I don’t remember — mostly because by the time I was fully cognizant these customs were things of the past — whether it’s a Portuguese tradition (or if it was a family tradition) to set off Chinese Lanterns at New Years, or if it was something done (only?) at the feast of St. John’s.
I do remember dad spending days designing the lanterns and the paper used and the fuel, so that they would burn and fly for a maximum time. (I don’t remember other instances of dad’s engineer mind growing up, though I suppose he was using it at work.) I remember his picking the paper and the colors and everything for maximum effect. (Other men made them of newspaper, and whichever fuel. But you know, my family — shocking, I guess! — tends to overthink things.) And I remember being little and very excited for this. Very excited too for “The children’s calendar”, which was published every year as a supplement of a newspaper that no longer exists. In it they printed a picture per page, and a verse underneath, the verse usually pertaining to some tradition or being a traditional rhyme. (Which btw is a great way to pass history onto kids. Kids love doggerel. I now want to do a USAIAN children’s calendar and December will have some doggerel rhyme about crossing a frozen river to slit throats on Christmas morning.)
Looking back, how technology has changed over my lifetime and what was impossible or very expensive then and is cheap and easy now is dizzying. For instance, that calendar was printed on newsprint, and left it to the parents to cut out each page, glue it to stronger paper or cardboard, and then put a string in to hang. (Yes, I do realize in the US at the same time, they likely would have given a free little calendar, whether glossy or not not sure. But Portugal is consistently 20 years behind the times.)
Anyway, I really anticipated the lighting of the balloon, though I never saw it beyond the lighting and climbing, but it made dad excited and happy and he’d track it as far as binoculars allowed.
Of course sometimes those balloons — fortunately not ours — would land somewhere out of sight of the launcher, on a house or a woods, and burn it down. (Which I suspect is why the custom no longer happens.)
The longer I live the more all my actions seems like that: you plan and work the best you can to make it the best you can, but in the end, for all you know, one of your actions designed for quite a different purpose, will land on someone else, and burn everything they own. Or set things on a course to burn down the world.
You can’t know. Learning to forgive yourself if that happens, is the hardest thing in the world. But if you don’t learn, you never do anything.
So we come to the end of 2020-won, which runs together in my head with its parent year. That I know of — and of course, you can’t fully know — I didn’t burn anyone’s house down.
Was it a good year? Well…. It was a confusing whirlwind of a year. I lost a batch of friends I couldn’t afford to lose, among them L. Neil Smith a loss that cut deep. Some of those I lost were surprise/sudden, like Rick Boatright and Paul Bisdorf. I’m still a little stunned and keep forgetting they are gone. In fact, part of the issue is that the list from these two years is so long that I always forget someone, and then it hurts anew.
I didn’t get nearly as much writing done as I wanted to, but we did manage to find a house, buy it, and are now fully moved in. We’re not unpacked, but it’s proceeding. Annoyingly, I can’t unpack and write at the same time, so both are being annoyingly slow. We didn’t manage to finish getting the house in CO sold, and might need to have some stuff done to it. But we have a plan and dates.
I had a Gofundme, which shocked heck out of me with its results, but this is good as it both makes it so I’m not going insane over how much the house in CO is costing until it sells and for the first time in my entire career has made it possible for me to invest in my writing. (This was not — Mr. IRS man who might be reading this — the purpose of the Gofundme, and nothing was promised those who contributed. But by going over, it had that happy result.) So I’ve hired an editor, and discovered that this for the first time in indie publishing, gives me an external incentive to deliver on time. So Monday Bowl of Red is going to go to the editor. (And will not go by my betas, because it’s so late.) However, the second of Deep Pink (PROBABLY called Deep Water) will go to betas next week, probably Friday or Saturday, G-d willing and the creek not rising.
The editor will get me Darkship Thieves, newly edited, tomorrow, and it will be re-issued or at least go up for pre-order sometime this week.
To that purpose, I’ve purchased a new formatting program, and also what I hope will be a means to sell e-arcs (Not really, but to do a limited-time sale to my fans and those who subscribe to my newsletter (see the little button for Schrodinger’s path on the right side of the screen) which bypasses Amazon and can offer it in various formats (except paper, that will be Amazon) before it goes up for sale on Amazon.
For various reasons, if you have no objections to Amazon and read on Kindle, I’d still prefer you purchase there, but I don’t want to go wide (yet) and I don’t want to miss sales because you’re just not in the Amazon machine.
Other stuff was purchased, because, you know, I’m just starting out as an indie — fortunately no danger of getting stale, when my job has changed completely in the last couple of years — and I need to go all in. All I’ve been doing so far is dipping my toes, and that’s never enough.
Anyway, I’d hoped to be able to test it this week with a couple of short stories, but the unpacking and finalizing of getting things setup in this house (The Coffee SHRINE! but also other things. Like would you believe we had the baseboards removed to install flooring, and have not put a single one int? Some of that happens on Wednesday (Well, Monday I’m sending book to editor, and I have Tuesday penciled in to sleep or run away with a local fan-becoming-a-friend, depending on weather.) But we’re taking it a day at a time, and I’m orienting to write a lot, because that’s what feels like I should be doing.) and other last minute things kind of stopped that cold. Oh, yeah, and all the tools and stuff come with a learning curve. So, I guess I’m going to be writing and going back to school virtually at least.
In case you wonder, no the boxes from Sarah’s garage aren’t forgotten. Younger son has unpacked them, catalogued them and has made up spread sheets. They should happen late Jan or early February.
Anyway, that’s the work side. Not sure about the other stuff, but I’m going to try really hard to finish books that are started and get them out there. There’s a chance it will work, because I don’t want to disrespect my editor’s time. So, there will be more or less, roughly, in order: Bowl of Red (Shifters), Deep Water (Magis), A Well Inlaid Death (Dyce Dare), Rhodes to Hell (Rhodes), Winter Prince (Seasons of war in Schrodinger world universe), The long Purr goodbye (guardian-cats), Hacking the Storm (Earth Revolution-Darkships), Fairy Ring (Magis), Darkship Defiance, Cross Rhodes, Spring Uprising (Seasons of War), The cat Who Came Uptown (guardian-cats), Chalked Outline (Dyce Dare).
And so on, and so forth. I just want to get these crazy people off my brain. Started but not sure where to put them, there’s a multiverse thing called Mirrorplay (The one that starts with “Jump, the Mirror said.” A …. cozy science fiction with someone who much resembles Dyce — called Alien Hunter. An orphan kitten’s mystery. A sword and sandal epic, and a six book series starting with No Man’s Land and ending with Earthman’s Son.
And now you know why I hired an editor. And why I’m prioritizing writing.
Also there will be the Odd fairytales book, which I wanted to get out before Christmas, but foundered on the shoals of “I can’t find anything, because my life is packed.” Well, it’s a little better now, and I have hopes of getting that out in January. (It’s done and edited. It’s just entering a couple of last minute changes and formatting for release in paper and e.)
Anyway, hopefully whatever else 2022 (Yes, I know, it’s 2020 Too) brings, I will get further along on this list that has been growing for something like 10 years while I struggled with health and other things.
That’s work. On the family/personal side, other than losing so many friends this year and still being saddled with double mortgage, the year wasn’t bad. The entire family is alive, relatively well, and working. Dan and I need to get in better shape this year, and lose some weight. On the edge of aging, improving health can make a big difference. And most of our friends and relatives are still alive, including the ones we thought were gonners at some point this year (you know who you are.)
Some things turned out way better this year than we had any right to expect: the house we bought after more or less 2 weekends in this town (well, we visited friends here) turned out to be in a place we like, near things we like to do. It needed a little more cosmetic improvement than we’d been aiming for, but that’s life. There’s a very good chance we’ll enjoy living in this place long term.
Will our balloon crash this year, and burn someone’s house? It’s possible. Will someone’s balloon crash and burn our house? It’s possible. You really can’t make sure you are safe from that.
All you can do is do your best and position yourself as best you can so that you can survive. (Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.)
On the blog level: Hey, we’re still here. Better than I expected at the end of last year. (Raises champagne glass.)
There will be no post tomorrow (because I’m going head down and writing like the end of the world is coming, so I can get this to editor by Monday and it will make sense and not be written in Martian. Mostly because I don’t read Martian. And neither does my editor.
