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The Dark and Light Mirror

Jan9

for [personal profile] avia‘s commissioned continuation of Day Twin, Night Twin

Those born to the sinister did not have children; it was impossible, or forbidden, depending on who you asked. Thus the daylight people were able to carefully control the number of sinister who were born, making certain it was always far lower than the number of daylight.

Ava was the only child her foster mother had, and was likely to remain so. The others were left in portals just big enough to allow an infant through, and given to sinister would-be-mothers by lottery; motherhood in the dark world was a very cherished thing.

Ella was the only child her mother had, and was likely to remain that way. She had a busy life, as mayor of the city (for some reason, those born the light side with dark twins tended to be important people, or rise to important places). She had lost her first husband to the plotting of someone else’s evil twin. She had her Ella, and did not want to lose her.

And yet Ava and Ella had other plans. They were just past their seventh birthday when they learned of each other’s existence; they were staring into a mirror, the portal that only twins could pass that existed in both their mothers’ rooms. Ava was doing her best to get her hair properly into pigtails. Ella had teased her curls into a rat’s nest. They stared at the mirror, willing themselves different, willing themselves…

“Like that. Only with better hair.”

Ella touched the mirror. It had never spoken back before. “Like that. Like the dark lady that came by yesterday.”

“Like that. Like the princess in the book. Like the proper ladies.”

“Like the ones that don’t have to go to school.” Ella stroked the mirror. She ought to be surprised, she thought, to feel it touching her back. But it was already talking to her; what was a touch in addition?

“Like the ones who get to live in the sunlight.” Ava could feel the portal. She could feel the sister on the other side of the portal. But she couldn’t get through anything but her fingers. “There has to be a way.”

“There has to be away,” Ella sighed. “There has to be. The twins do it, the evil twins.”

“The trouble-makers, the monkey-wrenchers. If they can cross…”

“Then why can’t we?”

It became their quest, dark twin and light, day twin and night. They read the forbidden books, and told their mothers’ mirrors of what they learned. They followed the twins, and took notes on where they crossed, and how.

They watched their mothers, when they played our their endless script of good twin and evil twin. “It won’t be like that.”

“Of course it won’t. We don’t need to follow the script. We were born on the wrong sides of the mirror.”

“We won’t spend all our time making easily-foiled plots.”

“Being gullible and easy to capture.”

“Leaving the keys to the city on the counter.”

“Leaving the map to the portals out where anyone could get it.”

Ava waved the map, and, with a great deal of effort, held it so Ella could see it.

“Leaving the map… no. No, we won’t do that.”

They were seventeen, then. Old enough to wander on their own. Old enough to cross through on their own, too, in the portals with the weakest gates.

Like the one in the old subway station, where the sun hit the shadows just so Old enough to cross through there, with a twin handshake and never a glance back.

But that was just the beginning of their story.

Next: The Light World and its Shadows (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/444505.html. You can comment here or there.

Adhara Speaks

Dec27

Inspired in part by this comic – http://www.rhymes-with-witch.com/rww10042012.shtml

To flofx‘s prompt

We were born from the same place.

My mother liked to point that out. We’d been born from the same people, from the same place, from the bed. We’d been conceived on the same night, three years apart, each of us.

I don’t know why they kept trying, after the first disaster. But they did. Every three years, on the same night. And every time, the were given another child. And every time…

…well, some attempts worked out better than others, let’s say that.

I was second. I was The Blessing, which isn’t an easy weight to carry, not after Sirius, who was A Burden They Must Carry.

This all fit, I think, into some sort of belief my parents had, but never managed to share with me. It wasn’t Sirius who ended things for them, but Altair, who came three years after me. Well. Altair ended our mother. Our father held on after that long enough to see me, Deneb, Cygnus, and Lyra old enough to last on our own – until Lyra was almost three years old. Until the day passed when they would have conceived the next one.

Then father took out Altair. That was a bloody and dark day, and none of us – those of could feel, those who can remember – will forget that day.

It was a noble and brave thing of him to do. Altair had grown strong and nasty, even though he was younger than I was. But that meant that that left three of us to fend for ourselves – and to handle the monsters born in between.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/437427.html. You can comment here or there.

