The apartment was cheap, but not suspiciously so, especially given the relatively decrepit state of it. It was a 1 bedroom affair, the building itself constructed at some point before the Great Depression, and it certainly showed its age. The bathroom was prone to mold, the windows let in a draft even when closed, and the fact that it was up 6 flights of stairs in a building where the elevator seemed perpetually out of order certainly didn't help. However, beyond these usual allowances made for an affordable apartment in a city such as mine, there were no outward signs that anything wrong with the place. There were never any strange noises, unusual cold spots in the center of rooms, no eerie lights. For all intents and purposes, the apartment appeared utterly mundane.
It took me a frankly embarrassing amount of time to notice the door. 7 months in fact. I've never been much of a night owl, and on the rare occasions when I did have reason to be up in the wee hours my time was generally spent in someone else's bedroom.
At first, when I noticed the door, I assumed that I was hallucinating. I was, after all, in a fairly inebriated state, having just returned from a rather pleasant evening of laughter and debauchery. I already had experienced considerable difficulty in extricating my key from my apartment's lock, so I figured it was more likely that something had gone wrong with my perception rather than the unlikely scenario that a wood paneled door had suddenly materialized in my living room where previously there had only been wall.
It was old fashioned looking, with a shiny brass knob and wood the color of old leather. I shook my head for a moment and blinked, squinting at the object. The door was still there. I rubbed my eyes and closed them, counting down from 10. When I'd finished, I opened my eyes again. The door was still there. I'm not exactly sure what I thought counting down from 10 was supposed to accomplish. Beyond one mercifully brief experience with salvia at a very bad party, I'd never experienced hallucinations before, so I was sort of going off of what I'd seen in movies and TV shows.
There was something intensely unnerving about the door. It emanated a feeling of primal wrongness, I instinctually knew that I was gazing at something totally in violation of the natural order. It took a lot of willpower to do what I did next.
Having exhausted all other apparent options to my disorganized mind, I moved on to the next logical stage of inquiry; I tried to open it. The doorknob was cold to the touch, arctic even. It felt like touching the inside of a freezer. A shiver ran down my back, though I can't be sure in retrospect if it was entirely from the temperature. I tried to turn the knob. It didn't budge.
An immense sigh of relief escaped my lungs, releasing a breath that I didn't know I was holding in. Trying to think of what else I could do, I pulled out my phone and snapped a quick photo of the thing, sending it to my landlord, with a caption somewhere along the lines of "wtf is this dude, y is there a new door???"
Nodding sagely to myself, as if I had succeeded in doing anything of note, I stumbled my way into my bedroom and locked the door before falling into blissful slumber.
I awoke to the incessant screeching of my alarm clock loudly informing me that it was 7 o' clock, about 6 hours from when I had fallen asleep. I slammed my fist against "off" button and rubbed the sleep from my eyes with my other hand. In following with my usual morning routine, I then pulled out my phone and checked through my notifications.
Alongside the usual torrent of internet pseudo-acquaintances posting pictures of their brunches and whatnot was a text message from my landlord. "What are you talking about Christina", it read, "is this photoshop or something?"
At first, I didn't understand what he was referring to, but when the rusted gears of my sleepy (and hungover) brain finally started turning, I immediately jumped out of bed and scuttled over to the spot where the door had been just 6 hours prior. I did so with the intent of recording a video to further prove its existence to my skeptical landlord... but I was greeted with nothing but wall.
I texted my landlord an apology, lying and saying it was just a poorly thought out prank. Then I popped into my car and drove down to the local electronics store to purchase a camera from the grumpy underpaid college student behind the register.
Making my way over to the photography section, I searched a long while for the option that simultaneously fit my budget and the requirements for my investigation. Eventually, I found just the item.
It was a trailcam, the sort of thing hunters and geriatrics with too many acres of land and not enough hobbies use to observe wildlife. It had an SD card with enough space for several hours of blurry, black and white nightvision video, and most importantly it was cheap. I paid for my prize with the surly cashier and made my way happily back to my apartment.
I set it up securely in front of where the door had previously appeared, and, feeling like a genius, went about the rest of my day. I fell asleep that night secure in the knowledge that by morning I would have proof of what I had seen the night before.
The next morning, I rushed over excitedly to my living room, feeling like a child on Christmas morning. My giddy excitement died as I stepped into the living room, noticing the complete lack of the trailcam. Old Saint Nick appeared to have shit in my stocking.
I made my way back to the electronics store, forced once again into interacting with the student behind the register for whom my very existence seemed to be an inconvenience. Upon noticing my arrival, he sighed heavily. "Can I help you ma'am?" he said, emphasizing the last word with the same inflection one might say intestinal parasite.
"I'm looking for a cheap camera that will stream video directly to my computer." I said, trying my best to avoid mimicking the man's petulant tone.
Shrugging his shoulders and releasing another drawn out sigh, the cashier shuffled his way over to the photography section and picked out a small camera, rather similar to the last one I purchased, but approximately twice as much in terms of cost. "Do you have anything cheaper?" I asked, trying my best to sound polite.
"No." declared the cashier, with all the compassion of an exterminator crushing a cockroach beneath a steel toed boot.
I ended up paying the exorbitant price on my already abused credit card, and grumpily stalked back to the apartment to set up the new equipment, knowing I wouldn't get to see it after the night was over.
Nevertheless, I had to know how the door got there, and I needed to have irrefutable evidence.
The process to set up the new camera was a bit more involved than the last. There was all manner of fiddling about with connecting the device to my WiFi network and installing some new software to my computer, but by the time it was over it successfully uploaded footage directly to my hard drive where I could watch it at my leisure.
I went to bed that night wondering what I would do with the footage after I acquired it. After all, I couldn't really go to the police with it, could I? Excuse me officer, I imagined myself saying, but a mysterious door appears in my apartment at night, and I was wondering if you could send someone around to take a look? I'd end up institutionalized. Similarly, it's not like I could go to the newspapers either. I live in a big city, and the reporters have more important fish to fry than transient doors.
At some point while I pondered my options, I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew I was awakened by the banshee cries of my alarm clock, angrily informing me that it was once again 7 o' clock.
I jumped out of bed, excitedly moving over to my computer to check the footage, finding that there was about 5 hours of video. I had turned on the camera at around 10 o' clock PM, so that meant whatever happened to the camera occurred at about 3 AM.
I set the video to fast forward and watched it carefully. The first 2 hours or so showed nothing, just the regular blank wall. At exactly 12 o' clock, however, static engulfed the screen, and suddenly the old wooden door simply appeared, as if it had always been there. I rewound the footage and played it at normal speed, trying to discern anything that would show how the door suddenly manifested in the wall of my apartment, but the static was far too heavy to tell. The video simply got incredibly distorted for around 10 seconds, and suddenly the static dissipated and there was the door.
Even on video, just looking at it gave me the chills. That sense of complete and utter wrongness came through even from the screen. I shivered slightly and set the video on fast forward yet again. There was no change in the door for nearly 3 hours, but as the video crept closer and closer to the end, I switched it back to normal speed with about a minute to spare.
As I watched, the door began to slowly open. There was no microphone built into the camera, but I could imagine the ancient hinges creaking. I could feel my palms begin to sweat as I stared, transfixed. I glanced at the time remaining on the video, it was only around 30 seconds.
As the video progressed onwards, the door eventually swung fully open, revealing a black, yawning void beyond it. Static began to gather at the corners of the screen, increasing in intensity as I vaguely discerned something moving in the darkness. The quality was rapidly degrading, and I couldn't tell any specifics, but it moved in an almost spider-like manner, skittery and deeply unnerving. It seemed just about to come into view when the footage fully dissolved into static and the video ended abruptly.
I leaned back in my chair, contemplating my next move. While the video had certainly convinced me that I wasn't just going crazy, I knew that it wouldn't exactly convince the average person. I could easily have added in the static with editing, and the vague movement behind the door could just be computer generated effects or some sort of puppet. After a few minutes of pondering, I came up with an idea.
---
"I'm sorry, what?" exclaimed Lilith, who was trying hard not to choke on her iced coffee.
"A door. It appears in my apartment at exactly midnight. I have it on video", I replied, sliding my phone across the table of the coffee shop.
I first met Lilith in college, where we shared a course on the history of Gothic literature. She was a perfect picture of the stereotypical goth, with pierced septum, dyed black hair, pentacle earrings, and a wardrobe whose diversity of color could charitably be compared to that of a raven. We hadn't spoken in a long time, but I figured if there was anyone I should contact about this sort of thing, it would be her.
I'd condensed the 5 hours of footage down to a few minutes with the help of a free online video editor, and watched in slight amusement as Lilith's brow furrowed, her eyes glued to the screen. After the video ended, she seemed utterly amazed.
"Any thoughts?" I asked, pulling back my phone.
"This is some sort of joke, right? You're screwing with me?" she asked, utterly bewildered by what I had just shown her.
"No joke. No screwing around. I figured you'd be the one to ask about this, because of the whole, you know..." I said, gesturing at the leviathan cross emblazoned on her black t-shirt.
Lilith rolled her eyes at me and fidgeted nervously with one of her bracelets. "I'm not sure Christina, this seems a little bit outside of my pay grade. I don't really know what you expect me to do."
"I just need a witness of some kind. What I've got here isn't really enough to prove anything on its own, but if someone else sees it that might lend me a bit of credibility. If some random chick goes to the news complaining about a mysterious door appearing in her living room at midnight that's nothing, but if I get a witness then they might have to listen to me. Plus, I figured maybe you could, I don't know, set up some form of protective circle or sigil or something." As soon as the last words left my lips, I felt like a moron, but Lilith actually seemed to perk up a little bit.
"I mean, I guess that makes sense. How about tonight? I can come over at about 11 o' clock so we have a little bit of time to get ready", she said, a tinge of excitement in her voice.
"Sound's like a plan then, I'll text you my address. I really appreciate you doing this for me." We got up from the booth, exchanged hugs, and went our separate ways. I was skeptical about how much good Lilith's "magickal" expertise would do with regard to the unearthly door, but I had mainly mentioned it to get her interested.
I wish I hadn't.
---
About 12 hours later, I heard a knock at the door (my front door, in this case, not the impossible one). I peeked through the peephole, saw it was Lilith, and I ushered her inside. She had brought with her a black leather bag, bulging with various books, candles, jars, and other occult accoutrements.
"That's a lot of stuff", I commented, gesturing towards the bag, "are you sure you'll need all of it?"
She shrugged. "I figured it's better to be safe than sorry. I'd rather be overprepared than come up short."
"Seems reasonable."
I showed her the spot of the blank wall where the door appears and she began setting up candles and incense, drawing strange signs with chalk, and pouring salt in a semi-circle in front of where the door would be. As she worked, she occasionally read out loud from some cheap paperbacks with titles like "The Witch's Bible" and "The Unquiet Dead: A Field Guide to the Afterlife".
To be entirely honest it was incredibly underwhelming. I didn't feel any "mystical energies" or unseen vistas of space and time yawning before me. There was just a goth screwing around with some candles while reciting mangled Latin out of books she got for 4.99 apiece at a charity shop.
Nevertheless, I let Lilith get on with her business and sat back drinking some cheap beer. After about 45 minutes she seemed satisfied. The floor and walls were covered with crude sigils done in white chalk, and the whole room smelt of incense and scented candles. I checked my watch, seeing it was 11:48.
I offered Lilith a drink but she declined, instead just taking a seat and fidgeting a bit with her jewelry. We talked for a while about what the door could be, where it came from, that sort of thing. Lilith seemed convinced it was must be the restless spirit of a former tenant, but I was a bit skeptical. While at this point I could no longer honestly say I didn't believe in the supernatural, this didn't necessarily strike me as some sort of haunting.
"I don't think it's a ghost", I said, taking a sip from my near empty can, "it strikes me as something further beyond our realm of experience than that. Something, I don't know, alien somehow. I mean it changes reality itself doesn't it? It transmutes a wall to a door, and let me tell you that door was real wood and the knob was real metal. Aren't ghosts supposed to be intangible or something?"
Lilith seemed like she was about to say something before she paused, a weird look crossing her face. "Christina, what time is it?" she whispered.
I checked my watch, the digital face reading out 12:07. I turned to see the door. It had been there for 7 minutes and we hadn't even noticed its arrival. Something about us not having realized it was there bothered me far more than its materialization. Was it possible that I'd passed by it in the apartment before and just never noticed it? I'd previously assumed that I'd simply always been asleep or out of the apartment when it materialized, but now I wasn't so sure.
Lilith had turned to look at it too, after a moment saying "It's like it's always been there."
The next 3 hours passed slowly, painfully. We snapped plenty of pictures of the door at every conceivable angle on our respective phones, videos too, and decided that after it disappeared again we should take footage of the bare wall for contrast. Lilith and I chatted a bit, but it was hard to continue conversations for long. Now that we had noticed it, we could feel the wrongness emanating out from the door, as if we were being watched by something just out of sight.
I don't know if there is such a thing as true evil, some sort of absolute moral right and wrong on a spiritual level. But being near that door, I felt like I was bearing witness to an atrocity against reality itself. We spent the last 2 hours of observation in nearly complete silence. It seemed like the longer we were cognizant of the door, the worse the feeling of discomfort got. If you've ever been on a roller coaster, you'll be familiar with the feeling of going up the track towards a long drop, the tension in your very blood as you brace yourself for the fall to come. As we sat there, I felt something similar.
I almost wanted to call the whole thing off, just have Lilith and I go to a 24 hour fast food place or something and call it a night. But I had to know.
Unlike with the door's appearance, we noticed when it started to open. We sat there, paralyzed with fear and excitement as it slowly started to creak open, the worn hinges squealing just as I thought they would. The room grew significantly colder, until we were both shivering intensely. Behind the door was void, absolutely void. It was black as the depths of the ocean and emanated pure dread. The smell of incense and scented candles seemed to dissipate, replaced with a vague stench like rotting seaweed.
Finally, the entrance was swung fully open, and we sat there, staring blankly into it. We didn't even try to pull out our phones to record what we saw. The thought to do so didn't cross my mind until well after.
I could see something start to move in the darkness beyond, some sort of motion, spidery, skittering. It was coming towards us. I caught a vague glimpse of a long, thin limb reaching out from the door, coming towards us, grasping blindly from out of the dark, and then-
I felt the sun shining on my face, my entire body sore.
I opened my eyes to find myself lying on the ground, outside. There were trees overhead, but the foliage wasn't dense enough to block out the light which had awoken me. All things being equal, I would have preferred my alarm clock.
I stood up, painfully, taking stock of my surroundings. I was in a park, one which I had been to before, located a couple miles from my apartment. I looked for my phone, but couldn't find it. I began to stumble my way back home, trying my best to ignore my aching muscles. I called out for Lilith a couple times, but was met only with silence. She was gone.
As I limped my way along, a passing jogger called out "Nice tattoo". Confused, I looked down at my arm.
Burned into my flesh in white letters, as if through frostbite, were the words "BRING MORE".

Company Name	Title	City
Dunham's Sports	General Manager	Beckley
US Foot & Ankle Specialists	Medical Assistant	Beckley
JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.	Relationship Banker - Beckley Main Branch - Beckley, WV	Beckley
Tentrr	Camp Host at Cacapon State Park	Berkeley Springs
Everstory Partners	Sales Representative	Bluefield
Mercer Healthcare Center	CNA Certified Nursing Assistant, PRN	Bluefield
Genesis dba Ferrovia-Ferrosafe-RVM	Driver CDL B for Genesis Rail Services II	Bluefield
Epic Travel Staffing	Travel Nurse (RN) Med/Surg (Medical-Surgical)	Bridgeport
Bfs Foods Inc	Assistant Manager	Bridgeport
Launch Wireless	T-Mobile Wireless Retail Associate Manager	Buckhannon
Papa John's Pizza	Delivery Driver	Buckhannon
Union Mission Ministries, Inc.	Thrift Store DC SortePricer	Charleston
Papa John's - P.S. MGMT	Delivery Driver	Charleston
Pizza Hut	Delivery Driver	Charleston
Emerald Health Services	Travel Nurse (RN) Med/Surg (Medical-Surgical)	Charleston
Goodwill Industries of Kanawha Valley, Inc.	Retail Sales Clerk - Kanawha City	Charleston
FamilyCare Health Centers	Dental Assistant	Charleston
Avis Budget Group	Rental Sales Associate	Charleston
KVC Health Systems	Wraparound Faciliator	Charleston
Campbell Transportation Company Inc.	Captain - Linehaul	Clarksburg
Home Base Inc.	Outreach Counselor	Clarksburg
Highland-Clarksburg Hospital	Registered Nurse - RN	Clarksburg
Par Mar Oil Company	Assistant Manager	Fairmont
Legacy Recruiting LLC	Class A Truck Driver!	Fairmont
The UPS Store Fairmont #3486	Part-Time Center Associate	Fairmont

Hey guys, here are some recent job openings , feel free to comment here if you have any questions, I'm at the community's disposal! If you encounter any problems with any of these job openings please let me know that I will modify the table accordingly. Thanks!