Everyone waiting for me to read something/answer something, feel free to poke about once a week, because I’m kind of buried, and things tend to get lost when I’m buried.
Until Jan. 2nd.
Let’s go into the New Year full hope and energy and face whatever comes the best we can. Be as determined as Havey in pursuit of pets. (Yes, he’s sitting on my lap as I write this. And won’t move.)
Even before we moved to this house, right after I first saw it, I had this idea for a coffee… thing.
You see, the kitchen in this house is tiny and cramped. The emphasis is on the cramped. It might actually not be that tiny, but I cook a lot, and I’m used to a massive kitchen.
We knew we wouldn’t be able to eat in there. That’s fine. It has a dining room. And then I thought “I can get more room on the counters, if I move the coffee making/breakfast bar to the dining room.
As the idea evolved it threatened to become a coffee shrine. I was going to get coffee sacks and put them on the counter part, and then epoxy them on. And on the back part, I was going to put a series of repurposed drawers, now with coffee advertisements on the back.
And…
And we’re at a time of a year where epoxying in the workshop is asking for trouble. And I don’t have the time to paint the adverts on the back of the drawers. Also the used drawers I could find looked…. a little funny. No matter what I did to them.
And see, I plan to feed the cats underneath the breakfast station (One way or another it’s been like that for all our houses, and the current bosses resent not having their breakfast stuff near mine, so they can harass me for food before I eat.)
Yesterday the restaurant we went to for anniversary dinner was right next to Hobby Lobby (A massive hobby lobby) and I asked husband to let me go in for twenty minutes.
I wandered the isles not sure what I was looking for but sure I’d know it if I saw it.
The mini crates were 70% off. And there were reproduction old-fashioned (and old looking) wallpaper books) and….
So, today at 10 am I was going to assemble the coffee thing, then write.
Well, as it happened, I was going to assemble the bottom of the coffee thing.
But I didn’t stop.
Husband came in as I was (of course, look, I’m not stupid. Or at least not completely stupid) attaching it to the wall and said “What the heck?”
I explained. At which point he laughed and started singing Bob the Builder.
…. At first in my head I saw Sponge Bob Squarepants. And I thought he was telling me I was high.
Well, I’m not, but a writer in the grip of an inspiration is always a little peculiar. Even when the inspiration is for a coffee… thing. And my coffee thing is ALSO a little peculiar. So, I could understand if he thought so.
We are sitting at a table in a bookstore cafe. Between us, my daughter looks at a book on ocean mammals. There is espresso growing tepid on the table.
“No,” she agrees.
“They don’t have our family history,” I say.
“No,” she says.
“And it’s because of our family history,” I say.
Her laugh is without mirth. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” I say. “No, don’t be. I’m glad. I’d rather know. I’d rather know to fear the state. I’d rather know how easy it is. Once you start saying that someone has too much, and other people deserve it instead. Once you give someone the power to decide that. They came for the rich, and I said nothing. But eventually, they come for all of us.”
“Yes,” she says.
Between us there is a house in Cuba that once belonged to my family and the tanks that separated them from it. Between us is the exile that drove my grandparents to Mexico, penniless, and the abject poverty that taught my mother what it was to weep outside a bakery because my grandfather couldn’t afford a loaf of bread.
Between us is history, and precedent. I can taste it in my mouth like ashes.
“You are calm today,” I say.
“Más se perdío en Cuba,” she says, philosophically.
I stare at her.
“You didn’t understand?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “I did. ‘More was lost in Cuba.’ ”
“Yes,” she says. And adds, “That is not a Cuban saying. A Spanish one, from the 1800s, when they lost Cuba as a colony. It is to say… ‘well, worse has happened.’ ”
I say, “This is not a colony we’re talking about losing.”
We finish our coffee and she asks me what I will do.
“What I always do,” I say. “Make art. And remember.”
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo,please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months(unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*
An unlikely assassin. An impossible mission. An entire city perched on a dangerous secret. Amber Chesterfield is untagged. Unlike most Korpora citizens, Amber does not have a chip implanted in her brain. Her thoughts are unmonitored. Her motives go undetected. And the government desperately needs a human like her… To assassinate the most powerful Sumrect in a thousand years, Ansel Cassadian. When a group of highly trained government officials kidnaps her and threatens to kill her family, she has no choice but to accept the impossible mission. With the help of Roy, a human agent well-versed in Sumrectian magic and technology, Amber secures a position as Ansel’s assistant—a position that allows her to get up close and personal with her target. Too close. As Amber finds herself falling for the Sumrect she must kill, she uncovers a sinister secret the government has been hiding from its programmed citizens… And the power to defeat the greatest evil her world has ever seen. But can she succeed without losing the ones she loves most?
The Blood of Belua takes place twenty years before The Eye of Elektron and may be read before book 1 of the series. If you like action-packed and fast-paced fantasy with a hint of romance, then you will enjoy The Blood of Belua, book 2 of The Sumrectian Series. Scroll up and take the dive today!
For untold generations, the peoples of the Qaehl have prospered—trading and warring as they expanded across the great desert. Mighty city-states rise unassailable above the sands, centers of commerce in a great web of humanity. Messengers and nomads, tradesmen and bandits, cross the burning wastes with each rising of the sun.
A change is coming. Strange creatures have been sighted in the deep desert. Rumors whisper of horrors begotten out of legend. But there is yet hope: a brave courier, an innocent young dancer, a compassionate warrior – each holding a fragment of the truth, each seeking the future. Each adrift in the desert, trying to survive the advent of ruin.
AN ENTIRE KINGDOM BUILT AROUND A SUPERNATURAL NEED FOR JUSTICE, ENFORCED BY THE WILD HUNT AND THE HOUNDS OF HELL.
What would you do if you blundered into a strange world, where all around you was the familiar landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, but the inhabitants were the long-lived fae, and you the only human?
George Talbot Traherne stumbles across the murdered huntsman of the Wild Hunt, and is drafted into finding out who did it. Oh, and assigned the task of taking the huntsman’s place with the Hounds of Hell, whether he wants the job or not.
The antlered god Cernunnos is the sponsor of this kingdom, and he requires its king to conduct the annual hunt for justice in pursuit of an evil criminal, or else lose his right to the kingship, and possibly end up hunted himself.
Success is far from guaranteed, and no human has held the post. George discovers his own blood links to the fae king, and he’s determined to try. But Cernunnos himself has a personal role to play, and George will have to sort out just why he’s the one who’s been chosen for the task.
And whether he has any chance of surviving the job.
Find out what it’s like to live in a world where you can help the Right to prevail, even if it might cost you everything.
To Carry the Horn is the first book of The Hounds of Annwn.
If you give a girl a wish, she has magic for a day. If you teach a girl to grant her own wishes… well, that never happens, does it?
Twelve-year-old Alexandra Gilliam is as good as her word. After all, breaking promises would set a bad example for her five younger brothers and sisters. By the time a magical key offers the children a wish apiece, they’ve read enough books to ask for things they actually want. From the high seas to the bright side of the moon, no place is beyond their reach, but Alexandra wants something even more ambitious: the power to do magic herself.
She strikes a bargain with the key: it will teach her everything it knows, and she will keep the lessons secret from everyone she loves. A tidy, straightforward plan—except magic takes a while to learn, and the key will only stick around as long as there are wishes to grant, and Alexandra’s family is beginning to wonder what she’s hiding from them.
For nine rollercoaster days, Alexandra will be stretched to her limits, reaching for the person she’s always wanted to be while doing her best to hold on to the person she’s always been. She’s never told a lie in her life, but if that’s the price of magic, she just might pay it—even if it costs her the trust of the people she cares about the most.
When the starship’s captain died midway through a run with a cargo of exotic animals, the owner gave first mate Jem one chance, and one choice. The chance: if he successfully runs the trade route solo, he’ll become the new captain. If he fails, he’ll lose the only home he’s ever known.
And the choice? He’s now raising an old earth animal called a basset hound. Between station officials, housebreaking, pirates, and drool, Jem’s got his hands full!
Adelsverein: The Gathering is Volume 1 of the Adelsverein Trilogy, a generational saga of family and community loyalties, and the challenge of building a new life on the hostile Texas frontier.
They came from Germany to Texas in 1847, immigrants under the auspices of the Mainzer Adelsverein – the so-called Society of Noblemen of Mainz, who seek to fill a settlement in Texas with German farmers and craftsmen.