On the Water

Dec25

For [personal profile] imaginaryfiend‘s prompt.

My twin and I were born on the same day, but on different planes of existence.

My father is a boatwright, you see, and while my mother was carrying me, my father – our father – was creating a boat. Building it from the felled trees to the shaped hull to the sails. Building her, my twin.

Our mother – who sewed the sails and shaped the carvings – told my father that it was a foolish conceit, when we were young. “You’ll turn her brain, telling her the boat is her sister.”

My father, who would not sell that boat, of all the boats he had crafted, smiled, agreed, and persisted in calling the ship his daughter, my twin.

“You’ve got to stop,” my mother said, when I was seven, and running along the boards more evenly than on solid ground, swimming in the ocean rather than playing in the park. “You’re twisting her.”

My father, who had watched me learn from my twin how to swim, smiled, nodded, agreed, and continued calling her my twin and my sister.

He couldn’t see her, the way I could, but I don’t think he needed to. He had brought forth the shape of my sister, and, in that shaping, he knew where her soul was – and that she had as much soul as I did.

“Stop it, or she’ll be ruined for anything but sailing.” My mother was not shouting, but it was a close thing. I was a teenager, and I had taken to the seas like I had been born with a keel as much as my sister had.

“Yes.” My father nodded, and smiled, and agreed. “She has been ruined for aught but the sea since she and her sister were begun.”

“She. Is. Not. Her. Sister.” And now my mother shouted. And now my sister and I shouted back, with her keel slapping the water and my voice rising up across the water.

“Yes. We. Are.”

And that was when things truly got complicated.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/436692.html. You can comment here or there.

Day Twin, Night Twin

Dec16

To [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith‘s prompt. Names from here

It happened once in a generation, or maybe twice – twins born on the cusp of the day, so that one was born to a sinister day, and one to a bright day. The one born to the sinister was taken away, to be raised by others born in the night-days. The one born to the bright-days lived in the light.

Those given to the dark lived apart from those in the bright, their business, their life, their whole existence separate. The twins were the only connection, echos who could, if they wished, cross the line.

They did, of course. The dark existed, if not solely, than primarily to vex the day. And the children of the dark who could do so directly joyed in causing trouble, in pretending to be their twin, in creating havoc and chaos. It was the way of the world.

Ava and Ella were born like any other dark-light twin pair, Ava to the night of a sinister day, Ella to the morning of a bright day. They were themselves born to a day-side twin, and so it was their mother’s sister who took Ava away, into the shadows of the sinister world. And so she raised Ava to be an evil twin, as her sister raised Ella to be a good twin.

Something was wrong about the pair, right from the beginning. Ava favored her right hand, spent as much time as she could under bright lights, and preferred light clothing to dark. Ella shunned the sun, ate with her left hand, and chose clothing the color of blood and mud.

Their mother and foster-mother watched them with concern. Some children went through these phases. Some could be corrected, some could not. The only answer, in most cases, was exile. There was no changing when you were born, to the bright or the night. The sisters did not wish to exile their children, and so they attempted to correct them.

“She won’t wear white.” The day twin put forth a token struggle as her evil twin tied her up. “She reads the forbidden writings.”

“She likes pink!” The night twin wriggled as her sister captured her. “And she writes love poetry.”

“We got them right, I know we did.” The day sister had locked her evil twin in a prison cell, and had begun to undo her hacking work. “I marked Ava’s wrist as she came out.”

“We got them right.” The night sister chained her twin back in the cell she had just escaped from. “But what if the doctors didn’t?”

Next: The Dark and Light Mirror (LJ

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/433515.html. You can comment here or there.

Big Brother

Dec16

To Rix_Scaedu‘s Prompt

All of Ashele’s friends had big brothers.

The trend when they’d been born was to select for a son first, and then a daughter, and then chose the third based on either the stars, one’s profession, or, least likely, one’s personal choice.

Ashele’s parents were Small Landers and Blue Hats – but not Les Chapeaux Bleus, or Ashele wouldn’t have been able to go to a normal school or have mostly-normal friends – and they’d gone natural on gender choice, leading to first Ashele and then one younger sister, Katina. This left both Ash and Kat at a decided disadvantage in dealing with, well, everything.