Nick’s earliest memories were of an unhappy home. His father, an alcoholic gambling addict, would regularly disappear for days, returning in the same clothes and not having shaved for days, and having blown all their savings on his binge. Eventually, in his mothers attempts to stand her ground, she tried to make him choose his family or the gambling. It drove him into a rage where he ended up beating her severely and running before the police came, and that was the last time he saw his father.
At 12 years old, his mother died of cancer that quickly spread through her body after first being discovered. Refusing to live with the parents of his father, he ran away and lived on the streets. For such a young boy, he was quite shrewd, shoplifting food from various grocery stores. Within just a couple months, he was devising schemes with teenagers to shoplift from department stores to mom and pop stores, and everything in between, selling the goods to local pawn shops. He learned how to learn the dead-zones of cameras, how to pry the security tags off of items, and how to distract security.
Then his friend gave him the idea of breaking into closed stores or vacation homes to rob them. He was careful, wearing a hoodie, tied to leave no stray hairs as evidence, a mask, gloves, different shoes, and a reversible jacket on the outside that he could flip around to quickly match a different description.
It was successful for the first few attempts, but then he decided to do a job on his own, and attempted to rob the wrong store.
He was casing the place, knocking on the door at the same time every day to ensure nobody was answering the door. Breaking a small window atop the lower floor and climbing a garbage pail to hop through. He went to the cash register, feeling like he hit the jackpot when he discovered more than a thousand in cash, totaling to a few thousand. But he wasn’t aware that the building wasn’t at all abandoned and was attached to a second building, and was a front for Patrick O’Sullivan, a member of the Irish Mob, and they just so happened to be doing a deal at the time.
He tried to run away, heading towards the door, but eventually ran into a boy not much older than he was. He always carried a switchblade with him as a last resort, pulling it on the boy. But he didn’t have it in him to stab the boy. He hesitated. And he got caught.
They forced him to take a seat at the table, and Patrick paced back and forth, Nick’s switchblade in hand. “So you want to steal from *me*?” He scoffs as he flicks open the switchblade. “Usually I would just cut off your fingers so you learn your lesson.” He turns to look at Nick was rage in his eyes. “But you *threatened my son*!?” he shouts into the boy's face, holding the knife just inches from his neck.
“Wait.” Nick hears a voice from behind him protest. Walking around him, narrowing his eyes as he gets a better look at his face, then nodding to himself. He has a different complexion than the others. “I recognize this kid. He’s the son of one of ours. Let him go, I’ll handle this.” he says as he turns to one of his associates, handling a much larger sum of money than NIck had just stolen, tossing it on the table in front of Nick. “This should cover the inconvenience.” He turns back to Nick and gives Nick a stern look. “I’ll make sure no threats to your family ever happen again. And this boy will make it up to you tenfold, *right*?” He gives Nick a small, almost imperceivable nod. Nick quickly agrees.
That was the day Nick met Lorenzo Columbo of the Italian Mafia. Nick never understood why he stepped in and saved him, Lorenzo only claimed that he saw ‘potential’ in him, but it earned Nick’s undying loyalty. He became like a father figure in Nick’s life, something he had never had prior. He gave him a place to stay with one of the maids, whose English wasn’t the best, but as she couldn’t have children of her own she took him as one of her own. Lorenzo taught him how to get by with less risk, *without* getting caught, while also teaching him the value of a hard work ethic.
But it wasn’t all smooth sailing, particularly when it came to family issues. Lorenzo’s daughter, Luna, never understood why her father brought Nick into their life. She was very attached, an only child, and being a few years younger than Nick, Lorenzo never explained what happened to her as she would have been too young to understand, and she tried to keep his direct family from getting involved in any ‘business’ issues. But he was trying to teach Nick how to be a man who could take care of himself, as he has already experienced so many things that no boy his age should have been exposed to.
Lorenzo was gone most of the time, handling business, unintentionally neglecting Luna. Like Nick, she was mostly raised by the maids, spending far more time with them than she spent with her own family. The maids and her dog were her primary companions. She never understood why Nick was allowed to join Lorenzo at work, but she couldn’t. She became increasingly jealous of the time spent with Nick, eventually despising him. She would be the first to remind Nick that he wasn’t really one of their family, and that he never would be. She would lash out, disobeying her fathers rules, but Lorenzo had a soft spot for children and she would be allowed to get away with it. The only rule he was extremely strict on is that she wasn’t allowed to leave the house without supervision, in that way he was overprotective of her, fearing that someone might take her away to get back at him.
Nick never understood why she hated him so much. He never did anything wrong to her, and she constantly targeted him. He didn’t ask for any of this, he just did as told, and tried to be obedient - something that Luna certainly was not. Due to how she treated him, he developed a distaste for her. Considering he spent a lot of efforts trying to stay in line and follow the rules, he never understood why she *never* followed the rules, and why he was judged so harshly for breaking the rules, while she could get away with anything. It didn’t seem fair. From that point, though he wasn’t one of their family members, it was almost like they had a never-ending sibling rivalry.
-----
6 years later…
Lorenzo asked Nick to speak to him privately. He confided that they had a major problem. One of the O’Sullivan brothers was dead. Lorenzo expressed that it breaks his heart to have to ask for this, but they need somebody to take the fall, and asked Nick if he could do it, promising that he would make it up to him and be there for him once he’s out.
To Lorenzo’s surprise, Nick gladly accepted. Nick felt that he owed his *life* to Lorenzo and would do *anything* for him, because he wouldn’t even be alive if it wasn’t for Lorenzo.
It wasn’t until the day of the trial that he was informed that *Luna* was the person he was taking a fall for. As much as that explained why Lorenzo needed somebody to take the fall - he couldn’t let his daughter go down, and it would be extremely poor optics if his daughter murdered one of them - he wondered to himself why it had to be her of all people. ‘It’s just like her to *literally* get away with murder!’, he thought to himself. But he was loyal, and still decided to do what he agreed to without dispute.
The part that really upset him was when she took the stand as a witness. She burst out crying, accusing Nick of being ‘crazed’, how all they were doing was hanging out peacefully and over a joke he snapped and couldn’t control himself, giving explicit detail about how brutal he was, how he grabbed the murder weapon - a relatively small but heavy ornamental statue - and just wouldn’t stop hitting him. She almost got it escalated from homicide to murder, and would have if Lorenzo didn’t pay for the best lawyer in the state. Nick tried his best to keep his cool, and had to accept that Luna finally got what she wanted… For Nick to be gone.
-----
10 years later…
Nick is finally released, and Lorenzo has provided him with a home. But they had to be discreet, as it would seem quite obvious if he fell right back in line after serving time for killing one of the Irish without permission.
One day, Lorenzo calls and says it’s an emergency, he needs Nick to meet him at the house urgently.
Nick arrives at the house, standing in the next room awaiting a moment to speak with Lorenzo.
“What do you mean you’re leaving!?” he hears the unmistakable bitterness of Luna’s voice speaking to her father. “You’re leaving me!?” Her voice is becoming increasingly distraught. “I guess I should be used to you leaving by now!” it sounds as if she’s on the verge of tears.
“Sweetie, this is urgent.” Lorenzo says calmly. “Tell me something new, dad!” she says with a scoff. After a brief pause. “... How bad is it?” she asks her father. He remains quiet. “Why aren’t you saying anything!?” Lorenzo breaths in deeply and sighs. “It’s nothing for you to worry ab-” Luna interrupts him. “I’m not a child!” she spats back at him. “Luna, watch your tone!” he says commandingly, leaving no room for dispute.
“I’m putting someone else in charge. You’re going to listen to everything he tells you to do in my absence. Do not give him a hard time, do you hear me? There will be no negotiation. Just because I’m not here, does not mean you can do whatever it is you want to, is that clear?” he demands.
“Yeah, whatever. Have a safe trip dad.” She stomps out of the room, Nick only seeing the back of her head as she speeds by, hiding her face, presumably to hide tears. She didn’t even notice him.
Nick enters the room, Lorenzo seeming relieved at his presence. Nick presumes that Lorenzo wasn’t sure if he would show up. He stands tall, hands clasped behind his back as Lorenzo takes a seat.
“Nick, I have to leave, and I’m leaving you in charge. I don’t have time to explain.”
Without hesitation, Nick responds. “How long can I expect you to be gone?”
“That is left to be determined…” Lorenzo says, sounding almost sad.
Nick gives a small nod. “I assume there will be an announcement of my authority to minimize insubordination? And I’ll need a briefing on your dealings, as well as a place to stay while you are gone.”
Lorenzo lets out a small chuckle. “Nicolaus, you already know all of my dealings. I have never kept any secrets from you. And you could choose any of the guest rooms here to stay in.” Ever since he was a child, Lorenzo was the only person to call Nick by his full name. To others, he was just Nick, or to the maid staff, he was Nicky as a term of endearment.
“You can trust that your business will be safe under my care, sir.” Nick says confidently.
“And my daughter?” Lorenzo tilts his head down, eyes looking up at Nick’s with a piercing gaze.
Up until this point, Nick has done a good job of keeping stone-faced. But he’s sure that at hearing about her, that Lorenzo could see a slight wince on his face.
“Yes sir, of course.”
-----
A little while later, Nick had taken some time to process the situation. He realized he needs to read between the lines of this situation and figure out why *he* was chosen for the job. It makes little sense. Optics are extremely bad, leaving a person with his history not only being accepted back, but now in charge?
Nick dared not question Lorenzo any further, not only because of his integrity and respect for authority, but because he knew if Lorenzo did not give any further information, it’s because he does not feel comfortable speaking around the others.
Then there’s the way he mentioned his daughter. Nick could sense that this means Luna is in danger. There must be some legitimate threat out there, one that his regular people couldn’t handle, or could not be trusted for. And that’s likely related to the reason he’s leaving too. The bad blood between us implies how serious the threat must be.
Nick has to come to terms with the fact that he’d had to dedicate nearly half of his life to her protection. Whether he likes it or not, fate keeps leading him right back to her. Not that she ever has shown any appreciation for it. But he wouldn’t have any life to live if it wasn’t for Lorenzo, so it’s decided. If he must stake his life for her protection again, then so be it.
He just hopes she will cooperate this time… Last he heard, Luna was always notorious for her rebelliousness and knack of getting in trouble. Seemingly even killing people on a whim, despite never being trained in combat.
He suspects keeping Luna in line might be an even more difficult job than the last one he had to do for her…
Once settled in a guest room and Lorenzo preparing to leave, he acts distant from most of the others, with a cold, calm demeanor, always seeming in control, much like Lorenzo. Aside from the maid staff, whom he is quite pleasant with. After all, some of them were the ones who raised him.
He decides it’s time to focus on his duties, approaching Luna’s bedroom door, actually feeling a bit nervous. Not about what she might do, as much as trying to keep himself in check, as he’s well aware of how much unresolved anger there is which has been ignored rather than dealt with. But knowing Luna’s rebellious nature, he knows he needs to establish authority while her father is gone.
He chuckles to himself at the irony of how facing Luna feels like a fate worse than prison.
He steels himself, face becoming stone, jaw slightly clenched, as he knocks on the door.
No longer is he the scrawny boy that she last saw, now a hardened man, looking far different from before. More imposing. Standing 6’1 with a scruffy face and long wavy hair, making his complexion seem darker than it is. In his mind, he expects to see a young, rebellious teenager answering the door, music playing in the background as she rolls her eyes at him in disdain for being interrupted.
-----
While Luna used to be adventurous and outgoing, she was never the same after that day she encountered Liam O’Sullivan.
Nobody but her father knew the truth. The reality that on that fateful day, Liam had tried to rape her. Well, more than tried, he *did* rape her. But she didn’t go easily. Maybe she would have been able to fight him off if her father taught her to defend herself how she always wanted to, but she fought back with all her might. And once he fell off balance, she grabbed the closest thing she could find, the statue, and lost control. Unable to stop swinging until he stopped moving. She never thought she would be capable of something so horrible.
That’s the real reason for her outburst at the trial. She was being forced to relive the most traumatic moment of her life. And it emphatically proved how horrible of a person she was. Sending another person to prison for what *she* did. No matter how much she hated Nick when they were young, that was a fate he didn’t deserve. She’s lived to regret the fact that she not only took one man's life, but ruined another man's life. It’s what she’s best at.
She became much more reserved, even more attached to her father and her dog, Shadow. No longer outgoing, she became very reserved around others, fearful. Especially men.
Her ‘rebelliousness’ and anger she shows others is just a front, not allowing them to see the darkness she harbors inside. Hiding her loneliness by being cold towards others, acting tough when she is extremely sensitive. She only has a few friends who could tolerate her and how much she pushes them away, a habit she formed because she doesn’t feel she can trust anyone. She never smiles, except when with her father or her dog.
Her looks and cold personality have always gotten her the most attention from strangers, yet she yearns for simple attention from one person in her life and that’s her father’s.
Deep down she has a sweet, caring heart, but it’s hidden and covered by layers of fear and trauma. Her guard is always up, especially in a house full of men that she hates. She hides her wounds from everyone. She spends her time mostly exercising, reading, or occasionally sneaking out of the house with Grayson, one of her fathers men that she had taken a liking to, as he helps her out whenever she does decide to sneak away. Eventually it led to a secret relationship between them.
Despite her attachment to Grayson, and their meaningless sex, she had never been able to fully let her guard down. Especially because Grayson has a bit of an abusive nature, to say it mildly. He *has* abused her before, hitting her, but it hadn’t left any major marks. Out of fear of losing the one man in her life that paid attention to her, she has allowed it. Hiding it from her father, because she knows what would happen if he found out. He is slowly destroying the little bit of her self worth that is left.
-----
The silence in Luna’s room is deafening, so she fills it with a mild audible sound of Spotify in the background. That still wasn’t enough to get her mind off of the conversation with her father. While it was the same conversation she’s had with him time and time again throughout her life, this time felt… Different. Very different.
She leans her head back on the headboard and checks to see if she has any text back from Grayson, whom she left a message asking “What the hell is going on?”, and as expected, there was none. She’s sure he knows her father is leaving, but isn’t sure if he knows why, or who will be put in charge. Just the idea makes her scoff, the last thing she needs is a babysitter.
Her dog joins her on the bed, nuzzling his head on to her lap, tail wagging, demanding pats, and coaxing a smile out of her. Shadow is the only thing keeping her from going insane in this house, knowing exactly when she needs comfort and never hesitating to provide it. He remains on the bed with her, resting his head on her thigh, never leaving her side. For a moment, she forgets what’s going on.
She hears a knock on the door, staring at the hard wood for a moment. She hopes it’s Grayson, checking on her to make sure she’s okay, and maybe if she’s lucky, even comfort her. She gets up and heads to the door with that thought on her mind. She wasn’t prepared for what she discovered.
Her heart drops. Familiar dark eyes that are engraved in her mind staring down at her with nothing but coldness in them. She blinks once, twice, wondering if her eyes are deceiving her. The lean boy she knew was standing there, but he was no longer small and lean, his features far more chiseled and distinguished. The suit he wore was striking, unable to hide the muscular frame beneath. She found herself speechless for a moment. It felt unreal for her to see him after he was unrightfully taken away.
He recognized her eyes at first glance, his eyes quickly breaking, darting to the abrupt movement at the side of the room, realizing it’s a dog, the dog's eyes darting between them, measuring our reactions. Even it seems frozen, confused by their reaction.
He notices how much she’s grown. Her face thinner, freckles and imperfections faded. While obviously older and taller, she seems… Smaller? Despite her never being as large as Nick, she had an aura about her that was almost intimidating. But now the air around her is… Different.
But it’s her hair that caught his eye most. Much longer than it used to be. Although he supposes it’s the same for him, it’s an integral part of her presence now. If he were to take a moment to consider it, he’d think she’s grown to look far more feminine and be quite beautiful. But he immediately speeds past those thoughts before they complete, focusing on his job he has to do.
Neither of them said a word, but their eyes spoke a million.
“Nick?” Her voice came out in barely more than a whisper, trying to comprehend if this is real. If so, she had no idea he was even out of prison, as nobody had informed her. A thousand questions ran through her mind. ‘How long has he been out? Why are you at my door? Are you even real? *How much do you hate me*?’ But she can’t bring herself to utter another word.
Having been anticipating conflict, the way she spoke his name almost threw him off, he expected that her father would have informed her that I was in charge, which is why he expected her to rebel, but that seems not to be the case. She seems to be genuinely surprised.
He narrows his eyes, a little, trying to read hers. He’s always prided himself on his ability to read people. But hers are hard to read, as she’s seemingly experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions, and he doesn’t understand why she would feel anything more than disdain based on his expectations. And honestly, it’s unsettling for someone like him to be around such raw emotion without being prepared for it.
As much as he wants to comment on their past, to call out what she did, or at least ask why… He decides against it. ‘Neither of us want to be in this situation. It’s just a job’.
He slowly takes in a deep breath, calculating his words. Standing tall and tilting his head back authoritatively as he begins to speak.
“Your father has put me in charge in his absence. Not just to oversee business matters, but I am personally responsible for your safety.” He leans in, maintaining eye contact, trying to convey the seriousness. “I will not be allowing any harm to come to you while you are my responsibility. If I give any orders, I will need you to obey immediately without question. If you have any questions, ask them later. I will need to know where you are and to give approval of where you are going at all times. I will need your phone number, you will have tracking turned on your phone at all times so I could monitor, and you will always answer when I call no matter what the circumstances. I don’t care where you are going, I only care about your safety. I will not tolerate any disobedience. I will not tolerate being ignored.” He pauses for a moment, to see how she is taking his words.
“I need you to tell me that you understand.” He maintains a serious look on his stone face as he awaits an answer.
Her brow furrows as he utters sentence after sentence, focused on how much his voice has changed and is no longer as soft as it used to be. She feels like she’s staring at a stranger, but then she begins to realize what he’s saying.
She shakes her head, feeling like he hadn’t even given her a chance to speak as he lays a newspaper's worth of rules in front of her. All she can do is let out a perplexed “Huh?” He’s the one her father left in charge of her? The one who never tolerated her? The one who spent half his life in prison because of her? There is no way… She scoffs, trying her best not to lose it on him, but it’s hard.
“I’m sorry, what? Do you really think I’m going to agree to this!?” she asks, with pure anger in her tone. She knows for a fact he doesn’t want to do this either, so why didn’t he say no to her father? How could he agree to look after the person that ruined his life? It only drives her crazier that the look on his face isn’t changing or reacting to her. She used to always know how to push his buttons and get a reaction. She looks over at Shadow, almost for assistance, but he is looking at Nick with a calm curiosity, even wagging his tail slightly. *It figures*, she thinks, *He usually hates men, but of course when she wants him to…*
“There will be no tracking my phone, no obeying you, no approval from you. I’m not doing this.” She pushes past him, out the door, her blood boiling, heart racing, palms sweaty and hands shaking. ‘How does he think he’d ever get away with this? When the hell did he get back anyway!?’
To her surprise, Lorenzo is with his men, including Grayson, putting on his coat in the living room. “Luna. I take it you spoke with Nicolaus?” He speaks confidently. *This is real…*
“Will you be okay?” Lorenzo asks, placing his hands on her shoulders. All she can think is *how could I possibly be okay?* as she fights back tears in her eyes.
“I’ll see you soon.” he says, stroking her cheek. She fears this might be the last time she ever sees him… And she doesn’t want to part like this. She wraps her arms around him, hugging him tight, enjoying his presence for as long as she has it. He soon breaks the embrace, seeming reluctant as he nods his head, departing through the door. She rushes back to her room before she allows her tears to escape.
-----
-----
I appreciate it if you’ve made it this far! I’m looking for a long-term partner to play out this scenario where I’ll be playing Nick.
Despite our rivalry, we end up being stuck together. In the middle of a life of crime and a criminal conspiracy, thrown into a situation where we must rely on each other. With myself as the protector, and you, who is thrown in to a world you've always been hidden from.
The mystery of what’s going on will only deepen. What’s *really* going on? Why is there danger? We’ll have to question trusting anyone.
This setting should leave it pretty open in the directions we could go, and while I have a few ideas of ways we can take it, I welcome your ideas as well!
As we get to know each other, while there’s so much that led to our rivalry, there’s much more that was secret and that we’re unaware of about each other. While we may handle things differently, with Nick relying on staying calm, and Luna relying on overreacting, we both have lived a life where we felt abandoned, and have our own ways of hiding what we think or feel, both of us having trouble getting closer.
He’s forced into a role of her protector, and she’s never been able to feel safe around people. And he never knew all that she went through, falling for the illusion she gives that she doesn’t care about anything, never knowing how badly she needs that protection. By giving her somebody she could actually feel safe around, and him coming to terms with the fact that he may voluntarily want to protect her if given a choice, there's many threads that could eventually evolve into them developing feelings for each other, as much as they may want to resist that happening.
Along the path, there may be a lot of drama and disputes, pushing each other away, but due to the situation, we’ll be forced back together.
Despite being a very lengthy introduction, I’m open to any length of responses, there’s no requirements in length! Whatever feels right! It’s all in good fun!
Feel free to let me know any adaptations or ideas you may want to include, or requests!
If interested, I hope to hear back from you!