Among those recruited for the transatlantic journey are an extended family who will survive and endure, making their mark in Texas, their new land. Christian “Vati” Steinmetz, the clockmaker of Ulm in Bavaria, has brought his daughters and sons: Magda – passionate and courageous, is courted in Texas by Texas Ranger Carl Becker, a young frontiersman with a dangerous past. Her sister Liesel wants nothing more than to be a good wife to her husband Hansi Richter, an otherwise stolid and practical farmer lured by the promise of adventure and the chance to better himself, for the Adelsverein tempts him with the promise of farming more land than could ever be possible for the youngest son of a poor farmer. Magda and Liesel’s brothers – the bold scapegrace Friedrich and shy Johann are as close as twins can be – they think of the transatlantic journey by sailing ship as the most wonderful adventure ever. But at the end of it all, they are set ashore at a desolate camp on the Texas Gulf Coast, faced with a long trek to their new home in the Texas Hill Country – an unsettled and dangerous frontier, menaced by hostile Comanche war parties.
Will the Adelsverein representatives be able to make peace, as they build new homes and settlements? What will an immigrant German family make of their new home in Texas?
Adelsverein: The Gathering – It’s about love and loss, joy and grief . . . and the sometimes wrenching process of becoming American.
When Corporal Frandsen’s marine battalion was tasked with retaking a space station from enemy forces, he expected a hard fight. What he got was a fight for his life with a time-limit that could kill his entire battalion. What is an enemy willing to risk to win a battle at any cost? Everything.
Wounded in body and spirit after the fall of her kingdom and loss of her lover, the knight Kaila has one last duty to perform before dying: seeing two orphaned children home to their clan in Bringanzo’s Desert.
But all is not lost. When the shaman of Three Mountains Clan takes Kaila on a smoke quest she learns Kreg is still alive, fighting his way across the lands to her. She will raise an army to free him, though hell shall bar the way.
And once they’re united, not even the beast men who overran Trevanta, shall keep them from taking back their land.
Out from the dark burial crypts of Ancient Egypt came the ravening, evil *Thing* that attached itself to Sylvia Cotter… and turned her into a creature of the night whose hunger could be satisfied only…
in the graveyard!
This iktaPOP Media edition includes an afterword that gives historical and genre context to the novella.
When he was hired on to the Diamond H Ranch, the stranger gave his name as Dane. After seeing his skill with rope and gun folks started calling him “Lightning Dane”.
Was he a gunman? An outlaw? *Why* was he here? Nobody knew except Dane himself. And he wasn’t talking.
The iktaPOP Media edition of this book includes a new foreword by indie editor and author D. Jason Fleming putting the book into historical and genre context.
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
*So it took me forever to finish this. Not because writing is difficult, but because I was doing it in dibs and drabs while painting/cleaning/preparing for holidays, such as they are this year. I’m going to try to do them in another three/four worlds for the rest of the year, but I’m not going to promise one a day.
Anyway, this is unproofed, and fresh off the keyboard. I hope you enjoy.
Merry Christmas for those of you who celebrate. And everyone, enjoy the short story. – SAH*
Home For Christmas
A Shifter’s short Story
by
Sarah A. Hoyt
Rafiel Thrall, Goldport police detective and lion-shifter wanted to scream, but he couldn’t.
He woke up in his bed, sitting up, with something much like a scream at the back of his throat but no sound emerged.
An ancient, insinuating, sticky voice spoke in the back of his mind I’ve got you now.
And he knew it was true.
He didn’t even try to fight as what controlled him told him to get dressed and come out into the night and play.
*******
“A spider monkey?” Tom Ormson, part owner of the George Diner in downtown Goldport, and dragon shifter asked the delivery man, frowning.
The delivery man, Paul Orvan, who was known in shifter circles as Orvan Ox, though really he was a minotaur in his shifted form, smiled apologetically. “Yep. Young lady. Missing from the zoo?”
“The zoo,” Tom answered, frowning. He knew that some of the shifters chose to live at the zoo, or at least spend part of their time there. There had been l’affaire camel not so long ago, where a veterinary had … Tom resisted making a joke about gone over the hump … and realized he was allowed to make such jokes in his head. Well, the vet had got over whatever hump had driven him to the zoo in dragon form, and there had been much hullaballoo a missing/never found camel. Tom wondered how they’d first got the camel added to their numbers, to begin with. He sighed, and signed for the delivery Orvan was proffering. In his human form, Orvan was a pleasant middle aged man, with glasses. He looked somewhat worried. He started to turn, then turned back, pushing his glasses up his nose, in a gesture that denoted nervousness. “Her family lives there, you know? They say it’s a Romeo and Juliet thing.”
“They?”
Orvan shrugged. “Well, mostly Bob from the Rodent Liberation Front. He goes in and out of the zoo a lot. He’s a squirrel, you know, and he says it’s a Romeo and Juliet affair.”
Romeo and Juliet … spider monkeys?
It made Tom’s head hurt. He could –in a power recently acquired – reach into the mind of any shifter. He could probably figure out where the spider monkeys were and why.
But the problem wasn’t so much that he could reach into the mind of any shifter. It’s that he could reach into the mind of every shifter. At once. Loudly. Which was great if he needed to put out a distress call, but not so great if he needed to delicately tap a spider monkey “young lady” on the shoulder and ask her what she was up to.
Also, if Tom reached out to all the shifters, the Great Sky Dragon – his ancestor, protector and foe – would find out about it. And find out Tom had the power. Tom … wasn’t keen to have the old dragon try to fight it out for the power that Tom was sure The Great Sky Dragon could control much better than Tom could. Inevitably. I mean. He’d had it a lot longer.
Also, if this was a Romeo and Juliet affair, Tom remembered perfectly well how the play had ended. And he certainly didn’t want to startle the young…. Couple?
Instead, he busied himself wiping down the counter surfaces, and cursing softly under his breath. The diner was full and he was alone behind the counter. And there was only one server, and a part-time one at that. Jason Cordova, now at instructor at the local community college, who had been known to hit the local bar dumpsters when he became a bear.
Jason was doing the best he could, circulating amid the tables filled with shoppers, weaving carefully around piles of packages stacked next to every table or on the table itself, and giving warmups and taking orders. But there were too many people.
Tom finished wiping the counter, turned the burgers on the grill, and, as the bell tinkled indicating someone had come in, he saw his back up cook, Anthony, come in, rushing.
Anthony was whispering “Sorry, sorry, sorry, before he even got to the counter. He took off his jacket, put it under the counter, and signed in the time sheet, saying, “I’m sorry. The baby is teething. I barely slept, and then when I finally fell asleep, my wife—”
“It’s okay,” Tom said, making a face. “Kyrie was supposed to be here and is having morning sickness.”
“Oh, shi—Shoot.”
“Yeah. And she’s probably having wedding nerves too,” Tom said, and sighed. “We had a massive fight, and made up, and I told her she could sleep in. Then I called Connan, but he had a singing gig late last night on 18th Street. So he’s out.”
Anthony grinned. “Well, it’s you and me against the world, old friend.”
“The world I could handle. It’s the customers that scare me,” Tom said. “Can you handle the cooking? The orders are there,” He pointed to the cabinet door next to the grill where the orders currently being cooked were stuck with magnets. “I’m going to give Jason a hand.”
He grabbed the coffee pot, and started circulating the nearer tables, giving warm ups and chatting. Jason, headed for the counter, gave him a sigh of relief.
Tom waited till Jason was close enough and asked, “What do you know about Romeo and Juliet spider monkeys?”
Jason almost dropped the tray filled with dirty plates and glasses from the table he’d bussed. “Oh, damn. Is it Leah and Mike? Only Mike isn’t a spider monkey. He’s a Capibara.”
*****
Bea Ryu overflew the small house in the old suburb with the tree-lined streets early morning. She hated flying long distance in the winter. You arrived frozen and with bugs in your teeth. Granted, it was better to do it at night, so the paparazzi didn’t have the chance to get a picture. Or at least not a clear picture, without forewarning. Most of the pictures they got were fuzzy and twisted and half cocked, and could be explained the same way as UFOs, as weather balloons or a camera issue. She momentarily wondered if UFOs were also real. Rafiel had said something about aliens?
But then she touched down, back paws hitting the little brick path that wound between two flowerbeds planted with winter-dormant roses.
