my other blog posts. If I haven't, then I apologize. You can just leave now because that means that I'm hypocritical and that this entire post has been rendered pointless. 

11: The New Vroengard Chronicles - pt. 2

     He awoke to an odd cracking sound.

   He sat up straight, face lit up with joy even though the room was totally dark. He sat completely still and listened carefully. Yes, there it was again - cracking, followed by a small, sharp squeal. 

   Anwyn leaped out of bed, landing lightly on his feet, and raced over to his desk, enunciating a quick spell that created an orb of soft light - a werelight - over his hand. He went to his knees and bent over the desk, face radiant with hope. The orange and white dragon egg was wobbling slightly, and a few cracks had appeared on the surface. 

   Anwyn grinned, quivering with excitement. A few more tapping sounds came from the egg, and it began to wobble more vigorously than before. It rolled uneasily to the edge of the wooden desktop, and Anwyn gently moved it back to the middle. He gasped in delight as what appeared to be a small, white foot burst from the shell, creating a small explosion of shell bits that rained down onto the desk. There came a small victorious chirp, followed by another more muffled one and a few scratching noises. It was the renewing of life in age-old world; a beautiful dawning of hope. It was the beginning of everything Anwyn had always dreamed of. 

   The foot returned to the recesses of the egg; and in another spot of the shell, another scaly orangish appendage emerged, creating a larger crack that connected with the first and caused a large piece of the shell to fall off.  It left a gaping, dark hole in the shell; but in the center of the abyss, a small form stirred. 

Anwyn sat frozen as, with one final wobble, the egg exploded apart. The baby creature tumbled out of the destroyed shell and flopped onto the desk with a wet squelch. It lay there for a moment, apparently insensate as Anwyn stared at in wonder. 

It was pale orange in color, like the intense light of the early morning sun mixed with a pure snowdrift. It was mostly covered in a viscous clear material that clung to its skin, dulling the brightness of the scales. It had a long, elegant neck and a strong, proportioned body, with a tiny pair of folded membranous wings on its back. Its limbs were spread out on the desk, and its tail was no more than a four inch nub. The beginnings of spikes were evident on the neck and back, while they appeared as mere bumps under the skin on its head, spaced evenly apart.

  Then it raised its tiny head and blinked once at Anwyn, still sprawled out on the desk in its puddle of egg fluid. Its eyes were colored as intense as the hues of a burning flame, made up of endless shades of red, yellow, and orange. As one eye focused on Anwyn, the colors seemed to waver, dancing in the iris like fiery wraiths. They weren't a single, steady hue, like those of the dragon Saphira, which were a constant deep blue. These were infinitely more intense - beautiful in a foreign, mysterious way and multitudes more captivating.

The baby dragon gave a brief, abrupt shake of its head, flinging away some of the clingy liquid. It took one step toward Anwyn, staring at him intently. It stretched its nose toward him, sniffing him. Anwyn bent over it, feeling a fierce protection for it at once. He somehow knew now that there was nothing that would ever be able to separate him from the creature. They had already forged an unbreakable bond, deeper and clearer than anything either had ever known.

Anwyn reached his right hand toward the dragon. It brought its nose forward and gently butted his palm. As soon as they touched, blazing light burst forth from Anwyn's palm. He gasped and reeled backwards as his entire arm was consumed by searing, white-hot pain, causing him to collapse on the floor, screaming. It was cold and hot at the same time, like some sort of poker that had been laid in a paradoxical fire before being stabbed into his skin. 

He gasped and sat up, sweat coating his forehead. The pain had ended just as abruptly as it had begun, leaving behind an annoyingly itchy sensation. The werelight hovered dimly above his head. Anwyn glanced at the baby dragon on the desk, which seemed to be attempting to join him on the floor, walking back and fourth across the edge of the desk and looking anxiously at Anwyn. 

Anwyn forced himself to relax, allowing his breathing  to slow down and even out. Then, with a feeling of finality like the sealing of his fate, he turned his palm over to see the gedwëy ignasia etched there - the shining silver diffused spiral oval that marked him as a dragon rider. It still itched obnoxiously, and Anwyn scraped his palm across the floor in irritation.