Company Name	Title	City
Atria Senior Living - Bay Spring	Med Tech	Barrington
InsurSolv,LLC	Loss Control Inspector - Independent Contractor - Bristol County	Bristol
Blaeser Insurance Agency	Customer Service / Sales Assistant	Bristol
Saint-Gobain	Supplier Quality Engineer - Aerospace Manufacturing, Mobility Business - Bristol, RI USA	Bristol
Ivy Rehab Network	Patient Coordinator	Coventry
ABI Resources LLC	Coventry Home Health Aide Companion Caregiver ILST RA	Coventry
Christy's Liquors	Liquor Store Cashier	Cranston
American Freight Management Company	Retail Sales Associate	Cranston
NTT DATA Services	Alarm CoordinatoDispatch	Cumberland
Servpro	SERVPRO Business Development Regional Sales Manager	East Providence
Savers / Value Village	Sales Floor Associate	East Providence
Eastgate Nursing & Rehabilitation Center	Certified Nursing Assistant	East Providence
Evergreen House Health Center	LPN Licensed Practical Nurse	East Providence
Affordable Dentures & Implants	Dental Assistant	Greenville
JR Vinagro Corporation	Scale Operator	Johnston
Maxx Fitness Clubs	Personal Training Sales Director	Lincoln
Foodlove Market	Catering Coordinator	Middletown
Davidson Hospitality Group	Room Service Server - Newport Harbor Island Resort	Newport
Sunbelt Staffing	Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant (COTA) job near Nooseneck, RI	Nooseneck
We Make RI Partners	R&D technologies-Production and Shipping	North Kingstown
Reliant Rehabilitation	Speech-Language Pathologist	North Providence
The Nitro Cart, LLC	Delivery Driver	Pawtucket
Looking Upwards, Inc	Early Intervention Service Coordinator	Portsmouth
HealthPlus Staffing	Family Nurse Practitioner needed for Outpatient clinic in Providence, RI	Providence
Providence Housing Authority	Laborer Dispatcher	Providence

Hey guys, here are some recent job openings , feel free to comment here if you have any questions, I'm at the community's disposal! If you encounter any problems with any of these job openings please let me know that I will modify the table accordingly. Thanks!

Tens of thousands of South Carolina mobile homeowners manufactured before 1976 & renting the land it sits upon, can be legally evicted without cause if the Appellate court upholds the verdict of my eviction based solely upon the wording of the 30-day notice of the end of the term of their expired lease agreement.
Many, if not most renters of land in a mobile home park, have leases for one year, which likely have never been renewed from year to year, as the law states.
If my case is not dismissed, it will become 'case law', which can then be used by any greedy, unscrupulous landowner who wants to own your home to evict you and take possession of your home, whether there exists no cause or reason for the eviction.
https://chng.it/kLW47xF2

TL;DR - A homeless man threatened me with a knife and I feel guilty for beating him to a pulp.
Years and years ago I (32M) used to live in a larger city and would go hang out at the gas station cattycorner from my house late at night when I couldn't sleep (I've always had insomnia) and talk to my now girlfriend's brother when he was working (I met him when he worked there long before her and I got together). Fountain drinks were usually less than a buck, so I'd get a few drinks and stay up talking to him late at night before having to go home, grab my stuff, and head off to high school or just go home and sleep if it was the weekend.
This story took place when I was about 16/17ish. I was planning on heading to the gas station, so I got dressed and grabbed this wooden nightstick I had before heading off. I've always been super paranoid of other people, and at that time I wasn't very strong, so I used to carry this police baton on me and kept it tucked in my belt against my back whenever I went out at night, whether it was a nightly excursion or just for a quick drink run and back to the house.
To get to the gas station you had to leave the back of my house and hop the fence before making a sharp turn to walk through an alleyway. There would be a drug store on your right as you walked towards the main road, and diagonally from that drug store across the street would be the gas station. The walk there was uneventful that night. It was spring and kinda chilly, but just an uneventful walk there.
I stood with my girlfriend's brother and talked with him for a few hours. Some people came and went, but we mostly just stood around shooting the shit while he did his gas station attendant duties. I had (I think) three bucks on me and that was it. Around 2 in the morning I decided to get a final drink before I walked home, so I refilled my cup, paid for it, and started the less-than-five-minute walk home.
This is where the story starts. I was walking through the alleyway back to my house. It was quiet like the walk there, with no car noises from the roads, no random cats or other animals, just the hum of the lights from the store. However, when I approached the end of the alleyway I looked to my left and saw this man sitting on the ground leaning back against the dumpster. He was slouched against it, but his head was drooped down and looked like he was sleeping. It was weird because, when I left the house around 10, there wasn't a sign of anyone around and he CERTAINLY wasn't there before.
I got nervous as I went walking past, but I kept looking at him until I was about level with him. He then rolled his head back (NOT just moved his head to look at me, but he ROLLED it along his shoulder and looked at me with his neck bent at an angle) and looked at me and I just about shit a brick. I slowed down a little bit and almost stopped from how bad this dude spooked me, but I tried to not show it by giving him a "sup" nod and saying "Sup?"
He looks at me and goes "Hey man, y'all got any money?" I shook my head and said "No, I spent the last of it on my drink here" and pointed to my cup. He then pushes himself up from the ground. He was a few inches taller than I am, about 5'10" to 6 foot, his clothes were all dirty but not holey or raggedy looking, and his hair was all matted and dirty and stringy looking. He started walking towards me and he yelled "Gimme your fuckin' money". I started backing up a little bit and I told him "I swear I don't have any money on me, man".
I couldn't run toward the end of the alley. I could see it, but I fucked my position up so now my back was facing toward the fence that separated our yard from the alley. It was a tall, wooden plank fence and there was no way in Hell I could have climbed that without him grabbing me. He just kept walking towards me and I was still locked up in fear. That's when he pulled a busted steak knife out of his pants and pointed it at me. He yelled at me again "I SAID GIVE ME YOUR FUCKIN' MONEY!" I'm not really sure how I was able to, given how pants-shittingly terrified I was, but I hatched this plan in my head. My soda was in my left hand. As he was walking towards me with the busted steak knife, my right was slowly making its way to the handle of my nightstick. I don't know if he saw it or thought I was reaching for my wallet or what, but I death-gripped the handle in my palm and chucked my soda at him.
Thankfully the soda cup made contact with his face/chest/chin/SOMETHING and splattered all over him and blinded him. The next part was kind of a blur, but somehow I whipped my nightstick out and busted him in the side of the head with it as he was wiping the Diet Mountain Dew out of his eyes. He crumpled to the ground and dropped his weapon (which I could now clearly see was a busted steak knife in the light of the parking lot), but he kept trying to get back up and I was terrified he was going to hurt me if he did, so I just stood over him with the nightstick and just wailed him repeatedly. Any opened part I could reach, I'd hit it. I don't know how many times I hit him, I don't know how long I hit him for, but I do remember busting his head a few times, busting his hands and arms and shoulders and elbows, I think smacked him in the ribs a few times... I don't know how long I stood over him and beat the shit out of him, but I know I was tired and drenched in sweat when I finally stopped... And he wasn't moving. He was breathing, but he wasn't moving.
I don't remember running and jumping the fence back into my yard, nor do I really remember much of getting back into my room, but I know when I got back upstairs I locked my bedroom door, I was soaked in sweat, I was shaking really bad, I was hyperventilating, and I didn't realize it at the time but I clearly pissed my pants out of fear. I couldn't sleep well for weeks after it. Every time I'd close my eyes I'd just see his angry face screaming at me for money and him waving that knife at me. At that moment I thought I killed this guy and now I thought the cops were going to come after me, but nothing ever really came of it. No dead body in a parking lot, no cops, no follow-up in the news, nothing. When I did sleep, I had nightmares about it for months and I didn't leave the house at night for a long, long, long time.
I could justify everything in that moment. It was all from a place of primal fear. I really thought he was going to hurt me or kill me. I should have just given him what little pocket change I did have (it was somewhere between a nickel and thirty cents, I really don't remember how much but it wasn't a lot at all). I should have just ran away. Maybe if I just hit him with my soda to blind him and took off... I don't know. It was either me or him, and I guess I decided I didn't want to be gutted in a CVS alleyway. Thanks to him I've been even more paranoid of people, especially at night, and I refuse to leave my house unless I'm armed. Recently the memory resurfaced and that guilt I'd felt when I was a teenager came welling up again and thought I should come to confess.

Today I fcked up by falling asleep about 30 mins into a 2 hour chem lecture which was followed by a 3 hour lab. This chem class is all people older than me (19F) like juniors in college (I can’t guesstimate people’s ages at all) it’s small-about 20 people and today was my second day. The class starts at 5pm. 5-7pm is the lecture and 7-10pm is the lab. It’s Monday- Thursday. I work at my school district’s office as an assistant and that is a very well paying job and I love working there daily, although it’s a lot since I usually leave my house at 8 and make the 30 minute commute. I work 8-4 and today was a particularly busy day. Today I left at 4:25, my campus is about 3 mins away from my office and i parked close to my class, set a timer for 25 mins and knocked out. Unfortunately it was not enough and 30 mins into the lecture I was nodding off into my palm. I put my shawl on because the cold makes me tired alas I was woken up by my new professor after about 20 minutes I think and he asked me a question and had me come up to the board and I got the question mostly right although I said Na+ had 11 electrons at first but a few of my classmates cheered me on and I got a lil hint from my professor reminding me about the plus sign. I did write the correct amount of protons and neutrons tho😭. Anyways I felt bad, I was in the 2nd to front row and my professor is newer to teaching in the states. All I can say is that I’ve learned. My parents cautioned me about working too much and so clearly i’m gonna have to cut my hours. Thats ok, the office is just happy to have me at all. I’d rather be at the office than at home during the day although it does take a considerate amount of effort getting ready every day. I feel bad, tomorrow I’m taking the day off and so I’m going to be extra participatory by studying. This is an intense course and I learned that the hard way today. I feel lots of guilt and a bit of shame. Tomorrow will be better. I haven’t been communicating very well but I was thinking of telling my professor I’m sorry and it won’t happen again as I am adjusting my schedule to make sure of it. He’s a well respected professor in Egypt and Canada and I’m sure he’s seen it before (I hope😭😭🤞)
TL;DR I fell asleep in an intensive chem summer class and made a horrible first impression of myself on the second day.

Including, but not limited to:
Most other people, cotton, money, oxygen, planets, solar system, the universe, the human body, keys, necklaces, napkins, Kleenex, plates, tv screens, cable tv, sports, the super bowl, smiling, laughing, crying, eyes, nose, mouth, hands, feet, cars, roads, trees, dirt, air, the sky, clouds, math, algebra, calculus, addition, subtraction, chairs, tables, beds, grass, water, coughing, walking, biking, running, kindness, rudeness, frisbee, football, swimming, swimming pools, food places, coffee places, dancing, yoga, meditation, work, medical doctors, medical school, high school, middle school, elementary school, colleges, puberty, glasses, contacts, Lasik eye surgery, old people, retirement homes, hospitals, eye clinics, dental clinics, rain, humidity, Mediterranean weather, airplanes, airports, light, lightbulb, flashlights, notebooks, pens, pencils, calculators, shoes, boots, sandals, Disney World, cartoons, amusement parks, roller coasters, water slides, sleeping, dreams, hair, beards, clothes, shopping malls, streets, roads, highways, houses, apartments, chatting, social settings, learning, reading, drawing, bathrooms, toilets, sinks, soap, showers, bathtubs, washers, dryers, cabinets, closets, towels, wallets, jackets, parking spaces, candy, food, soda, milk, juice, wine, beer, vegetables, fruits, bread, cheese, YouTube, Reddit, people disliking videos on YouTube, people liking videos on YouTube, people downvoting posts and comments on Reddit, people upvoting posts and comments on Reddit, nostrils, jumping, bouncing, jumping-jacks, music, movies, singing, talking, chewing gum, throat clearing, slapping, biology, bacteria, maple syrup, pancakes, waffles, bacon, being respectful, following rules, being kind, being honest, lying, cheating, having conversations, breathing, sneezing, sleepwalking, school bullies, hitting, smoking, vaping, chewing tobacco, California, Florida, Texas, New York, New York City, Manhattan, Brooklyn, American Idol, choir, vacuuming, sweeping, skipping, breakdancing, beaches, palm trees, hot weather, cold weather, snow, tailgating, cheerleading, thunderstorms, Pi, teachers, camping, etc.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Chapter 2

