#WritingWonders 4.30 — If your MC met a psychic, what would she ask? Well, this one took a lot of thought because the following is deep background to the universe, but for obvious reasons not surfaced in any story. Yet.

The concept of a psychic is alien to her. The planet and the civilization have both gone through a few "revisions" since our time. For a hint of that, read about a major actor of that change in https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/110277659480504706. The society my MC lives in treats the belief in the supernatural, voices talking in your head, and invisible friends as a contagious mental disease that must be contained. Magical thinking, in our modern way of defining it, is a sign of dementia in an adult.

This doesn't mean that cold reading doesn't exist. People use it for interrogation and for conning people. Additionally, those people that perform "magic" also reveal hints of their thought process in the physical manifestation of the "magic." A keenly deductive person can figure out the magic in use, but because all people think differently it is difficult to fathom actual thoughts without lots of experience trying to do so.

Foretelling the future? My MC would think that absurd.

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#WritingWonders 4.29 — Does your MC have a weakness or Achilles heel that regularly trips her up? [Words changed to "magic" and "spell" to prevent having to explain stuff.]

She may seem confident, incredibly able, often personable, and very mature but she is well aware that what she presents is mostly a façade, a persona, a mask. Trained to act this way, she is also very observant. She uses whatever behavior patterns allow her to get the job done efficiently without hurting people doing it, so she can return to her books and the solitude necessary to read them.

However. In her heart. And physically. She's a rebellious teenager.

• She ran away from home to learn magic when her tutors refused to teach her. Somebody savaged and nearly murdered her two weeks later, but, hey, she did learn how to use magic to fight, and set the guy on fire.

• When a fights-trainer noticed she'd fought off a gang without getting hurt herself and wanted to train her, he got her to consider him by offering to train her in magical fighting.

• To keep her on track as a prizefighter, someone who wanted to use her gave her trainer a copy of the Impossible Spell. She accepted it greedily. That she actually figured out how to cast it set her up to be the key element in a terrorist plot.

• The mob wanted to use her magic fighting skills as a transporter to protect shipments and to train her as a bodyguard. She wanted none of it—until they offered teachers that would help her hone her most powerful offensive spell, the one she couldn't use reliably.

Is there a pattern here?

#excerpt: My keeper added, "—You know the city, but you'll need to know it like the back of your hand. You're also physically fit. You can fight. We maintain that and work on your magical skills—"

My heart leapt.  They'll teach me... magic?

The bed springs creaked as stepped back onto it. I sat crosslegged. I said, "I'm listening," but I really wasn't.

I was such a fool.  So immature.  

So easily bribed with candy.

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#WritingWonders 4.27 — ** She Has a Birthday in Autumn ** [Antagonist POV]

I have no birth anniversary because I was raised in a culture were women were chattel. My twin brother Harvest Days did, and when he got old enough I insisted he celebrate it with a raisin-nut loaf, the only sweet he'd eat without, "Not food!" I raised him after mother died, and I adored him. He was a very talented thaumaturge, so very much more so than I, probably because he was quite autistic. I had to learn to read and write to teach him from books he had no patience for. When I worked to make his audition for a job with foreign thaus successful, too many people discovered I had a unique talent myself. When my mother had named me Rainy Days because I was born on a rainy autumn day in the high desert, maybe she had foreseen something.

But...

I was a woman.

That did not forestall men from coveting my talent. When I refused to marry the most ambitious, and my father backed me up, he ruined me to make me a slave. The foreigner thaus desperately needed me, but saving me didn't free me.

They had greedy masters.

The battles over what I could do eventually led me to destroy the civilization that so badly mistreated me because I was a woman, that mistreated my brother because they thought he was less than a man, and murdered my father because him being a hostage didn't control me. Later, I ensured the nation that freed me only to use me, fell.

Over time, I lost wars and founded nations. Things like calendars and histories were forgotten and created multiple times.

I do like to celebrate other people's birth anniversaries, however! If you invite me, know that I prefer glazed fruit tarts with caramel custard on a ginger-cinnamon crust. Raisin-nut loaf will make me cry.