And then she started coughing as the pain of shifting hit, bone grinding on bone, twisting, as her shape changed and morphed into that of a young woman of twenty or so, and obvious Asian extraction, but with vivid green eyes.
She stood in the middle of the path, still cold, spitting out bugs, and realized there were two people watching her.
Bea’s first impulse was to run. From her earliest shifting it had been drilled into her that you simply couldn’t allow people to see you shift. You couldn’t.
That way lay villagers with pitch forks, or worse thousand of years old shifters who thought they could control your love life.
But then the human brain intruded, and she realized she knew these people. They were Rafiel’s parents. She had met them before during her brief sojourn in Goldport.
Rafiel’s father looked a lot like Rafiel, only he had white hair where Rafiel’s was blond, and he had a little weight around the waist where Rafiel was trim. And instead of Rafiel’s ubiquitour tropical wear, Rafiel’s father wore khakis and a dark t-shirt. But mostly, he had wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. Mostly wrinkles of laugher and good humor. Right then, though, he wasn’t smiling. Nor was his wife, a woman only slightly shorter than him, with green eyes, and red hair running to sort of pinkish.
They both stared worriedly at her, and Bea shivered, reaching for the backpack which she’d carried strapped around the dragon’s wrist. It was now strapped around her wrist, and she had to flex her hand. It had cramped from cold. She had to get it to move properly again, before she could reach into the pack and bring out the robe she’d brought with her for wearing into the house. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Am I late? I—” The truth is she didn’t expect Rafiel’s parents to be waiting for her outside. She expected Rafiel.
She got a sense something was very wrong, even as Rafiel’s mother – Daisy – came up and grabbed her frozen hand. “It’s okay, dear,” she said. “It’s okay. Come inside. We have the wood stove on. You can change inside.”
Could she still call it change when the change was between mother-naked and clothed? Bea asked herself, but of course didn’t say it.
She never got to take her robe off. Rafiel’s parents herded her to the wood stove, in a corner of the family room, and next thing she knew she had a blanket wrapped around herself and was coaxed to sitting on an armchair. Rafiel’s mom handed her a cup of hot chocolate, and Bea wrapped both hands around it.
“It must be terribly cold flying at night,” Rafiel’s mom said.
“Actually the worst thing is the bugs,” Bea said. She drank some of the hot chocolate, to make sure there were no debris in her teeth, then looked up and smiled apologetically, “I’m sorry. Am I late? Rafiel said he’d be here.”
“Oh, my dear,” Rafiel’s mother wrung her hands together. “Rafiel is missing.”
******
Kyrie Smith, Tom Ormson’s fiancé, a panther shifter and co-owner of The George was in a mood. Not even the sight of the big neon sign with a dragon in a chef’s hat flipping pancakes could make her smile.
The thing in her mind was that it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that both of them were going to be parents, but she was the one stuck with carrying the baby: with the morning sickness and the mood swings, and oh, yeah, the inability to change into her animal form.
She was vaguely aware, somewhere at the back of her mind that this was probably a mood swing except her mind didn’t really care. She wanted to claw-swipe Tom and make him bleed for not having to put up with any of this. Not that it did her any good, because by the time she gave birth, she probably wouldn’t want to claw him. Or only on occasion when he came up with some stupid idea to promote the George. Like, say, the famous “doughnuts shaped as fingers, that get filled with red jelly.”
She smiled thinking of that and how neither Tom nor Rafiel could seem to process that the idea was revolting. Because as far as she could tell, there was something permanently broken in males’ heads. Or at least shifter males. They could revert to 12 year old with startling rapidity.
She both rolled her eyes and smiled at the jokes that Rafiel often made at the expense of the reproductive processes of “big lizards” which he claimed was what dragons were.
Smiling and shaking her head she came into the diner.
The first thing she noticed was that Jason and Tom were huddled in a corner talking. That meant there was something afoot, and likely it was shifter business. Because if weren’t shifter business, Jason, Tom and Anthony would be huddled in a corner talking.
She smiled at Anthony who smiled back, though he darted a worried glance at the other two. Kyrie gave Anthony the nod that meant “I’ll go see what’s up,” and approached the other two.
They looked almost relieved at her approach, and Tom put a hand around her waist.
“Problem?” she asked.
“Yeah. Apparently two young shifters ran away together and their families are vowing to kill each other over it.”
She raised her eyebrows. And she thought that they’d had problems when the Great Sky Dragon tried to make Tom marry someone of the dragon line. “What are they? Tigers and antelopes.”
Tom shook his head “No. Spider monkey and Capibara.”
“What. Oh, no you’re serious. Leah and Mike?”
“How come everyone knows them but me?”
“Well, darling, you’ve had other things on your mind. Besides the crazy fear that the fryer will explode. I just listen to gossip, that’s all. Poor kids. They should have a chance at their own lives. And both sets of parents are nuts.” She sighed. She didn’t like recommending this because, even though the guys were now friends they had started out as rivals and near enemies. But really, they were short staffed at the diner as was, and heck, finding missing kids was his job right? “Have you told Rafiel?”
“We tried,” Jason said. “His parents say he disappeared from his bed in the middle of the night. Bea just got here for the holidays, and she’s frantic.”
*******
“Well, that didn’t work,” Bea thought. She’d come across the country, against her father’s wishes, to spend the holidays with Rafiel’s family. Well, not exactly against his wishes, but it was complicated.
Bea’s father had said that if she was serious about dating Rafiel she needed to know Rafiel’s family and spend more time with him. Then he’d freaked out at the idea of Bea coming out for the holidays, even though that made the most sense, since Rafiel had some time off, and Bea was on Winter break from college. Mostly because “you’ve always had Christmas with us.”
She’d tried to explain that if she were to marry Rafiel she would spend some Christmases not with her parents, but it hadn’t made much of a dent in her father’s sense of hurt. He’d finally said that fine, if that’s what she wanted, but she could tell he wasn’t happy.
And of course, both she and Rafiel were only children. Which meant if they did get married, they would have to figure out which set of parents to have their holidays with. Their parents lived across the country from each other, after all.
It wasn’t like Bea’s father could just move his veterinary practice. And Rafiel’s family had century-long roots in Goldport. He had uncles, cousins, great uncles all over the city and state. Sometimes it seemed to her he knew everyone in town, and had a cousin in every useful profession.
And in his own direct line, both his father and grandfather had been police officers in Goldport. That was the sort of tradition that was hard to break. And he’d said he’d go to Atlanta, if that was what was required to marry her. But she couldn’t ask it of him. What kind of woman would? So, instead—
Had he really left home to avoid her?
The thought came and went just as rapidly. No. Rafiel wouldn’t.
They might have been having a long distance romance, but she knew him. Or at least she knew him better than she might have say 20 years ago. Because of the internet technology they had spent many a day talking, together in everything but the most basic physical sense.
And whatever else Rafiel was – conflicted, sometimes confused, often worried about his dual nature and what it meant, one thing he was sure of and she was sure of: Rafiel would never abandon a post of honor, or ignore anyone that he had sworn to care for. And that, now, included her. Particularly since her coming out here was at his instigation. He’d never leave her hanging. Ever.
If he’d changed his mind; if he’d decided that their relationship was too much work, and that marrying was a can of worms he didn’t wish to open, he’d have told her, and told her not to come.
She shook herself, set down the now empty hot chocolate cup.
Rafiel’s mom and dad – Daisy and Don – were standing by the big glass door, looking out. She suspected they were trying not to embarrass her, to let her cope with the news in her own way, to let her decide what she was going to do on her own. Through her mind, an exchange she’d had with Rafiel – about the visit here over Christmas – flitted. “Is this a test?” she’d asked. “Of course it is,” he’d answered. “I’ve found everything pretty much is.”
Right then.
She cleared her throat. “I’m going to shower, and brush my teeth, and—” She almost said “put on some clothes” but of course, she needed to do the opposite of putting on clothes. Clothes didn’t take well to a body becoming several times larger. “Change.” She’d have to be very careful not to be seen, but one advantage of being a dragon shifter is that she could overfly the city. On the other hand– Thoughts, not quite cohering into a unified idea flitted through her mind. She maybe should actually dress, go to the George and see what they knew. “Maybe if I can borrow a car?”
“Sure.” Daisy was wringing her hands together. “But there’s something you should know first.”