“Hazardous? I’ll show that manipulative, misanthropic, anti-establishment cretin just what hazardous means if he thinks I’m going to fold on this!”
The sound of vigorous guitar riffs made a fitting accompaniment to the angry tirade despite originating on opposite sides of the communal area. Ama was glaring at a laptop that sat on a stained oak desk shoved against the large table near the kitchen. She tapped a fingernail on the wood as she read through the alert.
“And what violation of basic human dignity has her royal prudishness’s undies in a bunch?” Em demanded with an affected sneer without looking up from his guitar scales.
“Oh you’ll agree with this one tree-hugger,” Drake muttered from where he sat oiling his work boots.
“Yeah,” Donny piped up, “Finney is trying to kill a perfectly healthy fir.”
“What!” Em demanded, carefully placing his battered old acoustic guitar down in its case and darting over to look at the computer screen. “You mean apark tree?”
Despite her simmering frustration Ama allowed a small smile to flicker across her face as she continued to type.
“Get out of your pajamas and I’ll tell you,” Drake ordered pointing towards the bathroom door with a stained rag. “School starts in forty-five minutes and you still have breakfast and chores. That goes for you too Pip-squirt.”
“I hope you washed your hands before you touched our food,” Em said with a frown.
“Boot grease makes a great source of fatty acids.” Drake retorted. “Now go!”
The two smaller boys muttered in annoyance but stumbled off to follow orders.
“So what is up?” the youth asked as he bent his head back over the smooth leather of his boots.
“Mrs. Finney wants that tree down that’s blocking her perfect view of Crescent Lake.” Ama replied in a dry tone.
“One that’s clearly on park property?” Drake asked.
“Indeedy-do.” Ama replied giving the paper in front of her a glare.
“So how’s she justifying it?” Drake asked.
“As a safety hazard to her house.” Ama replied.
“And?”
The biologist groaned and rubbed her face.
“As far as I can tell the trunk is perfectly healthy. There is an old trash can lid grown into the trunk and a little discolored sap is leaking out there.”
“Frass?”
“Watch your language!” Donny interjected as he darted up to the table.
“Frass is not a bad word,” Drake stated. “Have you let the chickens out?”
“Yes, what does frass mean?” Donny asked as he started piling stir-fry onto his plate.
“Look it up.” Drake ordered him. “Emerald! Breakfast ends in ten minutes! Get your tukus down here!”
“It’s bad health to rush meals,” Em snapped out as he came down a narrow stairway with deliberate slowness.
“It’s even worse for your health to skip meals altogether,” Drake growled threateningly.
“Shut it and give me some eggs.” Em snapped back.
“Emerald Waters Undersun,” Drake hissed out through gritted teeth. “You are going to get your own eggs.”
The boy threw himself into a chair and glared at Drake with challenge in every line of his body.
“Emerald,” Ama said in a calm tone. “I think you should apologize to your cousin now.”
“Sorry I disturbed you Ama,” he offered without breaking eye contact with Drake.
“Not me, him,” Ama said.
“Sorry you had to hear that Donny.” Em said.
Ama heaved a sigh and closed her computer.
“Emerald,” Ama said.
“Do you want to eat or go hungry?” Drake demanded.
Ama glanced at him with a familiar uneasy look in her eyes and Drake fought down a wince.
“Now, Em.” she said in a patient tone.
“I’ll go hungry,” Em snapped, jumping up and stalking over to the couch.
Donny kept his eyes fixed on his plate. Ama heaved a sigh before turning back to her computer. Em wriggled on the couch for several minutes before skulking back to the table. Drake moved to intercept him but Ama stopped him with a look and he let Em serve himself. Drake cast irritated glances at the wall clock as the time crept more and more into school time.
Ama closed her computer and stood, then sighed, sat and opened it again.
“I need to pick out their report topics,” Ama muttered.
“I could do it,” Drake offered.
“You do quite enough,” Ama replied briskly, as she scanned the news. “Here you go. For Donny, malfunctions at the Lewis- McChord Air Force Base air show.” A frown creased her face. “Wow, this is pretty serious. It looks like the F-16 demonstration team nearly got killed.”
Drake whistled and leaned over her shoulder.
“Multiple system failures,” he read out loud. “I am pretty sure that isn’t supposed to happen.”
“Nope,” Ama agreed. “Here is a topic on big game management for Em.”
“Reports due by next week?” Drake asked as the old printer on the desk began to squeal and grumble as it powered up.
“Same as usual,” Ama confirmed.
Drake put the printouts on top of the homework pile and moved to wash up the breakfast dishes.
“I need to get to work early today so you two be good for Drake,” she called out placing a quick kiss on top of the smaller boys’ heads and giving Drake’s shoulder a friendly squeeze.
“Good luck with Mrs. Finney, and stay safe.” Drake called out as she went into her room.
The table was cleaned off and wiped down and the clink of forks gave way to the steady scratch of pencils on paper. They broke for a recess after religion and then lunch after history and math, and by the time the Grandfather clock in the corner struck two the younger boys twitching with energy. Drake made certain the internet was disconnected at the router, and chased Donny and Em out into the garden.
“And don’t come in until dark,” he ordered tossing two snack bags out after them.
Donny as usual snatched his food and disappeared into the small orachard. Low grumbles about troglodytes and the Amish wandered out into the high corn following Em and Drake shook his head in exasperation wondering, not for the first time how the dark haired princeling came from the same gene pool as his little brother. The kitchen being mostly ordered Drake was turning to put the last random dirty sock in the hamper when a gnarled hand clutching a cane head appeared in the corner of his eye, causing his heart to make a valiant attempt to bolt out of his throat.
“Abuelita!” he gasped forcing his hands down from the guard position. “Where did you come from?”
Smoldering black eyes ran searchingly over the tall youth. An impossibly long mane of streaked silver and black hair was barely contained in a thick braid. A sharply pointed nose perched over a small wrinkled mouth. A vibrant red horse-hair serape hung over her shoulders concealing everything except her brown and gnarled hands which currently clutched the old tree branch she used as a cane. Drake had been more than a little comforted by the fact that both Em and Donny had admitted to having the thought ‘witch’ every time time they saw her as well.
“From the hand of God by the bodies of my sainted mother and father,” she replied after a long, uncomfortable silence.
She always spoke in a low husky voice that suggested years of smoking, though Drake had never smelled even stale smoke on her.
“Right,” Drake blinked and grinned at the response; the one she always gave. “So you are here for their Spanish lesson? I have their grammar books ready and-”
The narrow end of the tree branch rapped against the concrete of the floor causing Drake to jump. Abuelita glared at him, locking his gaze and holding him in place with it for a moment.
“I am here for their lessons,” she finally stated, “and you are there for my payment.”
Drake thought longingly of the repair and maintenance manuals in the cab of the truck and the new tool he was itching to try, but he forced a grin on his face.
“Yes ma’am,” he said. “What can I get you today?”
Abuelita pulled out a bag of woven grass from under her serape causing the indistinct patterns on the cloth to shift and change.
“Take this,” she ordered him, “and collect me the cobalt blue berries that grow on a single stalk close to the ground. They must come from the mountain to the south east of here by the crystal brook.”
Drake nodded, and took the little bag, he didn’t quite manage to infused his gestures with enthusiasm he supposed. The old woman, probably wouldn’t have noted it anyway. She turned and moved towards the garden door without waiting for any other reply. However she called out over her shoulder as he turned to find his own way out of the rambling structure.
“Don’t dawdle little one. A storm brews in the distance.”
He tried not to roll his eyes at that, the weather forecast was clear and eighties for the next week according to the morning fire report Ama had printed. The youth only nodded and slipped around the corner. He circled the barn and pulled a set of loose tan pants and tunic out of the cubby. The soft worn leather almost perfectly matched the forest floor for color as did the moccasins he pulled on after them. His morning running clothes were modern stuff that wicked the sweat away from him and let him speed through the forest. These were his free day clothes. The ones that let him disappear into the forest and wander. Abuelita, for all of her demands, would tend Em and Donny until he returned no matter how late that was, and with the Park’s yearly budget talks still under way it was highly unlikely Ama would be home until long after the sun had set. Despite still hearing the call of the half restored truck he felt something lossening in him already. The soft cotton and smooth leather rested easily against his skin and Drake slipped into the forest.
Freedom; for the moment at least, blissful freedom. Pushing aside the guilt that accompanied the thought as well as any lingering worries about his charges the youth let his legs carry him through the trees. He shunned the man made paths, following the faint animal trails. This close to the barn they were as clear to him as if they were named city streets. Being animal trails, they invariably led him to water. Today he stopped at a trickling stream, took off his moccasins, and rolled up his pants legs. The youth turned and followed the thin flow of icy water upstream, letting it steal the heat from his body through his feet.
Some distance upstream, the stream widened and pooled under a boulder. There Drake paused and pulled an old black compass out of his pocket. Behind him he knew every trail and tree. Ahead was a broad swath of National Wilderness he would have to cross, or possibly Bureau of Land Management or even state managed forests where he more rarely wandered. It was hard to tell where the boundaries were from the ground. The clearing he wanted for the berries was solidly in BLM land and he still had quite a ways to go to get there. The stand of timber that stood between him and his goal was dense with young tree and branches that frequently formed impenetrable hedges he had to track around and he checked his compass regularly as he climbed in elevation. Even so the youth found he had wandered too far off his route and had to correct when he spotted the boundary fence. However he was in no hurry and he reached the clearing long before the sun told him it was time to turn around.
Sometime in the past some unknown force had carved a shallow trench across the side of one of the small mountains that that dotted the wilderness. It had puzzled Drake at first. The scour was at the wrong angle to be an old rock slide, and terminated in a near perfectly circular clearing at the lower end. Centuries old Douglas Firs abruptly gave way to a second ring only a few decades old. Those were in turn beginning to produce cones and a smattering of knee high saplings. The rest of the space was completely given over to wildflowers. No matter what season Drake visited it he found a riot of life.
There had been an early spring and many herbs that normally would have waited a month or more were already in full bloom in the mountain meadow. A white wave of foamflower washed in from the deep forest surrounding the clearing, sending up knee high stalks covered in the delicate white blooms. Late trillium hid close to the roots of the great firs, many having shed their white corollas and begun to put forth their bulbous seed heads. Fuzzy white baneberry blossoms nodded gently in the breeze. A riot of yellow and purple spread across the ground as vetch and buttercups and a host of clovers competed for space in the open sun. Great stalks of lupine as high as his head thrust up their purple and blue proudly from thick clusters of palm shaped leaves. Pink shooting stars and violet harebells crouched under the protection of the larger plants. Indian paintbrush lit the scene with flames of red and orange. Where a spring seeped into the meadow elephant’s head flared neon pink and corydalis bushes put forth blushing blooms. Pale green wild orchids stood along the wet spot and the swarms of bees danced from them to the glacier lilies.
Sometimes, as he bent over a tiny blossom and traced the intricate network of veins in the petals, drank in the scent, and felt the smooth surface of the leaves an otherworldly feeling would come over him. It was as if there was another world just out of range of his senses. If he could only really look, the thin illusion that was blocking him would slip away and reveal the real world underneath it.
“Look Awiegwa,” his father would whisper, pointing at a deer mouse perched on a fallen log. “What does it see?”
Awiegwa would screw up his face and squint. Trying to find the answer to the question.
Awiegwa had often wondered how so many flowers had come to be in the relatively small area. He had identified dozens of species and there were more he had yet to determine. The clearing was always the first place to bloom and the last to go dormant. Many of the flowers seemed to utterly defy their usual blooming patterns. However, as time passed he had simply come to accept it. It was one of the small good things that brought back the memories of his father. If it didn’t quite follow the rules Ama had taught him, well an impossible clearing in the mountains wasn’t a place for rules.
The particular bloom that Abuelita had requested had taken full advantage of the early sun and had already put forth a few cobalt blue berries; easily spotted at the edge of the clearing in the delicate sea of white flowers.
However before he left the shade of the forest for the meadow the youth paused and closed his eyes. Bole wasn’t always here, but he was often enough that Awiegwa always checked for him. Carefully he reconstructed the clearing in his mind; marking every tree and boulder on the edge. Three years he had been coming here and each time it was easier to recreate the clearing. Breathing evenly he opened his eyes, letting the mental image merge with the actual. There was a brief moment of confusion as details like the play of light through branches and the trembling of small clusters of flowers fixed themselves but there was only one truly jarring note. Awiegwa didn’t let his eyes focus on the disparity; he never did anymore, but a warm smile spread across his features as he slipped silently into the meadow.
He was here. As the youth moved in a low crouch, gathering the first fruits of the Queen’s Cup, he let his peripheral vision linger on a particular snag. There was nothing obviously interesting about it, other than the fact that it had not been there the last time Awiegwa was here. He had named the wanderer Bole, because it most often appeared as a thick tree trunk; sometimes living, sometimes dead. Occasionally it would be a boulder or simply a mound in the dirt. Often it wasn’t in the clearing at all. If the youth moved forward and tried to closely examine it he could never find anything to suggest it was something other than a tree or rock.
He had thought about taking a sample occasionally, had taken his knife out to do just that more than once, but something always held him back. Bole was a part of this place. Dissecting him would be too much like attempting to dissect his sense of his father’s presence here. The youth had never told anyone about this place, not even Ama with who could get most things out of him easily enough. Down at the house, in town, when he was Drake; solid, reliable, first up in the morning, two grades ahead in school with a penchant for science Drake, a productive member of modern society with a promising future and his mother smiling at him. Here he could be Awiegwa. Here he could believe in the ancient medicines his father had dug out of dusty old tomes and brought to life from the forest litter. Every time Awiegwa left the clearing and headed back towards home reality would reassert itself. Bole would resolve back into a figment of his imagination, created from pride in a somewhat better than average memory and what the social workers had called an “intriguing imagination”. When he reached the house and become solidly Drake again flickers of embarrassment would begin eating at him for letting his senses trick him like that, but as long as the blooms nodded around him in this garden Bole could exist even on a Thursday.
The little woven grass bag filled up with the berries fairly quickly and Awiegwa soon stretched out of his crouch and let his gaze wander contentedly over the clearing. As it always did, the warm space was working its special magic. Worries about Em getting out of his schoolwork, of not paying enough attention to the quiet Donny, of letting Ama see his petty resentments: it had all melted away from his muscles, thoughts of college costs and abandoning his duties dissolved into an acute sense of the now. The leaves rustled softly in a barely-there breeze, the heavy scent of some unidentified blossom filled his lungs, a dozen shades of green framed the rainbow of flowers, and over and above it all the creaking of the firs as the wind played over them. It was at times like these that he felth he could almost see into heaven; that something wonderful that existed just beyond his senses, and all he had to do was reach out and claim it.
The youth took a deep breath and let himself fall backwards onto a handy rise in the forest floor. His path had taken him to the foot of the snag and he shifted slightly to align himself with the gnarled roots. One hand gripped a time smoothed root.
“Ama trusted me enough to go out of state,” he murmured. “That’s the first time she’s done that. Usually she has Abulita stay with us to fend off the Harsh, but she said it’s long past legal now.”
It was his imagination of course that made him think the root vibrated in his hand in response. Many a long hour he had spent in this clearing with the wanderer. He had poured out his frustrations and anguishes over life’s injustices, had shared his secrets as he grew, and had shouted his triumphs. Sometimes he felt closer to Bole than to any of his human friends. However, something that sounded like his mother’s voice warned him that there was something odd about this and that awareness was the main reason he had kept this place secret from Ama. Their mother hadn’t exactly liked stuff like that. She had never objected to his father’s digging up the old stories of her people. Making cross generational connections between elders, who more often than not lived isolated lives, and the next generation, was an admirable goal in of itself in her eyes; objectively a social good. Storytelling was only the natural course for these relationships to take, but subtle looks had warned even a very young Drake that it was best to cautious what he shared with his mother. At least of those things that couldn’t be placed on a microscope slide. So this was Awigewa’s place, and while his father’s spirit wanders the flowers with he had never felt his mother here.
He let his focus drift up, and up. Dark blue Lupine nodded over his head framing the faint crisscross of jet contrails that threw a light haze over an otherwise cloudless sky. His clothed grew deliciously hot from the spring sun. The ground too had eagerly accepted the energy and now it conducted the heat into the muscles of his back. Bole’s wood beneath him was warmer even than the surrounding ground and an idle thought traced across Awiegwa’s awareness; something about it being odd for the light colored wood and relatively dry wood to retain more heat than the darker soil surrounding it. His mind was filled with the impression of a goal. He had been meaning to do, something. Something fun, yes, exploring, he’d meant to see if whatever had dug that den by the second boulder was cubing this year. He would just get up and do that in a minute. His back was so warm and comfortable.
​
https://i.redd.it/9sde27n9fb3b1.gif
“Flying Sparks”
Another foray into the lives of Drake McCarty, Ama Love, and the rest of their siblings as they discover that something alien is out in the forest around their home.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flying-sparks-a-novel-of-dragon-bear-and-boy/coming_soon
#FlyingSparks #ScienceFiction #Scifi #Story #novel #book #DrakeMcCarty #AmaLove #Donny #Em #Bard #Bole #Aliens #Spaceships #Crystals #fireflies #NPS #NationalPark #Doctor #Sever #family #storm #writing #reading #drama #literature #author #BettyAdams #DyingEmbers #Dragons #ThingsThatGoBoomp #Indiegogo #CrowdFunding