[author retains copyright]

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#WritingWonders 4.27 — What types of scenes are the easiest for you to write? Do you know why? CW: Wishy-washy logic.

No type of scene seems intrinsically easier to write than others. What makes a scene easier to write is how well I understand what I expect to happen and how well I understand what the characters are thinking, i.e., their agenda, before I begin writing. Sex scene, fight scene, heated argument, friendly dialogue: all basically the same. How long scenes take prepare for is proportional to their intricacy.

In the last novel I finished, one scene proved particularly painstaking. I discarded part or most of it five different times because I just didn't understand the woman who was the chapter antagonist, and kept getting her wrong.

The climactic scene that tied everything together also proved recalcitrant and turned into a slog (no rewrites, tho). It included the MC, twelve secondary characters with speaking parts and conflicting agendas, the main antagonist (Rainy Days if you've been following me), and an alien envoy who is part of an exchange of hostages while suing for peace. Three are a new type of post-human, one of which is one of the MC's lovers. The other lover is on the other side of the iron bars. Both lovers are realizing they could be buddies, which messes with the MC's mind at the wrong time. Additionally, there are a half-dozen non-speaking actors. It takes place in a high security prison that the MC has broken into because [spoilers].

I think I stalled out for the better part of a month before my intuition told me to go ahead and write it. That 8K scene took days to write.

An epilogue to the novel is largely unwritten because a key secondary character who's now the MC's friend wants a sequel written about her. She's campaigning to become a major antagonist and is heavily hinting she's sorta evil. The MC is oblivious, but any perceptive reader won't be and I don't want to set expectations. I'm not wanting to write that sequel at this point. This final 1K is proving difficult not because it isn't easy but because if I write it, it would feel like canon. In the meantime, #IAmRevising.

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#WritingWonders 4.25 — Does your MC see themself as a hero, or as something else?

A victim.

Her earliest memories are of her parents' funeral. She was raised with the blood money of the person who sent them out to die, her life controlled in every aspect by her until she ran away to learn magic. Her childhood friend abandoned her. She was savaged on the road and nearly murdered, but she learned to fight with magic to save herself. Afterward, people recognized her skills and manipulated her into being their sharp tool.

That said, she recognizes what being victimized feels like. Though she rather be left alone to read her books and practice her magic, she often fights for those she knows or for those who work for her to protect them from what she's been through.

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#WritingWonders 4.24 — Are there any tropes that you purposely chose to include or avoid?

I don't keep up with tropes but, like any idea out there, I no doubt write about the same things others have written about before, ad nauseum. I've been an author for 47 years, though I ought subtract the 14 years I didn't write because of burn-out.

As far as tropes "you purposely chose" goes: There are none.

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#WritingWonders 4.23 — The Invitation

Bolt held her wings flared out, making the metallic bits in the feather vanes sparkle in the sun coming through the skylight. She was either excited or very pleased with herself, or both. She practically vibrated as he handed me the sculpted silver foil-surface card, made to look like angel feathers.

I looked. I blinked. I held it out at arms length, as if that would somehow bring into focus words that didn't quite make sense. To me. "You were invited to a masquerade ball back where you grew up?"

"Yes. I want you to be my plus-1."

I snorted and started laughing.

Her wings flagged a bit and I reached for her shoulder.

I grinned. "You're planning on causing trouble, aren't you?" I waggled a finger at her and she perked up.

We'd both been pardoned for our criminal past. Trouble for us had multiple meetings.

She held open the card with both hands and warped over a primary feather to point at names. "The city directorate and commerce are putting it on. Those featherbrains that blackballed me when I tried to get into long distance hauling will be there."

"You're planning of rubbing your status change in their face. You're going as Captain Stormchaser, I suppose?"

"The hero who helped Director Rainy Days establish the nation? I'm wearing Stormchaser's actual antique armor daily... So... Why not wear her uniform? I'm having one tailored for me."

"Who would I go as?"

"You'll go!? You'll be my plus-1?" Her eyes sparkled now.