When the bigger boys bothered Jacque or Bradelli or Miko, their big brothers would jump in. When they needed help with homework, their big brothers would be there. When they needed inappropriate advice for dealing with authority figures, Gary or Deandro or Eder would be there to do whatever needed doing.

Ashele did everything she could do help Katina out, to be her little sister’s big brother. She got pretty good at fighting, punching, and, most of all, running away. She got even better at homework, and okay at bad advice. But she always wanted a big brother to help her with all that stuff.

She couldn’t have one – her parents weren’t willing to adopt one, and they couldn’t turn back time and do things properly – so she starting making one up.

Tall, taller than Gary or Deandro or Eder. Strong. Sports type. Able to block punches like in her favorite kung-fu movies.

Handsome. Other boys’ little sisters would want to date him. They’d be nice to Ashele to get closer to her brother. She could handle that.

When she got her nose broken defending Katina, she pictured him holding the hanky for her, instead of Eder. When she lost a shoe running away from another bully, she pictured him catching up with her and giving her shoe back. First dance, she imagined what he’d tell her in place of her parents’ awkward advice. When the boy got too annoying, and she had to punch him, she imagined her brother punching him instead.

And so it went. On her graduation day, when her parents were busy with a Blue Hat rally and couldn’t make it, she imagined him sitting there next to Katina, cheering for her.

She’d pictured him for almost ten years now, but when she looked up and saw him there, it was still a shock. Tall, handsome, hugging Katina close as he waved at her.

The principal caught her as she tripped. She was pretty sure nobody else noticed the brother she wasn’t supposed to have, but the principal, Mr. Ankay, whispered something in her ear as he passed her the diploma.

“You and I need to have a talk.”

The big brother was gone by the time she got off the stage, but Ashele had a feeling things had only started getting weird.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/470615.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/433262.html. You can comment here or there.

Fuze Logic, a story for the Giraffe Call

Sep18

For EllenMillion‘s prompt. Captain Fuze, who appeared in the Alder by Post, is my new favorite character..

They were having trouble with the Senedacht.

The Senedacht were… well, that was part of the problem. Nobody was
quite certain what they were. Best guess was a created intelligence,
but humanity had yet to deal with a created intelligence in a created
body, so they weren’t sure if the Senedacht were what it would look
like.

In the Senedacht language, as far as the translators could tell,
“Senedacht” was a pointer that meant the creatures who called
themselves that. It didn’t mean “people” or “those who live on
Sene-something” or anything else.

The whole Senedacht language was like that. Their words had no nuance,
no borrowed meanings, no connotation. Very rarely did their words
even appear to have any relationship to each other: Their word for
ghost, for instance, looked nor sounded nothing like their word for
ghastly. It was almost as if someone had gone through their world and
cataloged things, labeling each with a collection of sounds.

That was not where the humans running the translators gave up, crying. The Senedacht were
more than willing to spend hours pointing at things, reciting the word
for them. it was tiresome, in a language where you could not
extrapolate, but it was honest work.

It was in concepts that they came to the real problem, and not even all concepts, but specific concepts. When it came to the idea of “maybe,” both human and Senedacht translators ended up breaking down, the human crying, the Senedacht fluttering its antennae and muttering, over and over again, “yes or no, yes or no.”

Captain Fuze watches it all with more than a little amusement, but only because Captain Fuze had learned how to be amused by most things. “This planet,” she murmured to her navigator, “is not going to deal well with Fuzzy logic.”

Fuze Surprise

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/402721.html. You can comment here or there.

Commute

Sep10

To [personal profile] anke and [personal profile] eseme‘s prompts

Alinara woke up just before dawn. The snow had been coming down heavily when she went to sleep, and the radio had said it was going to be just below freezing all night.

The chill in the air suggested the radio hadn’t been quite honest. She slid on a spare pair of pants before getting out of bed and dove into her fleece slippers. The cabin, with its thick, thick walls, didn’t lose heat quickly, but a hard freeze could hurt more than just her breath and joints.

She fumbled the matches twice before she managed to light the tinder, and then had to light the tinder three times to get it going. A strong draft kept whistling down the chimney, putting out her little flames.