There was a small thud as the baby dragon leaped off the desk and landed on the floor a few feet away, squeaking in frustration as it scrabbled around on its back. Smiling, Anwyn picked it up reverently and let it rest in front of him, where it began licking clean its scales. It stretched out its wings to lick them near the base, and the werelight shone through the translucent membrane of the wings as well as the strings of the slimy clear fluid that clung to them. Anwyn stared at it, in awe of the tiny adorable thing. He could hardly imagine that something so small and weak would someday grow to rival the might of the ancient dragons of Old Vroengard. 

After fully cleaning itself, the dragon crawled toward Anwyn and sniffed his fingers. Anwyn smiled and smoothed them over the dragon's leathery head. It closed its eyes and gave a small keen of pleasure, then scrabbled into Anwyn's lap and nestled itself across his legs. Anwyn enclosed his arm around it, creating a cozy alcove. He stroked its belly, where the tough scales grew smaller and softer to create a small, squishy, vulnerable spot near the underside of the dragon's tail. There were no distinguishing marks or organs to reveal the gender of the dragon, but somehow Anwyn knew that it was male. With their minds forever interlinked like they were now, he had somehow detected a small sense of masculinity within the tiny creature.

Soon the dragon was fast asleep in Anwyn's arms, belly exposed to the air while its three-toed paws were curled up cozily. Anwyn stared happily at the creature for a little while before extinguishing the werelight and crawling back into bed, pulling the covers over both him and the dragon. He nestled the little creature right near his chest, nudged it against the pillow, and pulled the blankets up to the base of its neck. 

He didn't fall asleep for a long time. He lay there staring at the dragon via the soft, hazy light of an impotent blue werelight, with his hand enclosed guardingly over its back, looking forward to what the future held for them. 

10: Aster's Journal - Entry 1

(I'm going to make a series of journal entries where I blog from the point of view of the main character from an apocalyptic novel that I'm working on. Woo.)

   I managed to get some food today. I found a well-stocked grocery store in a vague spot of Wisconsin, but it was, of course, filled with rotters. I safely disposed of them all, more or less. One of them came at me with a burst of speed that I haven't seen in a rotter before. It's possible that they could be evolving. It seems improbable - I never believed in evolution anyway - but they've been around for a while now. Surely they've gotten the hang of this whole human consuming thing. Just as I've gotten the hang of this whole rotter slaying thing.

   I won't deny that I'm good at it. Killing rotters, I mean. It just makes me wonder about what life would be like if. . . there weren't rotters. What would I have become talented at then? I would still be in school. Reading Shakespeare and solving math equations all day instead of traveling further and further into the middle of nowhere, killing an endless supply of things that are already dead.

   I would kill for a life like that. Oh, wait - I have. I've killed so many rotters in an effort to get my life back. 

   I have to find some place to sleep. Bye for now.

9: Temperamental Table Flipping

I

can't

think

of

anything

I

have

no

words

ugh.

Blog posts to do. Spanish test tomorrow. AP Bio AP Bio AP STINKING BIO.

The Ponds are dead.

What is an ustedes command, anyways?

Life. 

Life.

Let's hope I can make this ranty post at least two hundred words long.

STUFF THAT HAS HAPPENED THAT IS GOOD:

- I saw my cousins. 

- I drank some white hot chocolate.

- I'm planning to order those shoes that Oswin wore in Asylum of the Daleks.

- The Ponds are dead. What am I even doing making a happy list.

- The Mark of Athena comes out tomorrow.

- Halcyon and Pines are also coming out soon.

- Four more days 'till the weekend.

- Four

- More

- Days

- Nanowrimo starts next month.

- That gif of the Alan Rickman table flipping is really bothering me with its freezy tendencies. 

- I'll just stop making a happy list now.

Homestuck is very cool. I like Homestuck. I think some Homestuck fanfictions might be in order soon.

I wish I could spend all day doing art. Writing and drawing and taking photos instead of working out math equations and scurrying from class to class and repeatedly headdesking over AP Bio. That would be wonderful. Just leave me in my room all day so I can sit there and create things. 