"You saved my flank and got yours burnt up as a result. The least I could do is the small stuff from time to time. It's at an aerie, though." Her hometown was a day angel-predominate city with buildings you needed to fly up to, or within.

She grinned devilishly. "I was thinking you could go as Rainy Days."

I rubbed my chin. "She's a giant—with wings. I don't have any."

"Make them part of the costume. You can jump magically between platforms, something only she, you, and very few people can do."

"She'd fly."

"Yeah. Suppose."

"Her's is pearl white complexion. You may have noticed mine is somewhat greenish."

"I've seen you wear washout skin dye plenty of times. Before you say it, I know you can paint on skin patterns. You did that for years, and I know you were good at it." Most people had from puberty; I'd only got a few weeks ago. Rainy Days' patterns continually shifted visibly over minutes and I wasn't sure she actually had control over what presented. Nobody did, except me. If I thought about do it, I could change my spots.

I said, "I have a better idea."

Bolt looked crestfallen.

"I get it. Rainy Days and Captain Stormchaser together would be awesome. But... I could go as my mother!"

"The singer Midnight?" Her eyes moved as she considered that.

I may not have inherited my mother's good looks, or coal black skin color, but I could sing and often practiced in the shower, as Bolt had learned. I sang a show tune: Don't Cry for Me, Equatorim. Her song helped me visualize the stately woman I'd seen on so many album covers, but of whom I had no personal pictures with me as a child. She died before I was five.

Bolt stepped back, watching as wavy black patterns slowly advanced across my arms and everywhere else. I was thinking sound waves, them vibrating, leaving wave traces behind, filling up every patch of skin.

"Wow. Amazing," Bolt said. "Nobody will recognize you—if you dye your hair black. Red won't do. I can carry you between levels."

"I'll reserve the jumping until I need to startle somebody."

Bolt started chuckling. I joined in. It wasn't maniacal laughing but, by the smile on Bolt's face, what we shared was close enough.

I'd have to wear contacts over my emeraline eyes but, with my hair up, I could wear a velvet black fedora to cover my horns (Midnight's spiraled). I'd need flowing knee-length Diva M's black dress with lots of black lace and maybe a sequins collar. The black on black with black so appealed to my goth soul! Me singing would perfect the costume.

Of course, my voice couldn't compare to my mother's. Nobody's ever would. For this, it would be good enough.

However, she had also been a spy for the Directorate. The reason she'd died so young. Bolt wanting to cause mischief at the masquerade resonated with me pretending to be my mother. Not being recognized as myself presented lots of devious possibilities, especially once Bolt pointed out the people who had hurt her. I was a devil-girl, never forget that.

"This might actually be fun!"

[Author retains copyright]

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#WritingWonders 4.22 — What does your MC like about your antagonist?

Keeping humans from going extinct.

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#WritingWonders 4.21 — Do dreams play a role in your story?

Maybe?

Two stories WiP:

In one she has a nightmare, but it turns out it was real and a "drug" made her forget it in the same manner you can't usually remember dreams well. So, not a dream but it does set up a mystery that if she solves it and figures it out, and who did it, somebody is gonna have a lot of 'splaining to do.

In the other, she has a dream that she wakes in. It allows her to discuss some foreshadowing for half-way through the story. Not sure if it won't get revised out. The dream continues into a recurring PTSD nightmare that queues into a scene a couple of chapters hence.

It is hard to say if the second dream and nightmare play a role so much as a way to progress the narrative in a non-standard way. There is certainly nothing symbolic or spiritual, or disjointed about it. They aren't like typical dreams, where other than mentioning a character woke without a sense of dreaming, or woke from a nightmare they can't get the gist of, there's little more to them in my stories.

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#WritingWonders 4.20 — What is your idea of a perfect day? [Culled interview question.]

Now I had a genuine smile—and Cliftown cringedr. Was I really that bad an interview guest? I almost asked that as a retort, but kept my cool.

I said, "I wake up, take a morning run, and after breakfast I go to the library."

"The library? Really?"