*****
“There’s something you should know,” Jason said. “See, Leah’s family thinks that they should stay in the zoo. Her grandfather is a keeper there, and he hides all the irregularities. They think they’ve been cursed, and all they can do is live in the zoo, so they don’t get killed. Some mumbo jumbo about whatever forsaken place they came from in Europe and how the peasants would have reacted to their shifting, you know?”
Tom was getting a headache again. Kyrie had gone to circulate and take orders and bus the tables, but he really needed to go work.
“And Mike?”
“Mike comes from California, but his family is from somewhere in South America.”
That tracked. What didn’t track was what spider monkeys had been doing in Europe. No wonder the peasants had reacted badly. Probably way back spider monkeys tracked as looking like the devil, or something.
But then, what was blue-eyed Tom Ormson doing being descended from the Great Sky Dragon?
“Mike is studying physics. He wants to work in aerospace. He’s planning to move to TX.”
“And Leah wants to go with him?”
“Right. They were perfectly all right with Mike crashing with them at the zoo, but taking their little girl away, and living a life away from being decent zoo exhibits is unthinkable. They threatened to disown her. And Mike—Well. I don’t know what he did. But his family isn’t too happy with his intentions either, because to them her family are those shiftless people who are throwing away their lives being exhibits.”
“Yeah,” Tom said, rubbing the middle of his forehead. “But what are they going to do about it.”
“I don’t know,” Jason said. “Knowing the people involved, though, I suspect half of them are out looking for her, and half have decided to go at the other people.”
“Fortunately,” Tom said. “The zoo is pretty well guarded. I don’t think anyone is going to let a herd of giant guinea pigs go start a war with spider monkeys.”
But Jason was looking at Tom somewhere between pitying and despairing, as though Tom were an idiot. “Yeah,” he said. That would be true. Except, you know, zoo lights. So the zoo is open at night, when people can come in with the ticket to see the lights. And there are minimal keepers on duty. And an entire herd of capibaras can too trot into the monkey enclosure, and wreak havoc before they’re caught.”
“So, it’s all on a timer till nightfall? Which is what? Five pm or so?”
“Yeah. Just about.”
Tom thought really hard of a swear word, but there were families with little kids nearby so he didn’t say anything.
*****
Sleep shifting. Bea punched the middle of the steering wheel, because she had nothing else to vent her frustration on, as she was stuck in lunch time rush hour in Goldport. Seriously?
Rafiel had been sleep shifting and hadn’t told her.
“Well, he hasn’t told us either, dear,” his mother explained. “I think it scares him too much to tell anyone, to be fair. We just caught him a couple of times, and convinced him to go back to bed, without his wakening.”
But they hadn’t set anything to catch him if he shifted, because he was likely to catch anything they put up. They’d ordered some sensors, but they hadn’t got them yet, and weren’t sure they’d work, since they were Chinese knock offs.
Well, but that meant that she knew who to talk to.
*****
The problem, Kyrie thought, is that they really needed Rafiel. He knew everyone in town, shifter and not. And he probably had relatives who worked at the zoo.
When the lunch rush slowed down, she called his home number.
Don answered. He sounded like Rafiel, if Rafiel had smoked three packs a day for ten years, a gravely, raspy voice that still held the authority of his years in the police force.
After abbreviated pleasantries, Kyrie asked, “He’s really missing?”
There was a long pause.
“He’s been sleep shifting,”
“Sleep shifting?”
Another pause, a long indrawn breath. “I think… ” Don sounded embarrassed. “Well, what happened to him and that sabertooth, you know….”
Oh. Kyrie hadn’t really noticed anything wrong going on with Rafiel, after the encounter with the female old one. He’d become a little quieter. Slightly less outgoing. But he’d also found Bea, and for a while Kyrie had thought that was all there was to it.
Except—
Except she’d heard from Tom. Rafiel had been mind controlled into mating in animal form with the female ancient ones. Which was, ultimately rape. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised it had consequences.
“Normally we catch him,” Don said. “Last night we didn’t… I think that’s all that happened.”
“Where would he go if he was shifted? And dreaming?”
*****
“Where would he go if he was shifted and dreaming?” the Great Sky Dragon asked.
Bea had been here before, in the back rooms of the Three Luck Dragon, a Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of Goldport and, as far as she and Rafiel and all his friends could tell, the world’s headquarters of the Dragon Triad which was actually composed of dragon shifters.
She had seen the “Chinese palace” style decoration of the back, all silk and gold and exquisite murals.
Which is why she was shocked, after waiting a couple of hours to be admitted to a little room next to the kitchen, where the Great sky dragon, in an apron, sat behind a foldable table, with a huge barrel of peas by his side, shelling them into an immaculate white porcelain bowl.
“I don’t know,” she said. “There is a place that… That is, he used to go there with his parents when he was young, but I’m not sure—” She wasn’t sure he’d go there, for the simple reason that most rape victims don’t go and hang out at the place they were raped.
The Great Sky Dragon was looking at Bea with an eyebrow raised. “Are you sure?” he asked, giving her the uncomfortable notion that he’d read her mind. “Absolutely sure? Because sometime a man has to defend his home.”
*****
Rafiel was the lion, running through the night, when he suddenly became aware of being the lion, and of what was in his mind, taking charge of it.
You! He shouted.
He recognized the unclean presence in his mind. And suddenly he was angry. “You have no right,” he said. “You are dead.”
The voice sniggered. Pretty pretty kitty, it said, in an oily, slithery voice. Come and be killed.
In his head, clearly, he saw where the creature meant to take him, and he blinked. Oh, was that it? Well and good, he was going there under his own power. And he would show them.
*****
Bea thought long and hard. But it occurred to her that if she went into the mountains, to the cabin that had been Rafiel’s favorite place before he was assaulted there by an otherworldly entity, she should have backup. Or at least let someone know where she was going.
It would have to be Tom and Kyrie. Not that she had anything against them, except that Kyrie tended to behave as though Rafiel were a cute, not very bright child. And Tom… well, Tom was just scary. That thing he’d done before, reaching into everyone’s mind—
Then she reminded herself that outside of that role of his, Tom hadn’t been scary at all. A bit neurotic. What was with his fear that the fryer would explode, anyway? And a bit well…. Worried. But she’d met his dad, and been reminded again of all the places that treated the “adult children” of various dysfunctionalities: alcoholics, overeaters, drug users. And she realized anew that the point of “adult children” was adult. They’d had to be adults much too early. She suspected something like it had gone on with Tom.
And Tom…. Well, he seemed to be friends with Rafiel.
It was a place to start.
When she went in, the diner was almost empty. Probably because as the sun was setting there was a frigid wind blowing. The Christmas lights danced around in the façade across the street.
The Christmas lights at the George – in the shape of little dragons – were sensibly attached inside the windows, outlining them.
And someone – she doubted Tom, though of course, judging from the name of the establishment and the buckets-of-blood image of George slaying the dragon over the corner booth in the back, it might be him – had written in marker inside the window “Have a Special Slayer Christmas!”
There were three servers circulating, and—
She saw Kyrie and Tom put coats on and rushed in.
“Thank heavens I caught you,” she said.
She could see the confusion followed by recognition in Kyrie’s eyes, but there was no confusion in Tom’s eyes. He smiled “Bea Ryu. Rafiel said you’d be visiting.”
“Rafiel is missing,” Bea said, and then poured out her meeting with the Great Sky Dragon.
Tom’s eyes narrowed. “The creature isn’t often… well.” He sighed. “You know what he’s like. He might be leading us to a trap.”
“I still have to help Rafiel if I can.”
“Yes,” Kyrie said. It was a quick word, somehow dismissive. “But here’s the thing, we were going to intervene in the Romeo and Juliet.”
“Pardon?” Bea said, now completely confused.
They explained to her, though it seemed insane. All about Capibaras and spider monkeys. And family feuds.
At the end of it Kyrie grinned, suddenly. In her bright pink winter coat—like most shifters, she seemed to dress inexpensively and off the rack, because of how often clothes got ruined by shifting – she looked like a gleeful little kid. “You guys go rescue Rafiel. Or at least see if he’s at the cabin. I’ll go to the zoo. Meet me there.”
As she started to turn away, Tom grabbed her arm. “Kyrie, you’re pregnant. You can’t shift!”
Her grin became a little more feral. Bea thought it was a grin designed for fangs. “Sure,” she said. “But they all know who my fiancé is.”