I think I'll go to bed now. I'm flunking tomorrow's Spanish test. Woo.

8: Sonnets - pt.2

   She woke up nestled among a cocoon of cozy blankets, her head resting on a soft pillow.  She sat up in surprise and looked around the room, her eyes wide. It was too dark to see much, but she could make out bright yellow light from the streetlights outside illuminating the thin curtains that covered the nearby window. Sounds of the city drifted in through the glass. 

She looked down at herself. She was wearing a pair of soft button-down pajamas. She tore the blankets away and looked at her feet. They were covered by a thick pair of clean socks. How did that happen? Who had done this to her?

Across from her bed was a small, dark hallway, leading to several doors and then turning away from her line of sight. She continued looking around the room. When her eyes fell on the man, she scooted back towards the headboard, eyes wide, and pulled the blankets up around her shoulders. It suddenly came back to her - he had come up to her in the rain. He had acknowledged her sad existence, most likely to take advantage of her. She began to panic, eyes wide as she looked at him.

He was asleep on what appeared to be four chairs lined up together, with a fluffy navy blue blanket draped over his body. Under his head was a fat brown suede pillow. One of his arms had fallen and his fingers were just brushing the carpet. His hair, holding a slightly golden sheen, gleamed dully in the window's faint yellow light. She looked at his face. His eyelids were completely still. He looked so young - like more of a boy than a man.

He terrified her.

She clutched the blankets tightly to her chest and moved to the corner of the bed, as far away from him as she could get. If there was one thing she knew, it was that males were never, ever to be trusted. 

She had to get out.

She tossed the blankets aside, feeling exposed, and stepped out of the bed. A small wave of dizziness hit her. She grabbed the edge of the bed and stood there for a moment, eyes shut tightly as the onslaught of nausea caused her to rock back and forth, like a tree caught in a gale.

She moved backward and something hard struck her in the small of her back. Pain exploded across her spine. She went down with a crash, slumping against the bedside table that she had run into. The vase of flowers on the table toppled and shattered as it hit the carpet, a small puddle of water inching away from the site.

She watched his dark form leap up, his body cutting across the soft yellow light from outside. He turned and saw her on the ground, and for a moment she could see his eyes lit by the streetlight - terrifyingly bright and still. Then he came toward her.

She moved backwards, away from him, but she was wedged in a corner. He crouched down slowly in front of her and lifted a hand. "Are you alright?" he asked softly, moving his hand toward her.

"No!" she screamed, pressing her body against the bedside table, which moved a few inches over from the force. "Don't touch me!" Her voice broke mid-sentence, and she felt tears filling her eyes. She silently cursed herself for always being so weak and clueless. 

"I won't hurt you," said the boy. "I promise." Though his voice sounded pleading and sincere, she couldn't see his face through the stuffy dark air. 

"Why am I here?" the girl screamed in his face, tears spilling down her cheeks. She hated the way his body seemed to hover near hers, hated the subtle smell of pleasant pine that pervaded the air around him. She placed a hand on his chest and insistently shoved him backwards, wishing she could get away, far away, soar away - 

He took hold of both of her wrists, and she loosed a scream loud enough to raise the dead. She wrenched her arm out of his grip and smacked him in the face with the heel of her hand, squirming away. But when she brought her hand back down on the carpet, she felt the crunch of glass under her fingers and gasped as sharp pain roared across her palm. She had planted her hand right on top of the shattered glass vase.

She began to sob without restraint, curling up against the wall as she cradled her mangled hand. Small droplets of blood began to drip onto her knees, and tiny glass pieces gleamed among the bloodied flesh of her fingers, but she didn't care. She didn't care about anything anymore. 

A light went on somewhere in the room, but she continued to cry, emptying all of her broken self out to the world. Eventually her sobs died away into sad hiccups, and she sat with her head resting against her knees, hand still bleeding. She took a few deep, uneven breaths, hating the familiar feeling of dried tears on her face.