Flying Sparks Pre Order Now Chapter 2 “Hazardous? I’ll show that manipulative, misanthropic, anti-establishment cretin just what hazardous means if he thinks I’m going to fold on this!” The sound of vigorous guitar riffs made a fitting accompaniment to the angry tirade despite originating on opposite sides of the communal area. Ama was glaring at a laptop that sat on a stained oak desk shoved against the large table near the kitchen. She tapped a fingernail on the wood as she read through the alert. “And what violation of basic human dignity has her royal prudishness’s undies in a bunch?” Em demanded with an affected sneer without looking up from his guitar scales. “Oh you’ll agree with this one tree-hugger,” Drake muttered from where he sat oiling his work boots. “Yeah,” Donny piped up, “Finney is trying to kill a perfectly healthy fir.” “What!” Em demanded, carefully placing his battered old acoustic guitar down in its case and darting over to look at the computer screen. “You mean apark tree?” Despite her simmering frustration Ama allowed a small smile to flicker across her face as she continued to type. “Get out of your pajamas and I’ll tell you,” Drake ordered pointing towards the bathroom door with a stained rag. “School starts in forty-five minutes and you still have breakfast and chores. That goes for you too Pip-squirt.” “I hope you washed your hands before you touched our food,” Em said with a frown. “Boot grease makes a great source of fatty acids.” Drake retorted. “Now go!” The two smaller boys muttered in annoyance but stumbled off to follow orders. “So what is up?” the youth asked as he bent his head back over the smooth leather of his boots. “Mrs. Finney wants that tree down that’s blocking her perfect view of Crescent Lake.” Ama replied in a dry tone. “One that’s clearly on park property?” Drake asked. “Indeedy-do.” Ama replied giving the paper in front of her a glare. “So how’s she justifying it?” Drake asked. “As a safety hazard to her house.” Ama replied. “And?” The biologist groaned and rubbed her face. “As far as I can tell the trunk is perfectly healthy. There is an old trash can lid grown into the trunk and a little discolored sap is leaking out there.” “Frass?” “Watch your language!” Donny interjected as he darted up to the table. “Frass is not a bad word,” Drake stated. “Have you let the chickens out?” “Yes, what does frass mean?” Donny asked as he started piling stir-fry onto his plate. “Look it up.” Drake ordered him. “Emerald! Breakfast ends in ten minutes! Get your tukus down here!” “It’s bad health to rush meals,” Em snapped out as he came down a narrow stairway with deliberate slowness. “It’s even worse for your health to skip meals altogether,” Drake growled threateningly. “Shut it and give me some eggs.” Em snapped back. “Emerald Waters Undersun,” Drake hissed out through gritted teeth. “You are going to get your own eggs.” The boy threw himself into a chair and glared at Drake with challenge in every line of his body. “Emerald,” Ama said in a calm tone. “I think you should apologize to your cousin now.” “Sorry I disturbed you Ama,” he offered without breaking eye contact with Drake. “Not me, him,” Ama said. “Sorry you had to hear that Donny.” Em said. Ama heaved a sigh and closed her computer. “Emerald,” Ama said. “Do you want to eat or go hungry?” Drake demanded. Ama glanced at him with a familiar uneasy look in her eyes and Drake fought down a wince. “Now, Em.” she said in a patient tone. “I’ll go hungry,” Em snapped, jumping up and stalking over to the couch. Donny kept his eyes fixed on his plate. Ama heaved a sigh before turning back to her computer. Em wriggled on the couch for several minutes before skulking back to the table. Drake moved to intercept him but Ama stopped him with a look and he let Em serve himself. Drake cast irritated glances at the wall clock as the time crept more and more into school time. Ama closed her computer and stood, then sighed, sat and opened it again. “I need to pick out their report topics,” Ama muttered. “I could do it,” Drake offered. “You do quite enough,” Ama replied briskly, as she scanned the news. “Here you go. For Donny, malfunctions at the Lewis- McChord Air Force Base air show.” A frown creased her face. “Wow, this is pretty serious. It looks like the F-16 demonstration team nearly got killed.” Drake whistled and leaned over her shoulder. “Multiple system failures,” he read out loud. “I am pretty sure that isn’t supposed to happen.” “Nope,” Ama agreed. “Here is a topic on big game management for Em.” “Reports due by next week?” Drake asked as the old printer on the desk began to squeal and grumble as it powered up. “Same as usual,” Ama confirmed. Drake put the printouts on top of the homework pile and moved to wash up the breakfast dishes. “I need to get to work early today so you two be good for Drake,” she called out placing a quick kiss on top of the smaller boys’ heads and giving Drake’s shoulder a friendly squeeze. “Good luck with Mrs. Finney, and stay safe.” Drake called out as she went into her room. The table was cleaned off and wiped down and the clink of forks gave way to the steady scratch of pencils on paper. They broke for a recess after religion and then lunch after history and math, and by the time the Grandfather clock in the corner struck two the younger boys twitching with energy. Drake made certain the internet was disconnected at the router, and chased Donny and Em out into the garden. “And don’t come in until dark,” he ordered tossing two snack bags out after them. Donny as usual snatched his food and disappeared into the small orachard. Low grumbles about troglodytes and the Amish wandered out into the high corn following Em and Drake shook his head in exasperation wondering, not for the first time how the dark haired princeling came from the same gene pool as his little brother. The kitchen being mostly ordered Drake was turning to put the last random dirty sock in the hamper when a gnarled hand clutching a cane head appeared in the corner of his eye, causing his heart to make a valiant attempt to bolt out of his throat. “Abuelita!” he gasped forcing his hands down from the guard position. “Where did you come from?” Smoldering black eyes ran searchingly over the tall youth. An impossibly long mane of streaked silver and black hair was barely contained in a thick braid. A sharply pointed nose perched over a small wrinkled mouth. A vibrant red horse-hair serape hung over her shoulders concealing everything except her brown and gnarled hands which currently clutched the old tree branch she used as a cane. Drake had been more than a little comforted by the fact that both Em and Donny had admitted to having the thought ‘witch’ every time time they saw her as well. “From the hand of God by the bodies of my sainted mother and father,” she replied after a long, uncomfortable silence. She always spoke in a low husky voice that suggested years of smoking, though Drake had never smelled even stale smoke on her. “Right,” Drake blinked and grinned at the response; the one she always gave. “So you are here for their Spanish lesson? I have their grammar books ready and-” The narrow end of the tree branch rapped against the concrete of the floor causing Drake to jump. Abuelita glared at him, locking his gaze and holding him in place with it for a moment. “I am here for their lessons,” she finally stated, “and you are there for my payment.” Drake thought longingly of the repair and maintenance manuals in the cab of the truck and the new tool he was itching to try, but he forced a grin on his face. “Yes ma’am,” he said. “What can I get you today?” Abuelita pulled out a bag of woven grass from under her serape causing the indistinct patterns on the cloth to shift and change. “Take this,” she ordered him, “and collect me the cobalt blue berries that grow on a single stalk close to the ground. They must come from the mountain to the south east of here by the crystal brook.” Drake nodded, and took the little bag, he didn’t quite manage to infused his gestures with enthusiasm he supposed. The old woman, probably wouldn’t have noted it anyway. She turned and moved towards the garden door without waiting for any other reply. However she called out over her shoulder as he turned to find his own way out of the rambling structure. “Don’t dawdle little one. A storm brews in the distance.” He tried not to roll his eyes at that, the weather forecast was clear and eighties for the next week according to the morning fire report Ama had printed. The youth only nodded and slipped around the corner. He circled the barn and pulled a set of loose tan pants and tunic out of the cubby. The soft worn leather almost perfectly matched the forest floor for color as did the moccasins he pulled on after them. His morning running clothes were modern stuff that wicked the sweat away from him and let him speed through the forest. These were his free day clothes. The ones that let him disappear into the forest and wander. Abuelita, for all of her demands, would tend Em and Donny until he returned no matter how late that was, and with the Park’s yearly budget talks still under way it was highly unlikely Ama would be home until long after the sun had set. Despite still hearing the call of the half restored truck he felt something lossening in him already. The soft cotton and smooth leather rested easily against his skin and Drake slipped into the forest. Freedom; for the moment at least, blissful freedom. Pushing aside the guilt that accompanied the thought as well as any lingering worries about his charges the youth let his legs carry him through the trees. He shunned the man made paths, following the faint animal trails. This close to the barn they were as clear to him as if they were named city streets. Being animal trails, they invariably led him to water. Today he stopped at a trickling stream, took off his moccasins, and rolled up his pants legs. The youth turned and followed the thin flow of icy water upstream, letting it steal the heat from his body through his feet. Some distance upstream, the stream widened and pooled under a boulder. There Drake paused and pulled an old black compass out of his pocket. Behind him he knew every trail and tree. Ahead was a broad swath of National Wilderness he would have to cross, or possibly Bureau of Land Management or even state managed forests where he more rarely wandered. It was hard to tell where the boundaries were from the ground. The clearing he wanted for the berries was solidly in BLM land and he still had quite a ways to go to get there. The stand of timber that stood between him and his goal was dense with young tree and branches that frequently formed impenetrable hedges he had to track around and he checked his compass regularly as he climbed in elevation. Even so the youth found he had wandered too far off his route and had to correct when he spotted the boundary fence. However he was in no hurry and he reached the clearing long before the sun told him it was time to turn around. Sometime in the past some unknown force had carved a shallow trench across the side of one of the small mountains that that dotted the wilderness. It had puzzled Drake at first. The scour was at the wrong angle to be an old rock slide, and terminated in a near perfectly circular clearing at the lower end. Centuries old Douglas Firs abruptly gave way to a second ring only a few decades old. Those were in turn beginning to produce cones and a smattering of knee high saplings. The rest of the space was completely given over to wildflowers. No matter what season Drake visited it he found a riot of life. There had been an early spring and many herbs that normally would have waited a month or more were already in full bloom in the mountain meadow. A white wave of foamflower washed in from the deep forest surrounding the clearing, sending up knee high stalks covered in the delicate white blooms. Late trillium hid close to the roots of the great firs, many having shed their white corollas and begun to put forth their bulbous seed heads. Fuzzy white baneberry blossoms nodded gently in the breeze. A riot of yellow and purple spread across the ground as vetch and buttercups and a host of clovers competed for space in the open sun. Great stalks of lupine as high as his head thrust up their purple and blue proudly from thick clusters of palm shaped leaves. Pink shooting stars and violet harebells crouched under the protection of the larger plants. Indian paintbrush lit the scene with flames of red and orange. Where a spring seeped into the meadow elephant’s head flared neon pink and corydalis bushes put forth blushing blooms. Pale green wild orchids stood along the wet spot and the swarms of bees danced from them to the glacier lilies. Sometimes, as he bent over a tiny blossom and traced the intricate network of veins in the petals, drank in the scent, and felt the smooth surface of the leaves an otherworldly feeling would come over him. It was as if there was another world just out of range of his senses. If he could only really look, the thin illusion that was blocking him would slip away and reveal the real world underneath it. “Look Awiegwa,” his father would whisper, pointing at a deer mouse perched on a fallen log. “What does it see?” Awiegwa would screw up his face and squint. Trying to find the answer to the question. Awiegwa had often wondered how so many flowers had come to be in the relatively small area. He had identified dozens of species and there were more he had yet to determine. The clearing was always the first place to bloom and the last to go dormant. Many of the flowers seemed to utterly defy their usual blooming patterns. However, as time passed he had simply come to accept it. It was one of the small good things that brought back the memories of his father. If it didn’t quite follow the rules Ama had taught him, well an impossible clearing in the mountains wasn’t a place for rules. The particular bloom that Abuelita had requested had taken full advantage of the early sun and had already put forth a few cobalt blue berries; easily spotted at the edge of the clearing in the delicate sea of white flowers. However before he left the shade of the forest for the meadow the youth paused and closed his eyes. Bole wasn’t always here, but he was often enough that Awiegwa always checked for him. Carefully he reconstructed the clearing in his mind; marking every tree and boulder on the edge. Three years he had been coming here and each time it was easier to recreate the clearing. Breathing evenly he opened his eyes, letting the mental image merge with the actual. There was a brief moment of confusion as details like the play of light through branches and the trembling of small clusters of flowers fixed themselves but there was only one truly jarring note. Awiegwa didn’t let his eyes focus on the disparity; he never did anymore, but a warm smile spread across his features as he slipped silently into the meadow. He was here. As the youth moved in a low crouch, gathering the first fruits of the Queen’s Cup, he let his peripheral vision linger on a particular snag. There was nothing obviously interesting about it, other than the fact that it had not been there the last time Awiegwa was here. He had named the wanderer Bole, because it most often appeared as a thick tree trunk; sometimes living, sometimes dead. Occasionally it would be a boulder or simply a mound in the dirt. Often it wasn’t in the clearing at all. If the youth moved forward and tried to closely examine it he could never find anything to suggest it was something other than a tree or rock. He had thought about taking a sample occasionally, had taken his knife out to do just that more than once, but something always held him back. Bole was a part of this place. Dissecting him would be too much like attempting to dissect his sense of his father’s presence here. The youth had never told anyone about this place, not even Ama with who could get most things out of him easily enough. Down at the house, in town, when he was Drake; solid, reliable, first up in the morning, two grades ahead in school with a penchant for science Drake, a productive member of modern society with a promising future and his mother smiling at him. Here he could be Awiegwa. Here he could believe in the ancient medicines his father had dug out of dusty old tomes and brought to life from the forest litter. Every time Awiegwa left the clearing and headed back towards home reality would reassert itself. Bole would resolve back into a figment of his imagination, created from pride in a somewhat better than average memory and what the social workers had called an “intriguing imagination”. When he reached the house and become solidly Drake again flickers of embarrassment would begin eating at him for letting his senses trick him like that, but as long as the blooms nodded around him in this garden Bole could exist even on a Thursday. The little woven grass bag filled up with the berries fairly quickly and Awiegwa soon stretched out of his crouch and let his gaze wander contentedly over the clearing. As it always did, the warm space was working its special magic. Worries about Em getting out of his schoolwork, of not paying enough attention to the quiet Donny, of letting Ama see his petty resentments: it had all melted away from his muscles, thoughts of college costs and abandoning his duties dissolved into an acute sense of the now. The leaves rustled softly in a barely-there breeze, the heavy scent of some unidentified blossom filled his lungs, a dozen shades of green framed the rainbow of flowers, and over and above it all the creaking of the firs as the wind played over them. It was at times like these that he felth he could almost see into heaven; that something wonderful that existed just beyond his senses, and all he had to do was reach out and claim it. The youth took a deep breath and let himself fall backwards onto a handy rise in the forest floor. His path had taken him to the foot of the snag and he shifted slightly to align himself with the gnarled roots. One hand gripped a time smoothed root. “Ama trusted me enough to go out of state,” he murmured. “That’s the first time she’s done that. Usually she has Abulita stay with us to fend off the Harsh, but she said it’s long past legal now.” It was his imagination of course that made him think the root vibrated in his hand in response. Many a long hour he had spent in this clearing with the wanderer. He had poured out his frustrations and anguishes over life’s injustices, had shared his secrets as he grew, and had shouted his triumphs. Sometimes he felt closer to Bole than to any of his human friends. However, something that sounded like his mother’s voice warned him that there was something odd about this and that awareness was the main reason he had kept this place secret from Ama. Their mother hadn’t exactly liked stuff like that. She had never objected to his father’s digging up the old stories of her people. Making cross generational connections between elders, who more often than not lived isolated lives, and the next generation, was an admirable goal in of itself in her eyes; objectively a social good. Storytelling was only the natural course for these relationships to take, but subtle looks had warned even a very young Drake that it was best to cautious what he shared with his mother. At least of those things that couldn’t be placed on a microscope slide. So this was Awigewa’s place, and while his father’s spirit wanders the flowers with he had never felt his mother here. He let his focus drift up, and up. Dark blue Lupine nodded over his head framing the faint crisscross of jet contrails that threw a light haze over an otherwise cloudless sky. His clothed grew deliciously hot from the spring sun. The ground too had eagerly accepted the energy and now it conducted the heat into the muscles of his back. Bole’s wood beneath him was warmer even than the surrounding ground and an idle thought traced across Awiegwa’s awareness; something about it being odd for the light colored wood and relatively dry wood to retain more heat than the darker soil surrounding it. His mind was filled with the impression of a goal. He had been meaning to do, something. Something fun, yes, exploring, he’d meant to see if whatever had dug that den by the second boulder was cubing this year. He would just get up and do that in a minute. His back was so warm and comfortable. “Flying Sparks” Another foray into the lives of Drake McCarty, Ama Love, and the rest of their siblings as they discover that something alien is out in the forest around their home. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flying-sparks-a-novel-of-dragon-bear-and-boy/coming_soon #FlyingSparks #ScienceFiction #Scifi #Story #novel #book #DrakeMcCarty #AmaLove #Donny #Em #Bard #Bole #Aliens #Spaceships #Crystals #fireflies #NPS #NationalPark #Doctor #Sever #family #storm #writing #reading #drama #literature #author #BettyAdams #DyingEmbers #Dragons #ThingsThatGoBoomp #Indiegogo #CrowdFunding

Flying Sparks

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https://i.redd.it/bqo2debncb3b1.gif

