The photos in the slideshow were taken by me just messing around with my camera. I love taking pictures.
The photos in the slideshow were taken by me just messing around with my camera. I love taking pictures.
This is the real Miss Kitty - the inspiration for the Miss Kitty in The Summer of the Frogs - tipped ear and all!
If one can do fan art of one's own characters, I did it. :) This is Nathan and Michael from Fragile Bones.
Art must start with an initial concept. After several thumbnails, this is the final design.
Ah! The good ole days! This is the 17 year old me doing page layout for the yearbook; I was co-editor my senior year.
The help. Can't work without my lap-warmer, Lyra. :)
46.
Thomas limped into my view a second time. Wretched, pitiable man. But so beautiful. The harbinger of what I could not guess at. But no doubt, a harbinger indeed! Every telling quirk in Fredrick's expression tells me the truth of it.
Uncapturable spirit.
His eyes, like the looking glass into the Other, pierce my soul until all that's left is a quaking in my very being. How can he look at one such as I and not recoil in horror? The rotten core of me should be wearing his terrible deformities, not his gentle spirit. My flesh reflects nothing but all the loveliness in the world, yet my soul is as decayed as all whom I carry.
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Catch up on the series here. Don't forget to vote and comment.
Tommy slithered, soft steps toward my bed. I raised my arms to him. He lifted me easily to my knees and held to me. I held to him. Like a child holds a toy once thought long gone.
"Are you ever very happy?" he asked me through the muffle of my hair.
I couldn't answer him. The idea as intangible as rain in the desert. The sand knows about it, but can't utter the words. It bothered me that I didn't know. But couldn't bring myself to worry about it overly.
"Am I ever?" I shrugged my shoulders. "Are you? Is Mom? Stian, so far away?"
He chuckled and shook his head. "I have considered it. This instant, I am." He tosseled my hair and gently yanked a bit. "Can you learn to be content?"
"You mean satisfied with what I've been given? Not wanting more?"
"I suppose so. You make it sound so bad."
"Isn't it?"
"I warned you not to ask about my past," He said calmly.
I couldn't answer Him. I had asked. He had warned me. I pushed
when He first refused. "We're just tools. Game pieces. Toys to be
played with. I'm not here because of my charity work on Earth."
"No. You were chosen."
I huffed. "I really don't want to hear it."
He chuckled, His eyes dancing merrily, glittering with tiny stars of
reflected flames. I frowned and cast my gaze back to the night sky spiraling
overhead with true stars. Constellations I had never seen in the
city cavorted far overhead. The tiny pricks of light filled my heart to
overflowing with wonder and awe. Thousands and thousands of them
scattered like splinters of glass across the velvet sky. I felt my lips pull
upward, in spite of myself, as I tilted my head back further to look at
them.
Did I really want to go back? Back to that lifeless place I used to
call home? Back into the unfeeling void? I could almost sympathize
with my old self. Stumbling in a jerking parody of living, exactly like a
zombie. Not even fully aware of the wounds that should have inflicted
painfully deep scars on my spirit - the already deadened wisp of a boy
that was beyond hurting - injuries I felt so keenly now that I was truly
free from that hollow mortal shell. The heartbeat of this place pounded
its slow, hypnotic rhythm. I could almost hear it, barely sense it deep in
my chest. Closing my eyes, I sank into it. Letting go. Losing myself to
it, finally.
Time, like the soft sigh of a sleeping babe or a clever turn of phrase in the hush of distant memories; it comes and goes.
Woe that it is so. No matter to which attitude we greet it.
It comes.
Swiftly or slow; it goes.
Would you weep for me? Would you rage with me? Would you laugh at the turning of its wheel?
Or holding hands, leap forth into that deep night where it matters not. Where time cannot grasp at our wrinkling flesh. Or touch strands of silvery hair.
Our stuttering hearts wind down. Would you stay with me? My head bowed in final supplication, with outstretched arms to greet it.
Swiftly, now, it goes.
How deeply does one have to go to find that final rest?
The line in the sand scares me. I stare at it with dread, longingly.
Yearning for a coward's way out, yet like a coward, fleeing from its inevitability.
From what deep well do these feelings flow? The pitch black where the soul hides self-eating.
Cannibalistic tendencies.
This wretched heart betrays me.
What's left?
What's left... is left weeping.