"The World Magic Wing of the Home University Library has a rare books collection thorough enough to have the books referred to in any book you might read. Like this one, mine, that's 500 years old. They don't let you check them out—though probably I could do that now with my status change. The room is climate controlled with lights that follow and hover around you, comfy chairs, and good tables. I can easily spend the day there, though I will admit I've had a library assistant wake me up when I've fallen asleep."

"You fall asleep in a library?"

"A good book can have the same calming effect as good music. Don't worry, they take the book you're reading away so you never drool on it..."

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#WritingWonders 4.19 — What things from your world / story would you like to exist in real life?

The disappearance of patrilineality, and a world where your gender, no matter how you present, makes you more or less, equal, dominant, able, or acceptable.

(The world is extremely diverse, too, but [spoilers].)

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#WritingWonders 4.18 — Does your MC have a love interest? (#RomanceWonders special edition.)

In the story currently under revision: Two intimate. (Impending wedding, partly political, partly about sharing both, lots of confusion.) A third who had a crush on her, who declared unambiguously he's ready to play. But, because the MC's good friend needed it, she pushed him at her. What followed caused even more confusion. And a fourth, who was a nerdy childhood friend, a bff really, whom she thought had abandoned her but had been pushed away by her guardian. Her memory of him continually bothered her all these years as a fabulated paradigm of masculinity. Now that she's reconciled with him, she's definitely interested. Lots of longing.

So, yes. All this happening over a period of 72 hours, and a couple hours a week later.

What fun to write!

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#WritingWonders 4.17 — "What qualities do you find attractive in a person?" she asked me. [Secondary character speaking.]

After the interview, I got me some time off with a wink and a nudge from the lady Director who didn't want to attend the afterparty (probably worried she might punch someone whose name started with C). The team sat at other tables. I chatted up lady Cherry Blossom Cliftown, the Celeb Interviewer cause she was fun to needle. I guess her manager and crew realized the interview had put her in a really bad mood and was happy someone else handled her, or I was her type. I didn't know which.

"Bolt, Bolt, Bolt," she said, and I grabbed the shot glass as she gestured so it sprayed the table, not my face. "Is it Captain Bolt, Lady Bolt, Girlfriend Bolt—?"

"Just friend. Captain of her guard once I trained, but friend first." I nursed an apple juice. Very rare. There were a handful of places cold enough for apples. Wasn't going to fly drunk in any case later, or be a cheap date.

"Perfect. Girlfriend." She propped her chin with her hand and still wobbled. "Why friend? What attracted you to her?" Her emphasis stated unambiguously what she really thought!

"Well, you ain't gonna remember, so why not."

"Remember?" She patted a pocket but missed her purse, so didn't grab a notebook. She grinned. "Good memory," she tapped her head, almost missing.

I was inclined to fly her home so she woke in my bed, just to see if she'd remember and to witness her panic. I grinned. Might be worth cleaning up her puking. I lowered my voice and said, "For all me flaws, she decided I was worth knowing and protecting,"

"How sho?"

"You know we were pardoned for bunch of things, right?"

"Right. She wrote the list down in open court! Nine other people."

"I was one. We was haulin' us weeds and herbs when she told me she'd been blackmailed into working for the boss, but didn't understand why I was working for him. Told her I'd wanted to open a moving company back home, but I couldn't get a license because I hadn't started and nobody would hire me because they found out I wanted to compete with them. I am a strong flyer; can transverse levitate 'specially well. So I needed to raise money to buy me own equipment. The boss got me jobs—then him some real bad *in*criminating evidence."

"Tricked? En-trapped-ed?"

"Pretty much. But guess what? She just nodded. She says to me, 'We're the same.'"

Cherry reached for the shot glass, but I slid it out of reach and watched her pout.

"Not judgmental, she was. When the boss made me the patsy messenger for all sort of bad news to mess with her, she didn't get mad. She commiserated, never telling me she plotted to get even. In the shoot-out what happened, a goon splashed me with demon fire. After the coppers arrested the boss and were about to arrest me and her, she magic-jumped to me, frightened off the scuz copper holding me, then jumped us away onto the roof of building where we hid. She later healed my burns though it took a lot out of her—then gave me what the boss had paid her before the sting op went down! She told me to start my company,. With that and my savings, I could!"