"Please, let me help you with that," said the boy. She looked up to find him sitting about a foot away, holding what appeared to be a small medical kit. She realized with slight embarrassment that he had been sitting there the whole time. 

A soft lamp in the corner lit up his features with a gentle radiance. He had a kind face, she realized, and her heart seemed to lurch a little. A crown of curly brown hair topped his head and glinted a little in the light. It just overcame the tips of his ears. He had a rather angular face, with a pointed chin and a slight shadow below his cheekbones. Then there were his eyes, blue and full of an unusual sort of gentleness. She looked at them and everything she had doubted about him seemed to fall away - as if she had shaken off what she had assumed about him, the things that were gray and dark and unkind, to find a constellation of glittering crystals at the bottom of the pan - a rare, beautiful element trapped in exposed bedrock, washed there by a storm upstream.

She looked away awkwardly, still not allowing him to see to her hand. "I don't trust you," she whispered frankly, refusing to meet his eyes now. She wanted to trust him, him and his starry kind eyes. But she couldn't trust anyone anymore.

He stayed silent for a little while. Then, in a quiet, melodious voice, he said, "But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restored and sorrows end."

She looked at him sharply, and he watched her with a faint smile on his lips. Something awoke within her, something that had been dormant and cold within her battered soul for a very long time.  

    Something that felt like hope. 

He reached out his hand to her.

She took it. 

The Proof of Your Love

I saw this band at Winterjam in January and loved them and bought their album and freaked out over how awesome it was and then forgot about it. Until this video, which uses my favorite song off the album. I think it's the best music video for a contemporary Christian song I've ever seen.

7: Plot Generator Challenge - Pt. 1

Said the Script Frenzy plot generator: At a Star Trek convention, a recent high school dropout must find a way back home.

Meh. Star Trek is the only geeky thing I haven't attempted to obsess over yet.

Said the Script Frenzy plot generator: After the Third World War, a skateboarder with an attitude falls for two very different people. 

No. No love triangles. LOVE TRIANGLES ARE THE SPAWN OF HADES NDSAJDKSLADNJSLDA *internally combusts*

Said the Script Frenzy plot generator: On the run from a sentient typewriter, a hyperactive poodle serves the homeless at a soup kitchen.

. . .

Challenge accepted.

   Glenna was not able to pick up the writing utensil due to the two fat pink objects that enclosed her hands. She pinched the stuffed paws together, attempting to squeeze the slender object between their stifling fluffiness. For a moment, she was victorious, the thin evasive wooden thing clenched in her paws.  She grinned brightly and moved her hands upward. The yellow pencil slipped out of her grip and clattered back onto the tabletop.

   "Chessie, can you - oh, never mind," said Glenna, and yanked off one of the large stuffed paws by clasping it between her knees. She removed the other in the same manner and tossed them both onto the table, flexing her fingers and shaking the long, floppy pink ears out of her face. She popped her knuckles and stretched her arms, nearly hitting a nearby boy who had chocolate icing smeared over his face and a pointed party hat atop his rumpled blonde hair.

   Chessie, Glenna's nine-year-old sister, was oblivious to Glenna's previous predicament as she pulled the tissue paper out of a sparkly rainbow gift bag.

   Glenna smiled as Chessie squealed at the contents of the bag. It was a mutant pukey rainbow pony or something. The girl at Chessie's elbow reached for it eagerly. "Ooh! Let me see!" she squeaked, fingers stretched toward the gift. Her exclamation of excitement was almost drowned out among the other exclamations of excitement in the place.

   It was the day of Chessie's ninth birthday, and Glenna's family was celebrating by holding a party at Stomp N' Shout, only the loudest, most obnoxious establishment in the city or possibly the state or possibly the country or possibly the world. It was basically a place filled with towering labyrinthine structures made of mesh and rubber; difficult games that spewed tickets allowing the purchasing of cheap, overpriced prizes like plastic snowglobes and sticky hands; underpaid employees who sauntered around in hot animal costumes and distributed hugs among the sweaty children. Kids would dash through these mazelike structures, smack their faces on the padded implements, and run crying to their mothers; kids would play these games, not have enough tickets for the cheap toy that they wanted - or otherwise break it soon after it was attained - and run crying to their mothers; kids would somehow get frightened by the workers in the sweaty animal costumes and would run crying to their mothers. Overall, it was the kind of place where Glenna did not want to spend her Saturday, but it was her little sister's birthday after all. She had agreed to dress up as a pink poodle in compliance with the Parisian theme that Chessie had requested after developing a certain fascination with all things French. It had taken a lot of wheedling on the part of Glenna's parents to get her to agree with this. She had finally relented under the promise of a twenty-dollar bill.