Chapter 2

“Hazardous? I’ll show that manipulative, misanthropic, anti-establishment cretin just what hazardous means if he thinks I’m going to fold on this!”
The sound of vigorous guitar riffs made a fitting accompaniment to the angry tirade despite originating on opposite sides of the communal area. Ama was glaring at a laptop that sat on a stained oak desk shoved against the large table near the kitchen. She tapped a fingernail on the wood as she read through the alert.
“And what violation of basic human dignity has her royal prudishness’s undies in a bunch?” Em demanded with an affected sneer without looking up from his guitar scales.
“Oh you’ll agree with this one tree-hugger,” Drake muttered from where he sat oiling his work boots.
“Yeah,” Donny piped up, “Finney is trying to kill a perfectly healthy fir.”
“What!” Em demanded, carefully placing his battered old acoustic guitar down in its case and darting over to look at the computer screen. “You mean apark tree?”
Despite her simmering frustration Ama allowed a small smile to flicker across her face as she continued to type.
“Get out of your pajamas and I’ll tell you,” Drake ordered pointing towards the bathroom door with a stained rag. “School starts in forty-five minutes and you still have breakfast and chores. That goes for you too Pip-squirt.”
“I hope you washed your hands before you touched our food,” Em said with a frown.
“Boot grease makes a great source of fatty acids.” Drake retorted. “Now go!”
The two smaller boys muttered in annoyance but stumbled off to follow orders.
“So what is up?” the youth asked as he bent his head back over the smooth leather of his boots.
“Mrs. Finney wants that tree down that’s blocking her perfect view of Crescent Lake.” Ama replied in a dry tone.
“One that’s clearly on park property?” Drake asked.
“Indeedy-do.” Ama replied giving the paper in front of her a glare.
“So how’s she justifying it?” Drake asked.
“As a safety hazard to her house.” Ama replied.
“And?”
The biologist groaned and rubbed her face.
“As far as I can tell the trunk is perfectly healthy. There is an old trash can lid grown into the trunk and a little discolored sap is leaking out there.”
“Frass?”
“Watch your language!” Donny interjected as he darted up to the table.
“Frass is not a bad word,” Drake stated. “Have you let the chickens out?”
“Yes, what does frass mean?” Donny asked as he started piling stir-fry onto his plate.
“Look it up.” Drake ordered him. “Emerald! Breakfast ends in ten minutes! Get your tukus down here!”
“It’s bad health to rush meals,” Em snapped out as he came down a narrow stairway with deliberate slowness.
“It’s even worse for your health to skip meals altogether,” Drake growled threateningly.
“Shut it and give me some eggs.” Em snapped back.
“Emerald Waters Undersun,” Drake hissed out through gritted teeth. “You are going to get your own eggs.”
The boy threw himself into a chair and glared at Drake with challenge in every line of his body.
“Emerald,” Ama said in a calm tone. “I think you should apologize to your cousin now.”
“Sorry I disturbed you Ama,” he offered without breaking eye contact with Drake.
“Not me, him,” Ama said.
“Sorry you had to hear that Donny.” Em said.
Ama heaved a sigh and closed her computer.
“Emerald,” Ama said.
“Do you want to eat or go hungry?” Drake demanded.
Ama glanced at him with a familiar uneasy look in her eyes and Drake fought down a wince.
“Now, Em.” she said in a patient tone.
“I’ll go hungry,” Em snapped, jumping up and stalking over to the couch.
Donny kept his eyes fixed on his plate. Ama heaved a sigh before turning back to her computer. Em wriggled on the couch for several minutes before skulking back to the table. Drake moved to intercept him but Ama stopped him with a look and he let Em serve himself. Drake cast irritated glances at the wall clock as the time crept more and more into school time.
Ama closed her computer and stood, then sighed, sat and opened it again.
“I need to pick out their report topics,” Ama muttered.
“I could do it,” Drake offered.
“You do quite enough,” Ama replied briskly, as she scanned the news. “Here you go. For Donny, malfunctions at the Lewis- McChord Air Force Base air show.” A frown creased her face. “Wow, this is pretty serious. It looks like the F-16 demonstration team nearly got killed.”
Drake whistled and leaned over her shoulder.
“Multiple system failures,” he read out loud. “I am pretty sure that isn’t supposed to happen.”
“Nope,” Ama agreed. “Here is a topic on big game management for Em.”
“Reports due by next week?” Drake asked as the old printer on the desk began to squeal and grumble as it powered up.
“Same as usual,” Ama confirmed.
Drake put the printouts on top of the homework pile and moved to wash up the breakfast dishes.
“I need to get to work early today so you two be good for Drake,” she called out placing a quick kiss on top of the smaller boys’ heads and giving Drake’s shoulder a friendly squeeze.
“Good luck with Mrs. Finney, and stay safe.” Drake called out as she went into her room.
The table was cleaned off and wiped down and the clink of forks gave way to the steady scratch of pencils on paper. They broke for a recess after religion and then lunch after history and math, and by the time the Grandfather clock in the corner struck two the younger boys twitching with energy. Drake made certain the internet was disconnected at the router, and chased Donny and Em out into the garden.
“And don’t come in until dark,” he ordered tossing two snack bags out after them.
Donny as usual snatched his food and disappeared into the small orachard. Low grumbles about troglodytes and the Amish wandered out into the high corn following Em and Drake shook his head in exasperation wondering, not for the first time how the dark haired princeling came from the same gene pool as his little brother. The kitchen being mostly ordered Drake was turning to put the last random dirty sock in the hamper when a gnarled hand clutching a cane head appeared in the corner of his eye, causing his heart to make a valiant attempt to bolt out of his throat.
“Abuelita!” he gasped forcing his hands down from the guard position. “Where did you come from?”
Smoldering black eyes ran searchingly over the tall youth. An impossibly long mane of streaked silver and black hair was barely contained in a thick braid. A sharply pointed nose perched over a small wrinkled mouth. A vibrant red horse-hair serape hung over her shoulders concealing everything except her brown and gnarled hands which currently clutched the old tree branch she used as a cane. Drake had been more than a little comforted by the fact that both Em and Donny had admitted to having the thought ‘witch’ every time time they saw her as well.
“From the hand of God by the bodies of my sainted mother and father,” she replied after a long, uncomfortable silence.
She always spoke in a low husky voice that suggested years of smoking, though Drake had never smelled even stale smoke on her.
“Right,” Drake blinked and grinned at the response; the one she always gave. “So you are here for their Spanish lesson? I have their grammar books ready and-”
The narrow end of the tree branch rapped against the concrete of the floor causing Drake to jump. Abuelita glared at him, locking his gaze and holding him in place with it for a moment.
“I am here for their lessons,” she finally stated, “and you are there for my payment.”
Drake thought longingly of the repair and maintenance manuals in the cab of the truck and the new tool he was itching to try, but he forced a grin on his face.
“Yes ma’am,” he said. “What can I get you today?”
Abuelita pulled out a bag of woven grass from under her serape causing the indistinct patterns on the cloth to shift and change.
“Take this,” she ordered him, “and collect me the cobalt blue berries that grow on a single stalk close to the ground. They must come from the mountain to the south east of here by the crystal brook.”
Drake nodded, and took the little bag, he didn’t quite manage to infused his gestures with enthusiasm he supposed. The old woman, probably wouldn’t have noted it anyway. She turned and moved towards the garden door without waiting for any other reply. However she called out over her shoulder as he turned to find his own way out of the rambling structure.
“Don’t dawdle little one. A storm brews in the distance.”
He tried not to roll his eyes at that, the weather forecast was clear and eighties for the next week according to the morning fire report Ama had printed. The youth only nodded and slipped around the corner. He circled the barn and pulled a set of loose tan pants and tunic out of the cubby. The soft worn leather almost perfectly matched the forest floor for color as did the moccasins he pulled on after them. His morning running clothes were modern stuff that wicked the sweat away from him and let him speed through the forest. These were his free day clothes. The ones that let him disappear into the forest and wander. Abuelita, for all of her demands, would tend Em and Donny until he returned no matter how late that was, and with the Park’s yearly budget talks still under way it was highly unlikely Ama would be home until long after the sun had set. Despite still hearing the call of the half restored truck he felt something lossening in him already. The soft cotton and smooth leather rested easily against his skin and Drake slipped into the forest.
Freedom; for the moment at least, blissful freedom. Pushing aside the guilt that accompanied the thought as well as any lingering worries about his charges the youth let his legs carry him through the trees. He shunned the man made paths, following the faint animal trails. This close to the barn they were as clear to him as if they were named city streets. Being animal trails, they invariably led him to water. Today he stopped at a trickling stream, took off his moccasins, and rolled up his pants legs. The youth turned and followed the thin flow of icy water upstream, letting it steal the heat from his body through his feet.
Some distance upstream, the stream widened and pooled under a boulder. There Drake paused and pulled an old black compass out of his pocket. Behind him he knew every trail and tree. Ahead was a broad swath of National Wilderness he would have to cross, or possibly Bureau of Land Management or even state managed forests where he more rarely wandered. It was hard to tell where the boundaries were from the ground. The clearing he wanted for the berries was solidly in BLM land and he still had quite a ways to go to get there. The stand of timber that stood between him and his goal was dense with young tree and branches that frequently formed impenetrable hedges he had to track around and he checked his compass regularly as he climbed in elevation. Even so the youth found he had wandered too far off his route and had to correct when he spotted the boundary fence. However he was in no hurry and he reached the clearing long before the sun told him it was time to turn around.
Sometime in the past some unknown force had carved a shallow trench across the side of one of the small mountains that that dotted the wilderness. It had puzzled Drake at first. The scour was at the wrong angle to be an old rock slide, and terminated in a near perfectly circular clearing at the lower end. Centuries old Douglas Firs abruptly gave way to a second ring only a few decades old. Those were in turn beginning to produce cones and a smattering of knee high saplings. The rest of the space was completely given over to wildflowers. No matter what season Drake visited it he found a riot of life.
There had been an early spring and many herbs that normally would have waited a month or more were already in full bloom in the mountain meadow. A white wave of foamflower washed in from the deep forest surrounding the clearing, sending up knee high stalks covered in the delicate white blooms. Late trillium hid close to the roots of the great firs, many having shed their white corollas and begun to put forth their bulbous seed heads. Fuzzy white baneberry blossoms nodded gently in the breeze. A riot of yellow and purple spread across the ground as vetch and buttercups and a host of clovers competed for space in the open sun. Great stalks of lupine as high as his head thrust up their purple and blue proudly from thick clusters of palm shaped leaves. Pink shooting stars and violet harebells crouched under the protection of the larger plants. Indian paintbrush lit the scene with flames of red and orange. Where a spring seeped into the meadow elephant’s head flared neon pink and corydalis bushes put forth blushing blooms. Pale green wild orchids stood along the wet spot and the swarms of bees danced from them to the glacier lilies.
Sometimes, as he bent over a tiny blossom and traced the intricate network of veins in the petals, drank in the scent, and felt the smooth surface of the leaves an otherworldly feeling would come over him. It was as if there was another world just out of range of his senses. If he could only really look, the thin illusion that was blocking him would slip away and reveal the real world underneath it.
“Look Awiegwa,” his father would whisper, pointing at a deer mouse perched on a fallen log. “What does it see?”
Awiegwa would screw up his face and squint. Trying to find the answer to the question.
Awiegwa had often wondered how so many flowers had come to be in the relatively small area. He had identified dozens of species and there were more he had yet to determine. The clearing was always the first place to bloom and the last to go dormant. Many of the flowers seemed to utterly defy their usual blooming patterns. However, as time passed he had simply come to accept it. It was one of the small good things that brought back the memories of his father. If it didn’t quite follow the rules Ama had taught him, well an impossible clearing in the mountains wasn’t a place for rules.
The particular bloom that Abuelita had requested had taken full advantage of the early sun and had already put forth a few cobalt blue berries; easily spotted at the edge of the clearing in the delicate sea of white flowers.
However before he left the shade of the forest for the meadow the youth paused and closed his eyes. Bole wasn’t always here, but he was often enough that Awiegwa always checked for him. Carefully he reconstructed the clearing in his mind; marking every tree and boulder on the edge. Three years he had been coming here and each time it was easier to recreate the clearing. Breathing evenly he opened his eyes, letting the mental image merge with the actual. There was a brief moment of confusion as details like the play of light through branches and the trembling of small clusters of flowers fixed themselves but there was only one truly jarring note. Awiegwa didn’t let his eyes focus on the disparity; he never did anymore, but a warm smile spread across his features as he slipped silently into the meadow.
He was here. As the youth moved in a low crouch, gathering the first fruits of the Queen’s Cup, he let his peripheral vision linger on a particular snag. There was nothing obviously interesting about it, other than the fact that it had not been there the last time Awiegwa was here. He had named the wanderer Bole, because it most often appeared as a thick tree trunk; sometimes living, sometimes dead. Occasionally it would be a boulder or simply a mound in the dirt. Often it wasn’t in the clearing at all. If the youth moved forward and tried to closely examine it he could never find anything to suggest it was something other than a tree or rock.
He had thought about taking a sample occasionally, had taken his knife out to do just that more than once, but something always held him back. Bole was a part of this place. Dissecting him would be too much like attempting to dissect his sense of his father’s presence here. The youth had never told anyone about this place, not even Ama with who could get most things out of him easily enough. Down at the house, in town, when he was Drake; solid, reliable, first up in the morning, two grades ahead in school with a penchant for science Drake, a productive member of modern society with a promising future and his mother smiling at him. Here he could be Awiegwa. Here he could believe in the ancient medicines his father had dug out of dusty old tomes and brought to life from the forest litter. Every time Awiegwa left the clearing and headed back towards home reality would reassert itself. Bole would resolve back into a figment of his imagination, created from pride in a somewhat better than average memory and what the social workers had called an “intriguing imagination”. When he reached the house and become solidly Drake again flickers of embarrassment would begin eating at him for letting his senses trick him like that, but as long as the blooms nodded around him in this garden Bole could exist even on a Thursday.
The little woven grass bag filled up with the berries fairly quickly and Awiegwa soon stretched out of his crouch and let his gaze wander contentedly over the clearing. As it always did, the warm space was working its special magic. Worries about Em getting out of his schoolwork, of not paying enough attention to the quiet Donny, of letting Ama see his petty resentments: it had all melted away from his muscles, thoughts of college costs and abandoning his duties dissolved into an acute sense of the now. The leaves rustled softly in a barely-there breeze, the heavy scent of some unidentified blossom filled his lungs, a dozen shades of green framed the rainbow of flowers, and over and above it all the creaking of the firs as the wind played over them. It was at times like these that he felth he could almost see into heaven; that something wonderful that existed just beyond his senses, and all he had to do was reach out and claim it.
The youth took a deep breath and let himself fall backwards onto a handy rise in the forest floor. His path had taken him to the foot of the snag and he shifted slightly to align himself with the gnarled roots. One hand gripped a time smoothed root.
“Ama trusted me enough to go out of state,” he murmured. “That’s the first time she’s done that. Usually she has Abulita stay with us to fend off the Harsh, but she said it’s long past legal now.”
It was his imagination of course that made him think the root vibrated in his hand in response. Many a long hour he had spent in this clearing with the wanderer. He had poured out his frustrations and anguishes over life’s injustices, had shared his secrets as he grew, and had shouted his triumphs. Sometimes he felt closer to Bole than to any of his human friends. However, something that sounded like his mother’s voice warned him that there was something odd about this and that awareness was the main reason he had kept this place secret from Ama. Their mother hadn’t exactly liked stuff like that. She had never objected to his father’s digging up the old stories of her people. Making cross generational connections between elders, who more often than not lived isolated lives, and the next generation, was an admirable goal in of itself in her eyes; objectively a social good. Storytelling was only the natural course for these relationships to take, but subtle looks had warned even a very young Drake that it was best to cautious what he shared with his mother. At least of those things that couldn’t be placed on a microscope slide. So this was Awigewa’s place, and while his father’s spirit wanders the flowers with he had never felt his mother here.
He let his focus drift up, and up. Dark blue Lupine nodded over his head framing the faint crisscross of jet contrails that threw a light haze over an otherwise cloudless sky. His clothed grew deliciously hot from the spring sun. The ground too had eagerly accepted the energy and now it conducted the heat into the muscles of his back. Bole’s wood beneath him was warmer even than the surrounding ground and an idle thought traced across Awiegwa’s awareness; something about it being odd for the light colored wood and relatively dry wood to retain more heat than the darker soil surrounding it. His mind was filled with the impression of a goal. He had been meaning to do, something. Something fun, yes, exploring, he’d meant to see if whatever had dug that den by the second boulder was cubing this year. He would just get up and do that in a minute. His back was so warm and comfortable.
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https://i.redd.it/zafjty1qcb3b1.gif
“Flying Sparks”
Another foray into the lives of Drake McCarty, Ama Love, and the rest of their siblings as they discover that something alien is out in the forest around their home.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flying-sparks-a-novel-of-dragon-bear-and-boy/coming_soon
#FlyingSparks #ScienceFiction #Scifi #Story #novel #book #DrakeMcCarty #AmaLove #Donny #Em #Bard #Bole #Aliens #Spaceships #Crystals #fireflies #NPS #NationalPark #Doctor #Sever #family #storm #writing #reading #drama #literature #author #BettyAdams #DyingEmbers #Dragons #ThingsThatGoBoomp #Indiegogo #CrowdFunding