The pipes hadn’t frozen, at least. She set a kettle on the stove while the fire got itself going, and washed her hair in the sink. She could take a nice hot bath when the drive was shoveled out.

She drank her first mug of tea while she got dressed in outdoor gear. By then, the cabin was starting to warm up, her breath no longer showing in the air. Reluctantly, Alinara stepped into the breezeway, shut the doors firmly behind her, and pulled the exterior door open.

The snow was hard-packed enough that it didn’t come tumbling in, which was both a good thing and a bad thing. Wishing for a flamethrower, Alinara climbed to the top of the drift, shut the door behind her, and started shoveling. With luck, she’d be able to clear her way to the bus stop with time left over for a bath. Normal back-to-nature sorts might be able to forgo day jobs, but she still needed to get into the office, rain, shine, or three feet of hard-packed snow.

When she’d gone out into the woods to find herself, she hadn’t imagined that the self she’d find would have quite so much upper-body strength.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/401127.html. You can comment here or there.

Delfugiaran Bunnies, a story for the Bunny Safari

Aug29

For [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt

There were planets where you set down, built the first houses, and spent your four years of prep playing house like you were in the burbs back on Earth.

There were planets where you barely got the house up before the storms the weather satellites hadn’t seen nor predicted blew over you, and you spent four years just trying to survive and get enough built so the colonists coming after you wouldn’t die.

There were places where Murphy’s Law seemed to be in full effect, you lost half the team, but somehow managed to present a colony that looked tidy enough, so tidy the company was left asking “so what was the problem again?”

And then there was Fuge.

The Delfugiara was an M-class planet off the “beaten path,” inaccessible enough that the prep team was given a six-year stint instead of the normal four, Earth-like enough that they were sent down with a double team and livestock in sleepers, enough to get not just a colony but a town ready for the long-termers. It looked to be a Suburb Hop type of stay, what Marcel called Old McDonald’s Farm. They built their houses and their barns, thawed out their animals, and laid their fences.

And then the Taigups showed up.

Taig got to name them, because he brought the first one one, and Taig was three, Marcel and Stiggie’s son from their last stop. It looked sort of like a bunny, but the only place Taig had seen rabbits or hares was in picture files, so it was a Taigup, after, Siggie assumed, his father’s Marciup (an antelope-like creature on Tanner Three).

The Taigup liked the warmth of the house, about five degrees warmer than the surrounding area, which was in early-spring. It turned out it – and then the three others Taig brought home in quick succession – liked not only the warmth, but the lack of natural predators; their three-year-old would stand for them eating any number of things, but not His Pets.

They’d wondered at the lack of other small omnivores or herbivores. There were Taigups in the brush, but not massive numbers – enough to allow for reproduction over the number that were eaten by larger omnivores and the few big carnivores – but no mice-analogs, no dog-analogs, no badger-analogs. Nothing but Taigup.

When they came back to the house after a long day of Terradjusting to find sixteen Taigup where they’d had four, and the same the next three days as they spread them out like Free Kittens in a box, they began to understand.

“We’re going to have to get used to Taigup stew,” Marcel decided, as they pushed a box of the things out into the wilderness for the carnivores to eat. “Or we’re going to be drowning in bunnies.”

“I don’t think we can eat that fast.” Stiggie picked up a Taigup as it split itself into two. “Well, at least we can teach Taig exponential growth.”

(I was going to call it Welsh Taigup, even though that’s cheese, but I decided to go with something that actually involves bunny).

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/396804.html. You can comment here or there.

Paradox and… a story of Superheroes

Jul1

For [personal profile] imaginaryfiend‘s commissioned continuation of Returned Paradox

I was born to death.

I was born to the memory of a dead woman, forty weeks to the day after Paradox Maverick died, and I was told so, in whispers and glances and blasted macaroni and cheese on my birthday every year. I was born, it seemed when I was younger, to echo her back to my mother’s companions, to look like her in every way I could.

Sometimes I think that she did it on purpose, Paradox, tinkered with my genetics in the womb to put them off the scent, as it were, to make them keep looking in the wrong place and never think to look where they should have. I wonder, if she did that, if she had any idea how well she would succeed?