  That was how Glenna ended up wearing a pink poodle costume - complete with a black triangular nose painted over her own - and standing amidst a bunch of screaming children who were getting hyper off slices of the sugary, over-icinged Eiffel Tower-shaped cake that Glenna's parents had ordered. They both sat on either side of Chessie, keeping her from getting tackled and/or sat on and/or puked on by any of the other children, as well as disposing of the trash that was produced by her gifts.

  After glancing at her watch, Glenna leaned toward her parents. "Mom, dad, I'm gonna go. I've gotta be at the soup kitchen by three thirty."

  They both glanced up at Glenna, smiling. "Alright, darling," said her mom, who then gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. "Stay safe."

   Glenna hugged Chessie. "Happy birthday, little sis!" she smiled. Chessie giggled and shoved the mutant pukey rainbow pony at her.

   Making her escape, Glenna grabbed her tote bag - the one with the screenprint of Rose Lalonde from Homestuck - that contained her change of clothes and searched out the bathroom, using the confined space of a stall to awkwardly wiggle out of the poodle costume and into some normal clothing.

   Coming out of the stall, Glenna washed the dark makeup off her nose with some warm water from the sink and then stood up to admire her reflection. Dark hair, sliced in an angled way that framed her face and fell no further than past the middle of her neck. Green-grey eyes lined lightly by the purple eyeshadow that she liked. A smattering of freckles across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose.

   She turned away and left the bathroom, pulling the tote bag higher up on her shoulder as she pushed through throngs of excited kids. The door was just in out of reach - the one sight that stood as a beacon of hope to all in the vicinity who were over the age of twelve. She pushed out into the cold afternoon air and pulled up the hood on her jacket, reveling in the freshness of the autumn day.

   She sought out her grape-colored Schwinn in the corner of the parking lot where she had left it. Grabbing on to the familiar white handles, she hopped onto the seat and pedaled away. The soup kitchen where she volunteered wasn't far away, and she enjoyed the feeling of the fall air numbing her cheeks and fingers.

6: Sonnets - pt. 1

Her run-down Toyota Corolla broke down in the middle of the road. As it slowed to a stop, she listened to the hum of the engine seeping away into nothing, becoming overtaken by the constant drumming of rain on the vehicle. She sat and stared at the dashboard, at the monotonous pounding of water on the windshield. The purple sleeves of her hoodie were soft against her palms.

   She opened the car door and stepped out into the downpour. Immediately the water soaked her hair and skin, her entire self, her entire body and soul. She stood and allowed the torrent to overtake her until she was cold to the bone, the waterlogged hoodie not helping her now. Her hair, which was usually blonde, lay in tangled mousy strands falling down her shoulders, darkened to a dull brown by the rain. The car had stopped in the city, stranding her in a maze of alleys and backstreets. 

   She didn't look back at the car as she walked away. She didn't want it. She didn't want anything that this life had given her.

   She trudged forward aimlessly, her body soaking wet. Her hair was plastered to her skin as she walked through a dark alleyway and came out on an empty street. The world seemed to be a dull shade of blue, the clouds colored in a shady azure like bruised skin, casting a bluish shadow on the rainy earth and on all of its inhabitants, on all of their despairing hearts.

   She sat down on the ground, crossing her legs like she used to when she was a little girl. She felt the rain pounding down on her back and her head, a driving force that tried and tried to break her. It seemed odd that something as strong and powerful as the rain couldn't do it, when everything else could. 