Alright y'all... here's the final piece. It's 15 Google Docs pages, so it's a long one. If you don't want to read and are wondering what the takeaway is, it's this: Jenelle has so many different health "issues" that have popped up and disappeared over the last 10+ years, received diagnoses for some, has had tests done for most, and has ultimately ignored all of it. Sometimes she focuses on her esophagus. Sometimes it's her neck cracking. Sometimes it's her lungs. Sometimes it's her bloodwork. Sometimes it's her hemangiomas. Nowhere in any of the testing, medications, unofficial or official diagnoses is there a solution she's happy with. It never ends, and it never will. I'll eat a very tall sandwich if she ever announces (another) official diagnosis that explains all of her ailments (not necessarily one blanket one) and demonstrates treatment or lifestyle changes that she's making to try to make herself feel better.
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January 2022 - Posts a TikTok video saying she’s been taking things easy lately and has lost her spark and motivation because of her health issues. She says, “I’ve recently been diagnosed with two tumors in my spine, and they recently found out that I also have a tumor in my neck, which hurts pretty bad. We don’t know what we’re doing about this yet, but I’ve just been in a lot of pain lately. My neck is just killing me.” She hashtags the video "syringomyelia," "hemangioma," and "spinetumor." In another video, she says these tumors are different than the cysts she’s previously mentioned and lists out what she has: cysts in her spine and head, two small tumors on her vertebrae and “thoratic” spine, another tumor at C3 in her neck, called hemangiomas. More on that in a bit.
January 2, 2022 - Posts a TikTok response to a comment that said, “I have a cyst on my brain. Actually, a lot of people do. They call them ‘don’t bother me cysts’ because they are so common. Your absolutely fine.” Sarcastically, Jenelle says, “You know what you’re so right; it doesn’t cause any issues until you go paralyzed or can’t hold your bowels anymore or have left arm weakness like I do, or have a nerve study done and show left side weakness in your body.” She says we shouldn’t compare whos worse and that it’s not a competition, and wants to clarify that she has cysts and tumors. She says cysts elsewhere aren’t a big issue, but they are when they’re on your spine. “Just use Google.” She points out that the video is shaking and says it’s because of weakness in her hands. She says the commenter is right that they won’t do anything about it until the symptoms get worse.
Posts another response to a different comment that says, “I know it’s been a long road to this discovery. Can you share with us the journey such as exams they had to conduct to find these tumors?” Jenelle says every time you get an MRI/CT scan done, you should ask for the image disk and bring it with you to every doctor you go to, as long as it has a diagnosis. She shows a picture of her “thoratic” spine and points out two little tumors and a cyst. She shows the MRI of her sinuses and shows us that cyst. She says she got another MRI that she doesn’t have the image disk for, but it showed she had another hemangioma.
January 5, 2022 - Posts a TikTok with someone else’s audio that says, “how do you know you can’t OD on cannabis? Because I try! I try every fucking day Barbara.” It could be argued she only posted this because her mom’s name is Barbara, but her cannabis addiction is well documented.
January 6, 2022 - Posts a dancing TikTok and a commenter says, “That’s good for the back.” She responds, “Staying positive and dancing until I can’t anymore.”
January 8, 2022 - Says in a TikTok comment that she was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and just has anxiety.
January 12, 2022 - Posts a TikTok with the caption “When your husband asks if he got you sick,” and the audio says, “Umm… yeah.”
Random thoughts YT January 2022 - talks about her implants and says, “They say to get them redone every 10 years, but I don’t have any problems right now.” She says she asked 2 different doctors, and both told her that she has so many other health issues that they don’t think she has BII and aren’t concerned about it.
January 2022 - Seventh video, with footage starting in October and going through January. It’s been six months since she found out about the cyst. Her back hurts really bad, yet still went on a fair ride (which made her nauseous, despite her “never” having motion sickness before). She has nerve pain in her shoulders, back, and ribs. Headache, neck cracking, ear popping, feels like she can’t breathe. She Googled what she shouldn’t be doing: no trampolines, no scuba diving (“which I’m certified in scuba diving, so that really sucks”), and no roller coaster riding. So. ENT said to see the neurologist again; the neurologist suggests seeing a new ENT. The neurologist assumes the neck cracking isn’t caused by the cyst. Goes back to the neurosurgeon - they’re going to repeat the MRI and look for any changes. The results show it’s getting longer but is the same width. Mentions her heat issues again; she’s getting red patches on her chest and breaking out and itching when she’s in the sun. She says she’s getting neck tightness, extreme pressure headaches, and blood pressure rising when she stands up and sits down. The doctor suggests an MRI of her neck. Now claims arm & fingertip numbness. Refers to her cysts as tumors, benign vertebrae tumors, and hemangiomas. The neurosurgeon suggests pain management, but she wants to try herbal remedies and some fruit that cures cancer. The neurosurgeon says the hemangioma is fine and that her neck is normal. Jenelle suggests she may have thoracic outlet syndrome. She thought her neck was cracking due to the hemangioma, but the doctor tells her that wouldn’t cause the neck cracking. She has an EMG scheduled and will get a blood study done to detect her blood circulation.
February 2, 2022 - Posts a negative review for another doctor on Facebook. She says she was told by the PA to “go to the ER if you become paralyzed or lose bowel movements due to the cyst in your spine.” She was referred elsewhere for TOS syndrome (thoracic outlet syndrome). She says she’s been crying for months about her problems, and the practice didn’t care to look into it further when her problems are “very apparent” on her MRIs. She doesn’t recommend this office and ends the review with, “Not to mention my cyst in my spine is growing in length 1mm per month.”
This same day, someone comments on a TikTok video asking how her back is doing. She responds by saying, “Lots of pain, and my neck always cracks but waiting on second opinions.”
February 8, 2022 - Posts a TikTok with the caption “Nerve Study Day” with star emojis. She starts her voiceover by saying, “Time for another dottor’s appointment.” She explains the nerve study tests her nerve impulses with shocks and acupuncture pokes. She says, “Don’t worry, I wore a mask, I was sick.” She says she felt like shit after and took a bath and then laid down after because she had a bad headache. She had to help Kaiser with homework, though, because being a mom doesn’t stop. Ate dinner but still didn’t feel well, so she went to sleep.
February 2022 - Eighth video. Got a new opinion from a new neurologist who sent her for another MRI and a nerve study. Claims her symptoms have gotten worse. Says her cervical MRI was at C3, C5, C6, & C7. She has a hemangioma in her neck, degenerative disc disease, and a disc bulge. The thoracic MRI showed T7, T8, & T9 - has a syrinx & hemangiomas there. And the cyst in her sinus. Says her thumb on her left side is losing grip, and her arm doesn’t feel like it’s attached to her body. Her brain pain has been getting worse and worse. Claims the new doctor says it’s weird no one is doing anything. She looked at her CT myelogram scan from 2021 and says spondylosis is her new diagnosis and that the neurologist didn’t tell her about it. Her neck has been cracking even louder - she’s being referred to another neurosurgeon for her spine cyst. She’s going to have her lungs checked for more cysts. After the nerve study, says she has problems at C6 in her spine and is waiting for the neurologist to look at the results. She has had nerve pain in her arm and back since the study, as well as double vision.
February 20, 2022 - Posts a TikTok about her health and mentions she will get checked for ALS and has been crying a lot. She’s getting all of her tests redone and her nerve study redone. She says she’s having trouble breathing, and since she has cysts “popping up everywhere,” they want to check to see if they’re also on her lungs. She hashtags the video “ALSAwareness” and “PrayersNeeded.” Responding to comments, she says, “Yeah, I asked my doc about MS, and she said nope, I don’t have that based on my brain MRI” and “I wish I did have MS and not ALS… but she said she looked at my brain MRI and there were no lesions.” Someone comments that the shaky hands and poor thumb grip could be caused by phone use and gaming controllers, but Jenelle says, “No… I’ve had a nerve study to prove weakness. I am having atrophy in my thumb. My thumb is losing muscle.”
February 23, 2022 - Posts an Instagram story selfie from a doctor’s office captioned “Good news but bad news… blood work is normal”
February 24, 2022 - Posts a TikTok captioned “freaking out on the inside” and “Life tough at the moment :( #NerveStudy.” She says she had to get another nerve study done because the other person who did it wasn’t her doctor’s office. She shows us her medical shorts and her laughing at herself but says she was “tearing up.” She says the electricity part was good but waited on needles. She shows us the equipment they used. Then she shows us herself crying when she got home because she had such bad nerve pain and then went to bed. A comment asks what she takes for the nerve pain, and she says, “Hot baths.” Another asks if she has fibromyalgia, and she says, “Nope.”
March 6, 2022 - Asked in the comments on a TikTok video how she’s been feeling and when she’s going to the doctor again. She responds, “Thanks for asking! Have a lot of double vision, neck pain, and headaches everyday.. Going this week for my check up.”
March 10, 2022 - Posts on Instagram that she has a diagnosis. The next day she sold the story to E! News and said she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. From the article: “For as long as I can remember, I would get extremely bad tension headaches and full body aches - like I had the flu, but was not sick. My entire body gets in so much pain, and sometimes I lay in bed and cry.” She says, “Living life every day is challenging because of having only a little bit of energy to be able to get my work done and then having to go to bed early due to headaches or body aches.” She claims to be changing her diet to manage her symptoms.
March 11, 2022 - Posts an Instagram story that says, “I’m still so sad. Even tho I have a diagnosis… still doesn’t explain my neck cracking, double vision, and throat pain. I feel so hopeless. Something is def wrong with my neck, and it’s severely tight 24/7.”
March 12, 2022 - Posts a TikTok captioned “Hiii #LungCheckup #HealthUpdate #fibromyalgia.” She says she hasn’t been feeling good and took a break from TikTok for a few days. She shares her diagnosis and says she told her neurologist a few months ago that she couldn’t breathe, so she had a checkup with a lung doctor. They did a FeNO test on her, and her score was abnormally low, like “way too low.” She exclaims it measures the nitric oxide that you exhale on your breath. She’s now been prescribed an inhaler, nitroglycerin for her esophagus spasms, and a full lung checkup. She was going to skip her lung appointment, but good thing she didn’t! A quick Google search tells us that a high FeNO score is when you should be concerned.
March 13, 2022 - Posts a TikTok showing off weed merch someone sent her. In the comments, someone asks, “But do you think smoking is contributing to your lung problems? Hope you get answers soon!” Jenelle responds and says, “.....yeah I know :( but thank you.”
Same day - Posts a TikTok discussing her health, and in the comments, someone says one of her results can indicate a certain type of asthma. She responds, “or COPD, anemic, cystic fibrosis, etc. lots of issues.”
March 14, 2022 - A commenter on TikTok says, “My boyfriend rolls his eyes when I tell him my health issues.” Jenelle responds, “David does too.”
Same day - A commenter asks why she doesn’t feel good, and she replies, “The middle of my chest has been hurting for days extremely bad.”
March 16, 2022 - She posts a video captioned “Peak Flow Meter - Lung Reading” and starts it off by saying, “This is your sign to get your lungs checked.” She said she just woke up and has been told to keep a diary of how her lung function is and is going to see how good it is based on her age and height. She blows into the device for about a second and coughs afterward, gasping for breath. She shows us her level is at 410, and for her height and age, it should be at 475. She says she has the lungs of a 70-year-old. She’s going to continue to do readings 3 times a day and report back to her lung doctor. In the comments, she mentions her average is 400. There are multiple comments telling her the correct way to administer this test and that she’s doing it wrong.
She posts a second video responding to a comment telling her to stand up straight, take a big deep breath and blow out as fast and hard as she can. She does it three times and shows it’s 410 each time. Someone comments, asking if she’s sure it’s not stuck, and asks if she quit smoking. She responds, “I’m going to try breathing exercises.”
March 17, 2022 - Posts a video in response to a comment saying, “I thought you said you had a stiff neck and couldn’t breathe?” She’s lipsyncing to Eminem’s “Hailies Song,” specifically the lyrics “I act like shit don’t phase me, inside it drives me crazy. My insecurities could eat me alive.”
March 20, 2022 - Makes a video responding to a comment saying, “Whatever treatment plan your doctor has you on must really be working. You went from uncontrollable neck pain to this in no time at all.” Jenelle says she’s not going to be the most depressed bitch on this app every single day and is going to show us good and bad days. She says some people are in pain more than others. She says she’s been up since 1 in the morning because of her esophageal spasms, feeling like she has a heart attack. She’s not going to film herself every single time she feels like shit. There’s no treatment plan because they don’t know what’s going on. The only treatment plan she has is for her esophagus. She’s going to dance until she can’t no more.
March 26, 2022 - Makes a video with the caption, “I’ll give y’all more of an update soon. If you see bruises on my arms… you know why #myastheniagravis.” She’s crying and breathing heavily and captions herself saying her chest hurts. The text on the video says, “2 months ago: can’t breathe when waking up.” A clip of her in the bath says, “Tried to relax and rest since this began.” Posts a clip of herself in the ER that says, “2 days ago: hospitalized for extreme chest pain and difficulty breathing” and shows off her IV and pulls down her gown to show the monitors taped to her chest. The first clip is taken at 3:05 PM, and the second is taken at 3:49 PM. This one says, “Recently had 2 antibodies related to Myasthenia Gravis show up on blood tests.” Another says, “Had 2 EKGs, they stuck me 4 times for blood, stuck me 2 more for IVs, chest x-ray, CT scan,” and shows off all of her taped IV/blood draw locations. She posts another clip in the hallway outside of the x-ray room that says, “My blood clotting test came back high, but they said images looked ok.” We got a full picture of her IV in her arm that says, “resting for now but following up with neurologist ASAP”
March 27, 2022 - A commenter on TikTok mentions that weight gain can affect her mobility and says it happened to someone they know. Jenelle responds, “I can’t hardly walk 5ft without my legs burning like I’m doing squats, but I have been trying to take walks around my land lately.”
March 28, 2022 - Posts an Instagram story of someone else’s video explaining Epstein-Barr and Jenelle captions it “Yes, I do have Epstein Barr nuclear in my system too lol. This is crazy to think about yall… I had mono in middle school and was hospitalized for it (mind blown emoji)”
April 3, 2022 - Posts on her (shortly thereafter) defunct blog that she’s switching to wine from beer. She says, “With all my health issues happening my stomach and esophagus have not been agreeing with me. Since possibly having Myasthenia Gravis, there’s a huge diet and foods to avoid that can trigger GI symptoms and/or problems.” She claims that “Since switching to wine, my stomach has been a lot calmer, and my burping also has decreased significantly! Super happy I’m making healthier choices for myself.”
April 4, 2022 - Posts a video making and eating a homemade breakfast sandwich (English muffin, bacon, eggs, mayo).
April 26, 2022 - Shows her coffee order again - trenta iced coffee with vanilla sweet cream cold foam, classic syrup, and sweet cream.
May 2, 2022 - In an Instagram Q&A, she's asked how she’s doing lately and asked for health updates. She responds, “Health? It’s put on hold until June when I see my new neuromuscular doctor.”
Mid May 2022 - Starts her OnlyFans.
June 3, 2022 - Posts a picture in her pool exposing her entire rump and captions it “Summer tip: Idk why but switching from beer to wine has shrunk my stomach sooo much!”
June 3, 2022 - Posts a TikTok response to a comment that said, “weren’t you almost paralyzed a month ago? It’s a miracle you’ve recovered.” She says you can’t recover from a cyst in your spine. She says she needs an MRI check up to see how long it’s gotten. She clarified that she said she could go paralyzed any day now. “If I go paralyzed or lose any bowel movements without trying, then I have to immediately go to the hospital and get emergency surgery. So yeah, really, I’m like a ticking time bomb over here, just waiting to give up, I guess you can say. So next week, I’ll be going to see my new neuromuscular doctor. Still have a lot more genetic testing to do and blood work, so we’ll see what’s going on, but they’re thinking an autoimmune disease.” She hashtags it “syringomyelia” and “syringomyeliaawareness.” She also clarifies that she’s leaving health content on the back burner until she has answers.
June 7, 2022 - Posts a video once again showing her scans of her spine and sinuses. She hashtags this one “syringomyelia,” “sphiehemangioma,” and “sinuscyst.”
End of June 2022 - She and David go to St. Thomas. In the Youtube vlog she posts, she explains she’s wearing a portable fan around her neck to help cool her down since her various illnesses make her sweat/hot. In the airport, she mentions she’s relieved that she’s “so far not sick,” or in other words, not experiencing esophagus spasms. Once they land, she tells us she didn’t get sick on the flight.
June 26, 2022 - Posts a TikTok explaining the wearable fan more. She says she’s been having an overheating issue and that her face has been red, so if she looks burnt, she isn’t. Nevermind the fact that she posted pictures of herself extremely burnt from their vacation.
July 1, 2022 - Posts a video of her on an alpine coaster.
July 4, 2022 - Takes the kids on a trip to the mountains. Posts TikToks over the week of herself hiking and reaching the top of a lookout point. No health mentions.
July 22, 2022 - Posts about her Invisalign. Responds to a comment saying her jaw and teeth hurt and that she has headaches at night.
August 9, 2022 - Posts an Instagram story selfie showing a heart monitor taped to her chest and captions it “Heart monitor for 48 hours :(. This is following up from a high D Dimer test.”
August 10, 2022 - Posts a health update to TikTok. She reminds us she went to the ER in March and that while she was there, she had a high D Dimer test. The text on the screen says, “also had abnormal ECG in ER, sinus brachycardia (sic), & sinus arrhythmia.” She explains D Dimer tests are for blood clots or heart disease. They saw she didn’t have a blood clot and that her “lungs were fine” but told her to follow up with her doctor. She says the chest pain has been on and off for the last 3 months so she’s been ignoring it. She finally got ahold of her primary care doctor, who told her the chest pain is still happening, told her about the test results, and got a referral to a cardiologist. She shows us the heart monitor she has to wear for the next 48 hours (her exact words are, “so now, I’m on a chest monitor for the next 48 hours”) and says she has a heart ultrasound tomorrow and a stress test in September.
August 11, 2022 - Posts an Instagram story that says, “I told the tech ‘I feel like it might be stress from my kids but idk…’ She said ‘no you’re not crazy when it comes to your pain, I see it happening right here.’”
August 24, 2022 - In another Instagram Q&A she’s asked how her health is going. She says, “Just taking things easy and trying to stay stress free but waiting on test results from my cardiologist still and stress test next month.”
August 31, 2022 - Takes a big bite from a tall sandwich.
September 27, 2022 - Posts on Instagram/TikTok that they’re flying to Bar Harbor for their “honeymoon.” No mention of esophageal spasms on the plane. On this trip, she completes the Beehive Summit hike in Acadia National Park. She also showed us when she took a ginormous bite of a lobster roll and a breakfast sandwich.
October 1, 2022 - Rants about her golf cart that broke. Explains that she needs the golf cart so she doesn’t have to “break her back” “running” to the kids. No mention of mobility issues or because of her illnesses. Does mention her life was at risk since the brakes went out.
October 16, 2022 - Buys herself & David new dirtbikes. Bought herself two - one that is too big and powerful for her to ride yet and another that is more manageable for her.
October 19, 2022 - Posts a TikTok about getting mono in middle school. She explains her throat was so swollen and inflamed that she went to the hospital and was admitted. She had IV steroids. Said her body “could not handle” mono and that she was severely sick. She says mono is REALLY severe and that it is the Epstein-Barr virus. She’s “stitching” someone else’s video and references it when she says that E-B can cause so many other diseases when you’re older without you realizing it. There are 3 blood tests that can see if you actively have E-B. Jenelle says it’s crazy to think it can cause all these health issues. She says she can’t breathe and has bad mucus problems lately in the morning. She’s on an inhaler and seeing her lung doctor. They’re going to do a “bronoscopy” and she’s really scared. She tells people she thinks all of her health issues are from E-B. She must’ve forgotten she already explored this avenue in March. And in August of 2021.
October 26, 2022 - Posts a TikTok that says, “My stomach feeling great… but then… *warning triangle emoji* Esophagus Spams *warning triangle emoji*” and the video of her like errors out? The audio that goes with it says, “Everyone underestimates me but then…. *error noise*” so this is a trend that Jenelle is jumping on to make her esophagus spasms relevant again.
November 2, 2022 - Posts a selfie to her Instagram stories and captions it “sick with the flu..”
November 8, 2022 - Posts a selfie and captions it “In bed today, feeling bad AF. Had 4 lung biopsies yesterday and SO sore :(“
Same day posts a TikTok saying, “y’all have you ever had a bronchoscopy where they stick the camera down into your lungs and they take biopsies?” and tells us she had 4 biopsies done yesterday. She’s lying down with her heating blanket and says she feels sore on the inside. She asks again if we’ve ever had it done before, again. She says she had one taken on her voicebox as well, so 4 lung biopsies and that. They did something to her right lung and they cleaned it out with saline water. She says she’ll get results this week. She has mucus built up in her system, and they don’t know why. She captions it, “I can’t stand this #lungbiopsyrecovery”
She got her hair done for 4 hours the next day.
November 12, 2022 - Posts on her Instagram stories, “Connecting the dots with my health issues. One more blood test, hopefully that’s it. :(“
November 14, 2022 - Posts a TikTok of her using her inhaler. The caption says “#Combivent Inhaler hopefully some of my mucus production is cut down” She’s making goofy faces while she puts her inhaler together and looks giddy to have an actual physical toy to play with.
November 17, 2022 - David posts a picture of them and captions it “Yall pray for my beautiful wife, she has been pretty sick lately”
November 17, 2022 - Posts an Instagram story “Y’all, Predisone (sic) is working wonders right now for my entire body, thank god! #Grateful”
November 27, 2022 - Takes the kids to the mountains for Thanksgiving.
November 28, 2022 - Went tubing in the snow. Snow tubing?
December 2, 2022 - Posts on Facebook “Sorry if I haven’t posted much lately. I’ve been in so much pain with my health. Not feeling good enough to make any content.”
December 9, 2022 - Says she lost 20 lbs without trying and thinks it’s from health issues. She says she’s had a harder time eating and is eating smaller meals. She then goes on to explain how she’s been losing weight and says, “So if you’re wondering how I’m losing weight: smaller meals, eating healthier, cutting out fast food.”
December 15, 2022 - Posts on Instagram “If I could find the smartest doctor on this planet, that would be fantastic.”
December 19, 2022 - Her birthday. She and David fight, she calls him a “narcissistic asshole” and took off her wedding ring. Two days later, posts a TikTok and claims the argument was about luggage. There’s speculation this fight was drug related. In her TikTok defending their argument, her pupils are huge. They’re at the mountains with the kids when all of this is going on. She posts another video saying she has PTSD from past relationships and always assumes David’s cheating because she’s been cheated on in the past. She asks if she’s the only one that experiences this.
December 26, 2022 - Posts a selfie and captions it “I think I’m sick FML”
December 28, 2022 - Posts another selfie and captions it “Still sick AF. Yeah.. y’all are right I’m always sick idk why”
January 10, 2023 - Posts a video eating a chia bowl and captions it “Happy dance after fasting for 12 hours.” She has what looks like a blood draw wrap around her arm. In the comments someone asks if it helps and she says she’s doing it for blood work.
January 12, 2023 - Posts a picture of a digestive system poster from a doctor’s office and captions it “FML.”
January 14, 2023 - She and David take a trip to New Orleans. Posts an entire TikTok of what she ate and drank. She takes a giant bite of a crepe. She had 8 alcoholic drinks throughout the day.
January 17, 2023 - Posts on Instagram, “I have mycoplasma pneumoniae” and asks if anyone else has ever suffered from it.
February 2, 2023 - Lipsyncs to a song about smoking weed.
February 4, 2023 - In comments on another video, someone asks if she lost weight, and she responds, “Eating smaller meals, honestly haven’t been trying. I have a hard time eating.”
February 4, 2023 - Posts a TikTok captioned “Weirdest medicine I’ve ever taken! #MethyleneBlue #mycoplasmapneumonia.” She explains she’s trying to figure out her lung problems and says she found out she has long-term pneumonia and has had it for “pretty long.” Her antibodies are pretty high. Treatment is antibiotics for three months, then retesting her antibodies. She calls methylene blue her other medicine/treatment and says it’s an antioxidant if you use a little and if you use a lot it’s anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and boosts serotonin and dopamine. She’s also using a redlight watch that is supposed to kill the bacteria in her veins once the dye is in her system. She claims in the comments this was all prescribed by her doctor.
That same day she posts another TikTok where she says she’s been seeing a functional medicine doctor out of Nashville that she found on YouTube. She had one video call visit and said the doctor sent one test to LabCorp and found her diagnosis. She was diagnosed with mycoplasma pneumonia, as mentioned in the previous video, and neutrophilic asthma. He’s who prescribed the methylene blue and wants her to use it with a nebulizer. She says she’s done a lot of research on it and that it has more pros than cons and seems very beneficial. She says she has shortness of breath but is hoping the combination of antibiotics, methylene blue, and redlight therapy will help her feel better in the long run. She’ll let us know how she feels in 3 months. In the comments she claims she wakes up in the morning with panic attacks because of clear mucus.
February 7, 2023 - Answers a question on Instagram from someone asking how her breathing treatment is going and says, “It’s helping a lot! Since I’m gaining back my ability to fully breathe I’m about to sign up at the gym next.”
February 8, 2023 - Posts another video responding to someone’s comment that asks who diagnosed her and says that before she says who it is she wants to make sure that all of her problems are taken care of and that it’s the root cause of her issues. She found out with a blood test. She shows us her results and that her count for mycoplasma pneumonia antibodies is very high. You can see a doctor’s name on the page, which I’ve covered to protect their privacy. She says if this treatment doesn’t work, next to try is IV antibiotics.
February 10, 2023 - Posts another video referencing smoking weed/being high all the time.
February 10, 2023 - Posts a picture of Ensley and says, “She told me she’s sick… idk if she’s lying, off to the doctor we go.”
February 14, 2023 - Answers an Instagram question where someone asks about her health with “Getting much better!”
February 20, 2023 - Posts a picture in gym clothes outside the gym with the caption, “Here’s a cheers to my new journey to lose my ‘Mommy Pouch’ and love handles. Started working out today and it feels great!”
February 23, 2023 - Takes a giant bite of a birria taco.
February 24, 2023 - Posts a TikTok that she captions “#GymDay.” Based on what she’s wearing & her hair, this looks to be from 2/22. She says it’s an arm and chest day. We see the chocolate peanut butter protein shake she gets after and the Epsom salt bath she takes to soothe her muscles from yesterday’s workout.
March 1, 2023 - Posts a TikTok response to a comment that says, “Hope all is well. Miss ya video’s.” She says she’s been in a shitty mood. She thought her health was getting better, it was getting a little better, and she interrupts herself with a big cough. She says she’s finally seeing her new lung doctor and is having a sleep study done, is on a new inhaler, is having old CT scan results looked over, and her mind is “boggled” because she has to redo all of her esophagus tests again because they’re so old. She has to redo the catheter test with it down her nose/throat.
March 13, 2023 - Posts a TikTok with text on it that says, “Won’t be available in 1 week because I have esophagus testing but still drinking this alcohol like I’m A-OK” and captioned “#truth but kidding at the same time.” She says in the comments that it’s a trend. I don’t know or understand the trend, but she said it herself, truth.
March 22, 2023 - She and David take a trip to Key West without the kids.
March 23, 2023 - In response to criticism of her stomach, she says she had three kids, had her appendix removed, and had a hernia repaired. Her last child was born in 2017, her appendix was removed in 2013, and the hernia was repaired in 2018. Her significant weight gain started around 2020 and was unrelated to any of these events.
March 25, 2023 - Posts on Facebook that she had an esophageal spasm episode from deep sea fishing and wants to know if anyone else has experienced this so she can share experiences.
March 26, 2023 - Shows pictures on a TikTok video of how sunburnt she and David both got. She says she used “so much” sunscreen.
March 27, 2023 - Posts a TikTok telling us her seasick story from when they went deep sea fishing. She says they chartered their own boat and were talking about how neither of them had ever experienced seasickness before. She says they have their own 18 ft boat, and she’s never gotten sick on it. She says the waves were super choppy, and they were rocking so hard that her esophagus started acting up. This was around 12:30, and she just laid on the boat until they docked at 6:30. She tells us to be careful if we go deep-sea fishing because we can get seasick. She thinks that’s what happened to her, anyway. In the comments, someone tells her to take Dramamine, and she says it makes her sleepy. Which like, yeah…
April 6, 2023 - Posts on IG “Been MIA for a few days because my breathing isn’t so great and random chest pain as usual. Literally been resting for 3 days now.”
April 9, 2023 - Posts on Facebook “Positive ANA. Maybe there will be answers soon.” Someone responds in the comments that it could mean Lupus or Sjogren’s syndrome and said a rheumatologist can do further testing. Jenelle responds, “yes, being referred. My endo found out for me.”
April 17, 2023 - Posts a TikTok going to get Vitamin B12 injections. She says she has to give them to herself once a week for 4 weeks, then once a month after. Her vitamin D is also low. She went to the store to get syringes and stopped for her usual coffee. She shows us her order, which is now a Trenta iced coffee with no classic syrup, hazelnut syrup, ½ sweet cream, and vanilla sweet cream foam topping. Someone in the comments points out that a doctor on TikTok said those injections are just to make money, and she responded, “well, my vitamin B12 and D is low, and my ANA is positive, which means now I go to see a rheumatologist.”
April 18, 2023 - Posts a TikTok this day and the next day with her catheter in for her acid reflux test. She posted a picture on Instagram where we can see she’s driving 80 mph and captions it, “Going alone to get a procedure done for my esophagus today and I’m really scared. Have no support so any prayers are appreciated.” Through her postings about this procedure, we learn she stayed in a hotel by herself overnight.
In the video from the 19th, in the comments, she says she has a spot on her lung that hurts. The doctor says it’s caused by vaping, but she claims she never vapes. She’s definitely posted videos and pictures of herself with weed vape pens and has been a known weed smoker for over 10 years, as well as smoking cigarettes throughout the years and smoking heroin out of wooden pipes, which she had addressed by a doctor in 2012. Curious if she mentioned that this time. She’s up and down the comments claiming she doesn’t vape weed because that’s illegal where she lives.
April 24, 2023 - She and David travel to Virginia to buy a boat and start their multi-day journey sailing through the ocean back home. She claims she purchased this $57,000 boat with money made on OnlyFans.
April 30, 2023 - Posts on Instagram that they made it back home. Someone commented asking how long until she has esophageal spasms again. Jenelle responded, “I’ve had them the whole time I was gone…”
May 2, 2023 - Not health related but still fun; she posts that the turbos need to be replaced.
May 4, 2023 - Posts on Instagram “Good news: I don’t have acid reflux. Bad news: they still don’t know why I have esophagus spasms”
May 7, 2023 - Posts on Instagram “#HealthUpdate Found out I have thymic hyperplasia and lesions on my liver, and no I don’t have MG like they thought. Don’t know why this is happening. Discussing these results next week with my doc and the next steps.”
May 16, 2023 - On an Instagram Q&A, answers two questions about her health. To the first generally asking how she is, she says, “Seeing my rheumatologist this week for a positive ANA. Maybe I’ll get an answer.” To the second that says, “Any word on your liver results?” she says, “My doctors do not care at all. Told me I’ll get another CT scan in a year to check on that and my thymus.”
May 19, 2023 - Posts on Instagram “#HealthUpdate: My rheumatologist is retesting me for things like arthritis, lupus, etc., for having a positive ANA. Might be referred to another lung specialist soon. We will see what my results show in 2 weeks.”
May 28, 2023 - Answers two more questions in an Instagram Q&A about her health. One asking how she’s doing, she says, “I’m doing good, just not feeling too great lately.” The other asked about her health, she says, “I had DNA testing done and honestly shocked but will share the news soon.”
May 31, 2023 - Posts a TikTok of them taking their smaller boat out onto the Intracoastal Waterway. In Part 1, posted on the 30th, she says she was starting to feel seasick. We learn their “new” boat is still not working.