Here I am, now, exactly what they created, exactly what I created, and not what they would have had me be. Nothing, nothing, I might add, like Paradox Maverick, may she rot in a cold cell in the darkest corner of Hell.

I am Order. And today is my eighteenth birthday.

There will be macaroni and cheese. There will always be macaroni and cheese. And my mother will buy me a pretty dress, and I will wear it. It will be the last thing I wear that I did not choose myself. And it will be the last time I eat macaroni and cheese. Today, I am going to start my plans. Today, I am going to begin my empire.

~

“Bit serious, are you?”

The window was open. The window was not supposed to be open. Marciana looked up, frowned, and then felt her frown deepen from mere irritation to true anger.

“You don’t belong here.”

“Oh, but let’s be honest, neither do you.” The girl in the window was green, her hair blue, her wings – she had wings, humans did not have nor need wings – purple. She looked like she’d been dropped in a tye-dye pot. “You know it. All those tidy little notes in your journal. Didn’t anyone tell you that the primary flaw of villains is monologuing? Get in the habit and they’ll never stop. I’m Arsenic, by the way.”

“Lovely villain name. And I’m not a villain. I’m a hero. See,” she gestured at the tower they were in. “The Tower of Truth? Heroes live here.”

“Heroes and their kids. And Arsenic isn’t my villain name, it’s my given name.”

“Who names their kid Arsenic?” Because she was a kid, as much as Marciana was, maybe-eighteen, probably-less.

“Who names the daughter of two heroes Marsha?”

“It’s Marciana.”

“It’s Marsha with a flourish. Seriously. They knew they were going to let you grow up in the public eye. They knew they were already thinking of little Parry when you were born. Why in the world would they name you Marsha? Did they want you to turn evil?”

It was too much like her own thoughts. She squinted at the tye-dyed fairy. “Are you another one like Szec Mzip Wrisverhmersl?”

“Szeccie? Little pink goblin? No, Marsha, I’m not reading your mind. I’m not a mirror of your conscience – not like that, at least.”

“Then what are you? I mean, other than a green intruder.” She should be hitting the panic button. She should be calling in the Truth Troops. But she wasn’t panicked, and she didn’t want to see the Troops. Not now. Not with what she was planning.

“I’m you.” She waved both hands, making a blur and whirring noise like a flying bug. “Not like that. Not like Szeccie or any of the mirror-universe imposters.”

“Imposters, what?”

“Nevermind that. You people in the Truth Tower are awfully bad at telling truth, that’s all I have to say on the matter. No, I’m what you were supposed to be.”

It only took a second. Marciana was bright, after all, and her entire life had been haunted by the specter of what she was supposed to be. “You’re Paradox Maverick.” Her hand was on her blaster before she finished the sentence.

“I was. I’m Arsenic right now.” The green girl shrugged, looking entirely undisturbed. “Did you get any powers?”

“I did.” She didn’t want to admit that. “You know I haven’t told anyone else?”

“Neither have I. Of course, I haven’t told anyone I’m their enemies’ favorite troublemaker, either. You think I ought to?”

“Will they believe you? Nobody believes that I’m not.”

“Which is funny, all things considered. They think I’m…well, half of them think I’m Szeccie’s kid. Including my mother.”

“Wait, your mother thinks you’re a world-shifter’s kid? Your mother…?”

“I might be. It would suit my other me. Look, are you going to shoot me or what?”

“Your other you, what?” She set the blaster down but kept her hand on it.

“I’m not all Peri. I’m Arsenic, but there’s this little voice in the back of my head that is, or used to be, Paradox. I mean, sometimes it’s the other way around and she takes over. But for the most part, I’m me. Sennie.”

“Sennie?”

“Well, ‘Arse’ is a stupid nickname, isn’t it? Marsha?”

“Marciana. Yeah.” She was smiling. When was the last time that had happened? “So… why are you here?” Quick, think about business.

“Well.” She sat down on Marciana’s clean desk, one foot on the journal, leaving a smudge of dirt over Marciana’s declaration of self-hood. “Half of me was homesick. The rest of me was sick of being there, not being what they wanted. Watching their confused faces…”

“While they try to figure out who this cuckoo in their nest is, what she’s planning, why she doesn’t fit in.” The words tumbled out. She was half-standing. She sat down again, mortified. “Oh, Fillzbot.”