   Her stomach churned. She felt dizzy and faint suddenly. She closed her eyes and listened to the rain as it washed away the dirt and grime on the streets. It should have washed her away with it. Maybe that was her purpose in life - to be washed away by the rain. It seemed pleasant enough in contrast to everything else that she knew. 

   She kept her eyes closed as she heard a car drive by, threatening to splash her with a huge torrent of water. The sound faded away, and she returned to her thoughts, nausea overcoming her with brutal suddenness. There was a sound like a familiar click - a car door opening and closing. The sound refracted and stretched in her mind as she struggled not to sink into darkness. She knew she was about to faint. She barely heard the soft pat-pat of footsteps approaching her. 

   "Are you alright?" asked a warm voice in front of her. She opened her eyes dizzily. There was a man crouching in front of her, watching her with concerned eyes. She stared at him, trying to process what she was seeing. His image spun in front of her. She could make out a blob of dark hair that was curling at the ends and a pair of wide grey eyes, focused on hers. Overall he looked very wet.

   "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past. . . ," she murmured incoherently.

    The man squinted at her and placed a hand on her forehead. She flinched at his touch, every nerve in her body suddenly charged. She wanted to lash out, but she wasn't feeling right, and in an attempt to shove him away her hand merely twitched in her lap. 

   "I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought. . . ," she whispered breathlessly, and tipped to the side. Gentle hands caught her before her head hit the rain-soaked pavement, but she was already gone.

5: an abundance of doctors

    So we're going on a field trip tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. Woot.
I'm trying to write this blog post, but I feel very uninspired. I'd rather be at home. In bed. Asleep.
I like sleep.

Field trips are cool, and so are bowties.

I tried to write a poem for this blog yesterday, but I had Amelia by Matthew Perryman Jones (scroll down to find that song down there VVV) stuck in my head, so the poem came out with words and a rhythm similar to that of the song. #Poet fail. 
    I have a hard time writing poetry. I mean, at least poetry that has some kind of vague rhythm or rhyme scheme. I like free verse much better. And I'd rather write prose anyday. Not only that, but I have pretty much no ideas. Although I did get an idea for a story from watching The Backyardigans the other day, which was my favorite show from grade two to grade five. 
    New episode of Doctor Who on Saturday. This one's called A Town Called Mercy. Apparently the Doctor's going to the old west . . . ? And Amy shoots stuff. And there's a cyborg cowboy person.   
    I should stop talking about Doctor Who. Moving on.
    Me and my brother recently switched rooms. Now mine is smaller, and I love it. It's very cozy. My bed is against the wall, next to a window, and there's a small bookshelf across from it. I have lots of lamps everywhere (including the Doctor Who lamp that my wonderful mom got me from FYE. Thanks, Mom!), because I like soft light and I think the overhead light is a little bit too harsh. There's a Doctor Who poster over my bed, and some little TARDIS string lights across those wooden planks at the top of the bed where you hang a canopy. Gosh, if I continue in this direction, my room will be completely covered in Doctor Who stuff. 
    Looks like I'm failing at not talking about Doctor Who. Ah, well. Let's put in a gif for good measure. 

Bye!

Matt Smith's American accent

Matt Smith's American accent.

All arguments are invalid.

4: here's a rant for ya

    Here's a thing that I dislike: I don't think that a person's intelligence should be judged based on how they do in school. I also don't think they should be judged for the grades they get, in either direction. 

     We all know a hardworking smart kid. That kid who always gets A's, always has facts to spew in any situation, and does nothing else but study. And there's also another type of kid - the kind that blows off their work to do other things. They don't care about school so much. Either of those types - if that's how you roll, that's okay.

      A person's personality can vary greatly when it comes to the grades they make, and I don't think it should be equated with your grades. All A students are not humongously brilliant, and all D students are not humongously stupid. Some kids work and study as hard as they can, but can only manage C's. Some barely even do any schoolwork, but still get A's. Stereotypes are not accurate. And going beyond that, what about the shy kids or outgoing kids? Shy kids aren't always shy. Outgoing kids aren't always outgoing. And I just dislike how a person's grades and the way they act in school can give them labels and make them one-dimensional. There's so much more to every person.