*****
Rafiel, having run through the day in lion form was almost fully free of bonds when he reached the cabin.
It was a rustic cabin in the woods, where his parents used to come on vacation when he was young, and where he used to retreat to to be alone when he was older.
Inside it was nowhere near as rustic.
And as a teen and young man he’d appreciated the ability to be himself, lion or man, no matter what. He was free to roam these isolated woods, and he’d loved it.
The saber tooth tiger shifter had intruded here and controlled his mind. And his body.
Since then he’d woken with nightmares, or sleep shifted, or been on the edge of losing control.
Rafiel wasn’t sure how, but her mind – spirit? – was still around and still trying to control him.
It stopped today.
******
“You know he didn’t mean to be away when you arrived, right?” Tom told Bea, as they drove through the night.
She gave a sort of hiccup laugh. “I figured that out, though at first I was all distraught. I mean, you fly into town to stay with your boyfriend and his family for the holidays. And then…. Next thing you know he’s missing.”
“Being a shifter complicates relationships. Complicates everything really. And – I’m sorry, but there’s two things you should take in account, in this relationship with Rafiel – Goldport has an unusually high opportunity for chaos since I think we have the highest shifter population in the world. Sometimes I think everyone here is a shifter, some just hide it better. And the other thing is that Rafiel is a cop. And he takes it very seriously. So, while he will try to put you first….”
“There will be times when his duty calls him elsewhere? I get that. I mean, everyone has that to an extent, right. My dad is a vet, and he once left us just sitting at table on Christmas to go operate on someone’s cat who had just been run over. He didn’t have to, but it was his duty. So I get that.”
“Good,” Tom said. “Rafiel is more vulnerable than he seems.”
Sudden laughter burbled up Bea’s throat. “Are you seriously telling me not to hurt your lion shifter friend?”
Tom let out a surprised bark of laughter. The kid was all right. “Well, yeah. Anyway, dragons are bigger, so be gentle with the kitty.”
And he told her the story they’d nicknamed in their group “Three guys in a truck” when after rescuing themselves from the triads, Tom, Rafiel and a non-shifting friend had driven from Las Vegas New Mexico to Goldport. And become friends in the process.
It was while she was laughing at Tom – trying to recover from shifting-hunger — stuffing his face with cold cuts before Rafiel could remove the plastic, that Tom realized that might be happening here too.
******
They were like a buzz in the air.
In his lion form, paws braced, Rafiel stood behind the cabin, and sensed – almost saw but not quite…. The …. Creatures.
They were presences, senses. Ancient and malevolent. The one who’d been the sabertooth tiger kept trying to control him, while the others attacked.
They didn’t have physical bodies, but as they buzzed him, he felt as though the were taking bites out of his soul.
We are better than the fools that thought we’d be better with physical bodies.
Yes. We are as we always were, eternal entities.
And I have learned the error of my ways. Even if you, little cat, must be punished for my killing.
The thoughts hit him like slaps, and the bites on his… essence? Made him feel cold and weak. Like he was bleeding out.
Kitty, kitty, kitty. Come and be killed.
******
Tom could feel them, as the truck bounced within sight of the cabin, on the rutted private road.
Damn. Ancient ones. It needed only that. And at Christmas too.
Then he saw them, not quite lights, or not visible to normal eyes, encircling and dancing around Rafiel.
He was in lion form, and he looked exhausted. He probably was exhausted, because he must have walked all the way here. But he was also swiping at non corporeal entities with his paw, for crying out loud. And they were doing real damage.
Not-with-his-eyes Tom saw streaks of light? Plasma? Emanating from Rafiel into the cold evening air. He was being bled to death.
Before he could do anything, Bea had jumped out of the car, and was shifting without undressing – always a messy process – twisting and turning in the throes of the pain of ripping tissues and shifting bone, halfway a dragon when she spoke, the words out of her mouth twisting and echoing weirdly. “No, you fool. Use your essence, not your paw.”
Tom took in a deep breath and heard himself say, as if from very far away. “Use the essence, Rafiel, you’re our only hope.” Then jumped out of the car like a popping popcorn kernel, as he was shifting.
*****
The zoo was eerily quiet. Oh, there were groups of people walking around laughing; there were kids shrieking. The humans were loud enough.
But Kyrie noticed all the animals were very quiet. As though they knew something was coming. And they didn’t like it.
Now if she were two young shifters who were terminally romantic, where would she be. Well, probably Las Vegas, getting married by Elvis. But her romanticism was more pragmatic than theirs. And anyway, Leah had never lived outside the zoo. Everything she knew about normal humans was from the people who came in. She doubted even Michael had managed to drag her away from here this quickly and without her parents approval. Oh, she wanted to go with Michael – she and Kyrie had had long talks about it – but she wanted her parents’ approval before she left.
They were probably hiding so that the parents would get worried and come to their senses.
Kyrie suddenly had a good idea where they’d be.
She was going to have to talk to the secretary bird.
*****
The three of them stood, with Rafiel in the middle. They faced hundreds of the creatures.
Bea didn’t know what they were, or how she knew what to fight them with.
But she knew that she could will her mind in dragon form to rake them with thought-fire. And they withered and burned.
Took Rafiel a few minutes before he too jumped into the fray, a thought-paw raking the creatures off.
And Bea who now knew these were Ancient Ones had an epiphany They don’t despise us for having become flesh. They’re afraid of us. The flesh makes us more powerful. If only we’re aware of it. Yes. It’s more dangerous and makes us mortal, but it gives us power and strength beyond theirs.
There was a growl and the creatures rushed her, but Rafiel swept them away with Tom’s help.
They were winning this.
*****
The Secretary Bird’s human form was a young woman named Aimee Morgan. She was not a zoo dweller, but worked as an executive assistant at some downtown firm. When she came into the diner for a coffee, and it was only shifters, she’d been known to joke she was an executive assistant bird.
But she liked to go to the zoo for a respite, now and then. And again, Kyrie couldn’t understand how half the time the zoo didn’t realize they had three secretary birds instead of two. But maybe because of the new lush green exhibit with trees and grasses and rocks, sometimes a bird of the other disappeared and since there were eventually three again, the zoo keepers assumed they were just hiding. Like cats.
But Kyrie had a hunch she’d find her, and she did.
The other two secretary birds were asleep, but Aimee was patrolling the parameter, in the oddly war-like way of the birds.
She rushed at Kyrie, but stopped when Kyrie lifted her hand. “Peace. Don’t start none, won’t be none. I’m just here to make sure the kids are okay. You’re helping them right?”
Aimee shifted, the fastest shifting Kyrie had just seen. Then she ducked behind a rock and came back out wearing jeans and a t-shirt and looking oddly maternal.
“Of course I am. Otherwise their horrible parents would separate them forever.”
*****
They were driving back, laughing with the relief of a battle won. They’d found clothes in the cabin and were decently dressed.
Tom had pounded Rafiel’s shoulder and said “You all right now?”
“Yeah. I think so. It feels good to win against them,” Rafiel said. “I don’t think we killed them, you know. But I now know I can win.”
Tom drove the car, now, and Rafiel and Bea were snuggled in the back seat. He’d apologized – apologized! – for not being there when she arrived.
And then somehow the three of them were making the lamest jokes about crouching lion and not at all hidden dragons. And it was way funnier than it should be.
“And now to the zoo and the world’s strangest Romeo and Juliet,” Tom said.
*****
One shouldn’t want to laugh at the situation but one did. Or at least Kyrie did. There were Leah and Mike, both looking geekier than any shifter had the right too, huddling in human form, behind a rock in the middle of the secretary bird enclosure. They were clothed in jeans and t-shirts, and Mike had his glasses on.
And converging at them, from either side, were a group of monkeys and a group of capibaras.
And they looked pissed. And that only made it funnier.
But Kyrie kept her voice even as she gestured at the two families. “Halt. You know what my fiancé is. You don’t want to do this.”
*****
“How do you know where to go?” Bea asked Tom, as they ran full tilt through the zoo, drawing startled stares from the groups strolling through.
“This close, I can feel them,” Tom said. And then stopped.
Somehow normal humans had known or sensed to stay away from here. It was dark and quiet.
There were the two lovers, in the secretary gird enclosure, with Kyrie and a very maternal looking woman guarding them.