“No, no, you’re right. Exactly. They know about you. They think you’re me, too. Or sometimes they think you’re her, one of theirs, that died.” She paused. “Are you?”

“As far as anyone can tell – and everyone has looked – there’s nobody in here but me. It might have been easier if I really was the enemy.”

“Well… my folks are the agents of world domination, and yours want to protect truth and light. How do we go about being enemies of both?”

“We?”

“Well, who else have we got?” The green girl’ smile was pink, very, very pink. “And maybe if you have someone to talk to, you’ll stop monologuing.”

“So we become…” She thought about it for a moment. “Chaos and order. Paradox and reason. We’re monkeywrenchers. We’re the ones who tell them when they’re all being stupid. We crash wild schemes and stupid plans and bad press conferences.”

“Awesome.” She held out one long-fingered hand. “You have a deal, partner.”

~

I was born to defy expectations.

We were. We were born to be nothing our parents wanted. We were born to be trouble in their sides. We were born to legends we didn’t ask for, habits we didn’t have. We were born to ask questions. All the questions.

We are Order and Chaos. We are Madness and Reason. We are the Wrench in the Machine, and today is our eighteenth birthday.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/363365.html. You can comment here or there.

First Nesting

May29

For fflox‘s commissioned continuation of First Wind.

Yilly was falling, dropping like a rock, every attempt of his to fly, to find the air, falling, failing, freaking out. He had always been going to learn the feel, going to try the short drops with his high-level classmates, but there’d always been something more interesting, something more fun. Now there wasn’t any more time, and he was dropping from the high levels, right down to the flood zone and the river.

And then, there were his friends, his crawling-in-the-catacombs and splashing-in-the-river and staying-up-dancing friends, and there they were, just below him. Yilly cupped air and tried to slow himself. He didn’t want to hurt them, didn’t want to bring them down with them. But they were getting closer, closer. Mirro and Tanny swooped under Yilly and came up under him, grabbing his hands, pulling him up into a wind with them, while Lonoll did something complicated so she was standing up, looking Yilly in the face.

“Feel the air, Yill-ne-yill, find it in your face and your vents. Right there, right… there.”

As always, Lonoll could make sense when nobody else could, and Yilly found, for the first time, the way the air whispered across his vents and pushed up against his glides. “Oh…” It was more a prayer than an exclamation, as he suddenly understood what his parents had been speaking of. “Oh… I’m flying!”

He deserved the chittering Mirro and Tanny gave him, teasing him mercilessly for that one. “You’re flying me,” he allows. They were flying him. “You saved my life.”

“We need you.” Lonoll’s smile was broad, and her vents were tinged with red. Was she…

“Oh.” Another prayer. “But we don’t have a nest.”

“We do.” Mirro’s vents were turning red, too. “We found one. While you were in your high-classes.”

Yilly twitched his vents guiltily. “No more of those for me, not after today. You…” He could feel the wind, now, and shifted his glides and his vents to allow for the warmth of the updraft.

Lonoll took the opportunity to talk over him. “You brought us books, and those worksheets.”

“You went swimming with us, and showed us the secret caves.” Mirro picked up the thread. “And we didn’t mind your high-classes. You brought all that fun stuff back with you.”

“Besides.” Tanny was always more pragmatic. “We need a fourth to be a proper nest-group, so we couldn’t let you fall.”

Yilly laughed, dropped a body-length, and managed to restore his balance. “Good to know you’re thinking of me.”

“Flutter-brain.” Lonoll rubbed against him in a very pointed manner. Yilly swallowed an egg-sized lump of panic; he wasn’t up to that sort of flying yet, even if everyone was getting very red in the vents. “we’re always thinking of you.”

“And our nest.” Mirro rescued him, more or less, tugging him towards the cliff-face. “And our nest-group.”

“Come on.” Tanny fluttered and chattered in amusement. “Let us show you.”

Yilly managed to roll onto his back, catching the drafts as his friends – as his nest-group – tugged him towards the cliff face. Far above, he could see his parents’ nest, up in the highest levels.

He turned back to his nest-group, watching the girls’ vents flutter redder and redder. This was home now.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/347907.html. You can comment here or there.