"But you stayed?"

"Flapping stuff went down before dawn. Director Rainy Days wanted my lady for her current gig and had her coppers cordon off the city. She tried to escape and took me with her. Sadly, we failed to break free. In the fight after, I impressed Rainy Days, I did, fighting Her Highness to keep her from almost killing my lady, thus my current gig and my bling antique armor. Weren't easy, no way, but how can you not love a person who believes in you so much they risk themselves to save you? It's insanely attractive."

And, I thought, you'd better be blackout drunk, Cherry Blossom, 'cause that's secret, and you'd better not blab. I quickly poured her another shot from the expensive emerald green bottle.

On her second try, she found her mouth. After a cough, Cherry said, "She doesn't come across as nice in interviews."

"Yeah. She's a bit weird."

[Author copyright retained.]

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#WritingWonders 4.15 — Name one thing that's really difficult for your MC, but not [for] other people.

She sees it happen all the time with people and she can't really understand it. Raised in the midst of wealth from the age of 5 when she lost her parents, she spent her every waking moment studying and training, or when not doing that, putting it all to use running an estate, hosting events, and doing community service. Even when she rarely got to play, her play time somehow got twisted into practice and testing.

She ran away.

What she took with her was the conception that all things were tools, created for a purpose no matter how pretty or functionless. She thinks the same way about people, but understands viscerally that they are no different from her and have feelings about being used as a tool, and she doesn't want to make them feel what she feels. This affects her ability to make friends and understand love. She doesn't want to use people, and is driven to protect them.

She is unable to become attached to things as other people can.

That doesn't mean she doesn't treasure things like her book of magic or the jackknife she won off a gang member. Or that she won't protect them. But, if she lost them or had to give them up, she would and wouldn't resent it. Living homeless, or in a hostel, or home is all the same: a transient state.

She's repeatedly threatened people who push her beyond where she wants to go as they use her as their sharp tool (i.e., employ her)—that if they continue she'll disappear. Run away. Never look back. Start all over again. And. She has. Without resentment. Treasuring the lessons learned.

Her freedom is more important than her things. People even more so. In her mind, getting attached to things is just plain weird, and she can't really understand it. Accept it, yes. Understand it, no. If it weren't for people's actions, she'd think they were pretending.

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#WritingWonders 4.14 — "...and you are about the marry the hunk! So, tell me, what qualities do you find attractive in him?" [Interview question 7 and #romanticWonders.]

Mated for life was the proper term, which discounted the political reasons for doing something rarely done and ideally so self-restricting, and hunks was plural not singular, but quibbles. I'd been attracted to both guys, the supposedly do-nothing diplomat related to Rainy Days and [spoilers]. For one, both proved to be extraordinary... but for entirely different reasons. Trainability is important!

Cliftown sang, "You're blush-ing!"

I touched the back of a hand to a cheek to hide my dismay. Indeed, warm. There were things I wouldn't share publicly. I could share the reasons, though.

I looked into the floating lens and said, "Confidence. Knowing what they are about, and knowing when they don't—and being willing to learn. I like that." It's what I'm pretending to be like every second I'm dealing with people. "And there's the knowing how to treat a woman. It's how she wants to be treated."

"What about that fist fight—"

"You mean the picture in broadsheets?" I chuckled, grinning. "I'd pretended to be someone I wasn't and he thought I was entrapping him, and," I scratched the nape of my neck, "I did try to trip him. Failed. I did learn that he's as good a fighter as I am, but with a longer reach. I think we started admiring each other after that."

Cliftown shook her head—our bloody noses. My torn ear. She obviously didn't understand physical sentimentality.

I added, "But once we got the preliminaries out of the way, each had a way of treating me that I liked. Listening, for one. Opening up about the pain in their past, and the good things. Hugs are good. Just being around... him, I learned I had the capacity to love, and that I could trust I was loved back."