Tom leapt to stand in front of the women, and look at the furry horde of giant guinea pigs on one side, and spider monkeys on the other. “Listen, all of you, the kids are of age by human reckoning. They want to marry and make their own lives let them. Or reckon with me.”
It wasn’t that easy, of course. The leader of each group: an elderly man who looked like Gandalf led the monkeys, and a rounded woman of South American ancestry who led the capibaras shifted and tried to argue. They invoked the decisions the Great Sky Dragon had made a few times. But Tom wasn’t putting up with it.
Tom shook his head. “Look, I’m fairly sure I know what my predecessor used to decide. But I’m not him. We’re from very different times. I say let the kids try it. If they dislike it, they can come back. You know what? We live a long long time. Let them try and make errors, so they learn. That is an order.”
*****
Tom and Kyrie were still discussing the terms of the monkeys and capibaras surrender, or union, or peace treaty, or something, when Rafiel pulled Bea away. They walked through the illuminated zoo paths, away from the enclosure, amid laughing kids, and strolling couples.
“I’m sorry you got here for this,”” he said. “I know it’s a mess.”
He seemed to be asking a question.
She thought she knew what the question was. “Hey, I was here before. And I’ve talked to you for months, I know what this entails. I’m okay with it.”
He squeezed her hand and pulled her under a tree all lit up with Japanese lanterns.
Next thing she knew, he was dropping to one knee “Beatrice Annemarie Ryu, will you marry me?”
“Get up, you geek. People are staring.”
“No. Will you marry me?”
“Of course I will.”
And then he picked her up and spun her around while kissing her. And strangers clapped and cheered.
Afterwards, he gave her an engagement ring, on a coiled plastic necklace. “So it stays with you when you shift. I’ve been wearing it around my neck, that’s how I kept it when I became the lion. I wanted to ask you first thing.”
“Well, you did. First time you could. We’ll be fine.”
And they would be.
Sure, marrying him wouldn’t be an easy life. But Bea had never really wanted “easy.” And Rafiel felt like home.
They’d make their home together. And like the ancient entities being clothed in flesh became stronger, so would they be stronger for their being joined. Even if it doubled the problems.
They walked aimlessly, as snow started to fall.
Near the secretary bird enclosure, they heard Tom’s voice say “Because each person has the right to make a home with the one they love. No matter how hard it is. In the end, it’s worth it. If you never do anything hard, you never grow up.”
I feel the need to say that because I know you, cartoon critters, and you panic easily.
It’s just an announcement that I’m….. tired.
It’s been one damned thing after another for…. ten years? I was never a happy warrior. I’m simply a crazy warrior. I defend the last redoubt tirelessly, but it doesn’t make me happy about it.
And when everything you predict would happen happens, you start getting tired. Honestly, Cassandra didn’t need the kicking around, she probably kept giving it to herself. “How could I have made them listen?”
(Okay not everything but a significant number of important things, both in field and out.)
It occurred to me last night that I’m exhausted. I’m writing short stories in my worlds (well, the ones that are going to have more books soon) and the stories are there, but I’m so…. tired.
This too shall pass. We now have a functional bathroom. And I’m getting ready for Christmas — a weird Christmas with not even a tree (Hey, we found them yesterday, but which box would we set it up ON.) — and I’ll finish the story today and —
The attacks are relentless, so we must be tireless.
But we’re flesh and blood.
I’m going to concentrate on fiction until the first week of January. There will be posts, but they might not be meaty.
Can you send me guest posts? So I can keep things to maybe 3 posts or 4 a week? For the first month of the year while I catch up on fiction and get some stories off my head. So I’m ready when the next hit comes. So I remember who I am.
Omicron, Ontario and Lying With Statistics by Francis Turner
Note: You are strongly recommended to go and look at the source data at the page below
So there’s a graph going around social media that is more or less a classic example of how to lie with statistics. The graph is this one (or close relatives) as publicized by Alex Berenson, a journalist who has been increasingly skeptical of vaccine effectiveness
If you look at it uncritically it shows a huge spike in cases amongst those vaccinated against the wuflu while those unvaccinated are staying more or less constant. So you look at it and think that the current omicron variant is more infectious for the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.
However there’s some critical information that’s being missed. That is that the number of fully vaccinated is over 80% of the population while the unvaccinated consist of about 14% which means there are 5-6 times as many vaccinated as unvaccinated.
So if the wuflu were equally bad for both you’d expect roughly 5x as many whereas actually you have (at the peak) between and 3x and 4x. When you go to the website and click on the rater per 100k button you get the above graph.
And there’s plenty to comment on with that graph. Specifically it shows that the current (omicron) variant is not particularly bothered by the wuflu vaccines when it comes to infecting people. This is potentially bad and certainly suggests that optimistic people like me a year ago were overly optimistic in our reading of the trial results for the various wuflu vaccines. Bluntly the last few months have shown that protection against infection wanes rapidly and/or is very specific to earlier mutations of the wuflu and is far less effective against newer ones. Hence the frantic “get a booster”, “get another booster” messaging from the people who want to keep everyone scared
It also certainly suggests that, as should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain, the idea that the world would eradicated the wuflu was completely misguided.
So if you want to be skeptical of vaccine mandates you have quite enough evidence from that second graph and you aren’t in fact being misleading. In fact what it shows is that the wonderful new mRNA vaccines are no better than the traditional flu vaccines. You get some months of protection then the virus mutates and all that protection dissipates. Only unlike flu vaccines the mRNA ones have plenty of nasty side-effects.
But wait, there’s more and it’s more complicated. From the same Ontario site there’s this
Looking at that and you see that vaccination still seems to help against severe infection. Although 14% of the population are unvaccinated they make up ~55% of the not seriously hospitalized and about 66% of the ICU patients.
But wait… there’s (even) more.
When you do the sums about the population of Ontario (14.8 million) and the number of hospitalized (total 331) you realize that the wuflu is no more dangerous than the regular flu and way less so if you’ve had your wuflu jab.
So if the anti-vax people want to get their point across without using misleading statistics they would just take the graphs of cases and hospitalizations and put them against the population of Ontario. Or they’d just use the aarph per 100.000 produced by the Ontario health people and point out that even amongst the unvaccinated the rate of cases is 25/100,000 or 0.025%, hospitalizations are about 10% of cases and deaths (elsewhere, can’t see the Ontario numbers) are under 10% of hospitalizations (or <1% of cases).
They could also usefully look at the UK numbers and see that while cases are at record highs, hospitalizations and deaths are less than 10% of what they were at the last peak, a year ago.
And that of course ignores the number or people worldwide who have died from the current scary omicron strain (as opposed to with it), which appears to be roughly the number of people shot by Alec Baldwin (plus or minus one).
Sometimes the day goes sideways SO badly that it’s 5 pm before you realize that, dear Lord, it’s 5 pm. And I forgot to put a post up.
On the good side, I painted husband’s office on the ONLY day he’s likely to be out of it until April. So that part is good. On the other hand have about a million things to do by 9 am tomorrow. On yet the better side, yes the house is falling into place, but suddenly a confluence of “we have help today” means an entire day disappears.
Good morning horde. Do you know what time it is? It is time to disappoint the snobs. It is time to grin in their smug faces. It is time to hoist middle fingers at their scolding. And it is definitely time to pffft pffft pfffft right in der Fuhrer’s face!
Now more than ever. Every day with gusto and twice on Sunday for good luck.
And if you’re scratching your head right now and going “It’s nine and a bit on a Monday morning, what in heaven’s name has wound Sarah up?” worry not. You’re about to be told.
Back when I was a sprout, knee high to a dictionary, for reasons known only to my psychiatrist, I took a Swedish language class. The teacher was a dual citizen, child of a couple consisting of a Swedish woman and a Portuguese man, had lived in Sweden part time for most of her adult life, and explained the culture as well as teaching language.
I no longer remember what the word was — I haven’t used Swedish in 38 years, okay? I can listen to it and pick up a word here and there, but I have no more clue what they’re saying than before I took it — but one of the words she taught us meant “enough” or “just enough” and it was apparently the highest compliment you could give a person. “You’re just enough. Your house is just enough. Your clothes are just enough. Why, you’re practically modestly adequate.”
I didn’t have giggle fits in class. I waited until I was politely out. But then I did have giggle fits. Look, I do understand that the Scandinavian countries are not the most fertile places on Earth (in either sense) and that for most of history having just enough was great and amazing. At one time an acquaintance was venting about how he’d like to have more kids but he and his wife couldn’t afford them due to extortionate taxes. When I pointed out that was the cost of socialism, he said something like “Well, it’s better than famine and cannibalism. There was cannibalism driven by famine in my grandparents time.”
Honestly, I don’t know enough of the history of Sweden to know if that’s true. I have a vague memory they were more prosperous (and way more innovative) before socialism’s death grip on their economy. Also judging by how many people of Scandinavian descent there are in the US, having kids didn’t seem that difficult back then.
Mostly I was sad that he saw nothing between famine and socialism, that the free market and the idea of striving had been so completely expunged from his mind. He was not a stupid man, so this spoke to me of a culture in distress.
I also know for an absolute fact that the scourge of the coastlines of Europe didn’t leave their homelands to go aviking because they were enamored of “just enough” and were looking for a bare sufficiency. Judging by the hordes people still find buried various places, they were looking in fact for lavish profusion.
So, socialism, not culture.
In fact a lot of what we mistake for “decadence” and losing the will to live for a culture, is just the iron boot of communism, or the spiky heel of socialism (more subtle but just as deadly) pinning them down till they expire. Because those take the overculture first, they act as conquerors taking over, and the conquered culture acquires all the pathologies of the vanquished: the men become ineffective, the women become whores, and there are very few children born.
Anyway, when it comes to socialists and their idea that the peasants should worship the concept of “just enough” (while the rulers servants of the people can have as many lavish dachas as they want and shop at the party stores for whatever they need. And if the dachas look like pokey suburban American houses, and whatever they want just means they get some protein, hey, at least they’ll have more than you, peasant.) there isn’t anything that infuriates them quite as much as Americans being Americans.
Wind up an European and he’ll break out of his smug superiority about decades of socialism, and foam and froth at the mouth about how tacky Americans are: too large, too loud, eat too much and own too many things.
If you want them to come close to striking you, smile sweetly and say, “Yes, it’s all true. Thank you.”
Because you see, they know that deep inside they too want to be lavish. They’ve been taught, primed and indoctrinated to think the only color is grey, and the best you can do is have “just enough” but inside them is the ancestry of Charlemagne and yes the Viking raiders screaming to get out. They don’t dare voice it, because then they’d be as bad as “those Americans” who are “So crass” but they want it all, and they can’t stand that you won’t be bullied into giving it up, as they have.
In fact, my fellow countrymen, having crisscrossed Europe a few times, I have to tell you Heinlein was right. They ain’t got nothing — except some very old, very expensive buildings, certainly nothing in the way of creature comforts — that we don’t have bigger and better in Podunka, Illinois.
In fact, one on one, in a head to head comparison, and if we pick someone not addicted to drugs, our poor live way better than the European middle class, in terms of what they do and have in everyday life.
Regardless of the screams and cries about “hunger in America” (Most of it, as you know, based on flawed surveys and insanity) we have a plague of wild geese in every public park. In countries where there’s real hunger, geese don’t honk around being tasty and made of meat while people wring their hands and wonder how to stop them pooping everywhere. In those countries, any goose incautious enough to come near a hungry human doesn’t honk. He sizzles.
And most of our poor eat more protein, have better snacks, more comfortable clothes, sleep in better beds, and just generally live better than the European middle class. They mostly have cars, and can afford to drive around (“President” Bifflé — you might not want to look that up. Then again, you might want to. I’m not your mother — and his Junta would like to stop that) they have houses of whatever description that are warm in winter and cool in summer, and they are just generally in better shape than their European counterparts, before you get to the rest of the world.
In fact, some years ago, a sociologist said in an article, in passing, that the way to calculate lifestyle in America vs. Europe, you had to assume Americans lived “two levels up” from their counterparts in Europe. So the poor live like the middle-middle class and the middle-middle class live like the rich. This stuck with me long after I forgot his name and what the actual article was about, because it scanned as true.
Which brings us to the Bifflé Junta — yes, it really is a very rude word. The French are way better at that than us. The verb, btw is Biffler. And I still say you shouldn’t look it up — who are, as you know — but they might not, though I think these idiots do — are Marxists.
Being Marxists means they’re brain damaged about the economy. Because Marx had rats in his head and never understood how the economy actually worked, which is why he considered intermediary sellers “waste” and never fully understood things like “distribution.” (The two are related.)
Part of how they have rats in their heads, is that they can’t understand how wealth can be created. To them there is just a finite pie, forever. They will come up with excuses — climate change; the hunger in Africa; the heartbreak of Psoriasis — but really what they mean is “I’m uncomfortable that people can just have unlimited abundance. (And at the back of it, I think, is the fear that people will enjoy themselves more than the socialists do. They’re a rather joyless bunch, and therefore envious of what they don’t know how to have.)
But being sure that the pie just needs to be infinitely redistributed, they’re convinced other places in the world are poor because the US has so much. So they’re trying to bring us down several pegs.
Hence the “you have to lower your expectations” and banning fracking, because they want our gas to cost the same in Europe, and the perpetual environmental scolds and self-panickers running in circles and telling us we must lower our impact on the Earth, while leaving India and China to pollute their merry way.
And then this weekend — I told you we’d get to what set me off — it seemed like every time I logged into my main computer (I haven’t taken the time to customize those browsers, yet.) I got another stupid article telling us how to stop being American, for our own good.
My favorites (BY FAR) are the one saying America will suffer more from Omicron than anywhere else, because it’s less “dangerous to the individual” but more “dangerous to the community.” They tried hard to square that circle but his makes no sense whatsoever. It’s about how it doesn’t kill many people, but if we just SPREAD it, being SELFISH it will cause the heartbreak of psoria– Okay, I”m making that. It will cause missed work, and people being miserable from the common cold. And therefore it’s time to give up our individualism, and think of the community.
Do you guys know how hard it is to touch-type with stiff middle fingers? It ain’t easy.
Anyway, the other one was about how we, like other countries, need to stop giving Christmas gifts to adults.
The whole thing seems to be that the writer is awful bad about picking gifts, and it’s wasted money, and therefore we shouldn’t do it.
I have in fact talked about how giving gifts is often wasted money, which is why socialism fails. (You can’t know what other people want.)
But that’s neither here nor there. I often fail at giving gifts to my nearest and dearest at the prescribed occasions, but that’s mostly because I give them “gifts” whenever I notice they need something or want something. And I love surprising them with just what they need, but better quality than they’d buy for themselves. In the same way, I love buying gifts occasionally even for casual acquaintances, or making them something I know they’d like. (It hasn’t happened for years, a combination of money (the other house was really expensive. And yes, we really need to sell it) and time/energy. But it used to happen fairly often and I hope it will again.)
The ideal gift is frivolous, extravagant, and something the person loves but would never buy for themselves. I’ve been the recipient of several of those, sometimes from you guys, even.
And anyway, seriously, what business is it of these killjoys?
They don’t want to give gifts. Don’t. But assume your full aspect as the Grinch and say “I didn’t feel like it. And I have a heart like a shriveled raisin.” Don’t lecture me about how it’s best for me and everyone else, too. I will give whatever gifts I want, and if I ever win the lottery, I’m going to buy big honking tacky gold necklaces for all my friends, with pendants in the shape of pooping geese, so we upset all the delicate, lilac scented feelings of the bien pensant.
Americans, they will find, are not good at taking direction and indoctrination.
I am not going to be convinced “Just enough” is a great compliment. Yes, sure, I am downsizing, because we’re done raising the kids. But it’s more like we’re compact-sizing and upgrading. Instead of three cheap/used/from thrift store coffee makers, we’ll have a single one, but good, and with a warranty. Instead f three thin quilts from thrift store, we’ll have a big, fluffy, warm blanket. And we’re so rich, so lavish that you can actually find all that, in good shape, in thrift stores, and it’s only a little more expensive.
In America, we know what we need to live lavish, unapologetic lives. And I want it all. And just to piss off Europeans and their ideas of tastefulness, I want it in big checkers, purple and red. Because.
Because I’m an American. I’m going to giggle at their lectures, and giggle even harder at their rage.
I’m not going to be brow beaten by publications no one reads anymore into feeling guilty for our prosperity.
I’m going to be loud, proud and lavish.
And I’m going to Pffft, Pfffft, Pffffft right in der Fuhrer’s face.
According To Hoyt 