"Each?" Cliftown asked. Um. Yep. I'd slipped. Wasn't going to answer that I found it especially attractive that the guys decided they could be buddies. Wasn't saying that aloud!

"Next question," I returned, blushing again.

[Author retains copyright.]

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#WritingWonders 4.12 — Does your MC have a healthy lifestyle?

That's a loaded question! While she sticks generally to an ovolactovegetarian diet, can sleep on demand like a marine, gets plenty "meditation with mathematics!" by practicing performing miracles, and keeps herself in fighting trim—the latter is problematic.

As a prizefighter, a mob bodyguard, and now "working" for the "government," she does a lot of fighting. Considering the number of times she's had her nose broken and suffered pressure cuts, she'd look like scarred a 20th century boxer if it weren't for physicians practicing modern healing miracles. She's nearly been beaten to death twice, bled to death once (and barely revived), had a leg bone replaced, and too much more to enumerate in just four years. She has PTSD for feeling she was responsible for a gang war.

She often acknowledged she wouldn't get out of her current job alive (though she did). She's certain it's especially true of current "government" job.

Not a healthy life-style.

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#WritingWonders 4.11 — The real Cherry Cliftown, the Celeb Interviewer in the saintly porcelain flesh(!), stopped me outside the loo and asked, "Lady Bolt. What annoys you the most about—"

"—my friend?" I looked for a levitating lens, but this part of Studio Home looked like any other office corridor. Bare corrugated fabric brown walls, anemic spot lights, red exit sign. No lens. Still: "This ain't going over broadcast or somethin?"

"She is your friend, not just someone you're hired to guard? Right?" She frowned as she eyed my spiked hair and cheek piercings. Real gold, them.

Her lack of observational skill made me want to give her a cross-eyed stare of dismay, but I kept my jaw shut. I wore the centuries old antique armor worn by one of the most famous day angel grunts in all the history of Home! A certified hero. You know her name. I know her name Wearing it, I was all but stamped Di-rect-tor-ate-certified myself. Made entirely of relic-level remnants, it was. Rainy Days, who I nearly killed three weeks ago, had bribed me with the armor for a make-sure I'd train to become my friend's bodyguard. As if I wouldn't have, asked di-rectly; gotta negotiate, natch. Must'ave impressed her—nobody had almost succeeded in killing her in centuries.

I settled for chuckling into my wing, before saying, "Not gonna say we're besties, and we worked for the same scary dude for awhile, but she saved my life and I returned the favor when Rainy Days tried to incinerate her." I pointed at the many red and some still bandaged burns peppering my seat-side and back legs. "I wouldn't do that for any random devil-girl. Look, I'm okay with ya reporting that and so'd she be. We razz each other all the time."

Cliftown looked dubious, considering the meltdown and yelling that happened with those first questions before the break. That my friend had been using the street name Night Mare spoke volumes that she was some kinda scary. If ya didn't know her, to know it was mostly an act, someone pretending to be an adult really well.

I added, "Buuuut, you might wanna leave the Director's name out of it." I gave a toothy grin.

"*I'm just trying to figure the her out. In just a few weeks, she rose from a nobody to the second most important—"

I fluffed my feathers in front of her face, rustling them to get her attention. "Ah don't think she could ever uh been 'nobody.' Ya saw the list of crimes she got pardoned for? That doesn't count that she's done saved people. Lots of people, Home City's population being among them, which answers your question."

"How so?"

"What annoys me most is that devil-girl is completely clueless about things, pretty much like you Daisy... Um, Cherry."

The woman had taken out a quill to write on the back of her interview questions. She looked up, the point on her tongue, red bushy-brows sinking into a glare. Similarly pale reddish eyes flicked to the neck bones in the armor. They were real, very much so, and contained congealed magic. I could tell it was what they call a rebuttal when she said, "She's possibly the most focused person I've ever met."

"Focused." I blew air through my lips. "Yeah. So focused she sees da beetle on the redwood tree, but not the rotted log she's about to trip over! It's annoying that she goes out of the way to help little people like me, almost getting herself killed, but always risking and losing stuff, even herself. She's got a heart bigger than any one I've ever met, and once she's your friend she'll tell you the truth even if it hurts, then do a make-sure so you do your best. People follow her because they know she'll have their back."

I started gesticulating widely with my wings and arms, causing Cherry the Celeb Interviewer to stumble back. I was riled up.

"While she may have done criminal things, she also does the right thing or makes it right. She even faked a deadbeat's murder so she could take him somewhere to heal him so the boss wouldn't find out. 'I'm evil,' she says. 'Who'd want me as a friend,' she says. Flapping idiot! Yes, it annoys the flap out of me!" I shouted.

As I stomped by her in a mock huff, I heard papers drop. I looked back to see the interview questions slowly zig zag to the carpet, and grinned.

I'd give my life for that friend who saved me instead of saving herself. Next time Rainy Days, Director of Home or what the flap, tries to mess with my devil-girl, I ain't gonna miss!

[Author copyright retained]

[Poor, poor Cherry Cliftown, the comedy relief. —RS]

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WritingWonders 4.10 — Name one unusual thing in your MC's home.

The manor on the estate she ran away from had a library. She took it for granted as children are wont of anything provided in their environment, but she appreciated the thousands she shared with her friend, Feldspar, as they studied together.

When they were young.

After he abandoned her, she appreciated she could become immersed for hours and ignore some of her endless studies by being stubborn. She'd later decide her stubbornness was why her guardian refused to provide tutors to teach her "magic," labeling it "Not lady-like."

She was as wrong on that as she was wrong about Feldspar.

Much later she realized that some of her books, many multiple centuries old, were editions never redacted by the Directorate. They contained "politically dangerous" material often censored.

It was from these books that Feldspar helped her learn to perform miracles.

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#WritingWonders 4.8 — Interview question 6

"What is something you never leave home without?"

"You're hoping I'll say something fluffy like breath mints or my messenger bag, don't you?"

Cliftown gulped, justifiably worried where I might take this.

"Well, I do have a tin of Spicy Jam's Gingermints; never know when you'll kiss someone." I grinned to show my teeth. I really didn't have the Kiss of Death. A total misconception I'd nurtured.

Cliftown hazarded a nervous smile, and pointed at the tome still on my lap from the last question.

I nodded, "That, too. Never pays to be bored. I've also used it in my bag to shield against a kick. Worked well, but I think I'll go with something else I aways carry. Bolt. My trophy."

Something bright flashed in the dark beyond the stage lights. I raised my hands and caught the thing that was wider than my hand with a clap. I triggered the bone-handled jackknife.

The mechanism sprung loudly.

The six-inch chromed-steel blade flashed and Cliftown jumped off her stool, stumbling back. She stuttered, "T-t-t-t—that's illegal." And razor sharp, too! From how the woman shook, I'd be willing to wager she'd been mugged once at knife point.

I levitated the knife, spinning in the air above my palm.

"A woman gang member took exception that her guy wolf-whistled me, then tried to slit my throat when I hid in a dark alley. I took her toy away from her. Didn't get to mug anybody with it again."

Her eyes still locked on the knife, she asked, "W—what happened?"

"I tricked her into running face first into a wall. Since I now theoretically help make the laws, I'd argue it isn't illegal for me. I used it to save lives."

Still standing, my interviewer asked, "I may regret this, but how?"

I rotated my play toy to the horizontal, aligned to the space between a person's ribs—before pointing it away from anybody. I pantomimed throwing the knife with my hands, then with the heal of my hand, pushing it in. "I had to heal both the person I saved and my assassin, whom I stabbed. The whys and wherefores were complicated, let's leave it at that."

I clicked the knife closed. "Never leave home without it."

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Structure fire smoke, Screaming.

Her recurring #nightmare is in the midst of urban gang warfare, where she is a bodyguard not a combatant. This sentence from the #SFF #WIP is how she experiences it: I saw a strangely silent city block ravaged by riot, windows broken, smoke rising, and wagons smashed—with a bloody snow white day angel running by, his feathers on fire, mutely screaming because he didn't have a mouth or much of a face.

She has PTSD. She experienced that.

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