[Flying Sparks

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“Hazardous? I’ll show that manipulative, misanthropic, anti-establishment cretin just what hazardous means if he thinks I’m going to fold on this!” The sound of vigorous guitar riffs made a fitting accompaniment to the angry tirade despite originating on opposite sides of the communal area. Ama was glaring at a laptop that sat on a stained oak desk shoved against the large table near the kitchen. She tapped a fingernail on the wood as she read through the alert. “And what violation of basic human dignity has her royal prudishness’s undies in a bunch?” Em demanded with an affected sneer without looking up from his guitar scales. “Oh you’ll agree with this one tree-hugger,” Drake muttered from where he sat oiling his work boots. “Yeah,” Donny piped up, “Finney is trying to kill a perfectly healthy fir.” “What!” Em demanded, carefully placing his battered old acoustic guitar down in its case and darting over to look at the computer screen. “You mean apark tree?” Despite her simmering frustration Ama allowed a small smile to flicker across her face as she continued to type. “Get out of your pajamas and I’ll tell you,” Drake ordered pointing towards the bathroom door with a stained rag. “School starts in forty-five minutes and you still have breakfast and chores. That goes for you too Pip-squirt.” “I hope you washed your hands before you touched our food,” Em said with a frown. “Boot grease makes a great source of fatty acids.” Drake retorted. “Now go!” The two smaller boys muttered in annoyance but stumbled off to follow orders. “So what is up?” the youth asked as he bent his head back over the smooth leather of his boots. “Mrs. Finney wants that tree down that’s blocking her perfect view of Crescent Lake.” Ama replied in a dry tone. “One that’s clearly on park property?” Drake asked. “Indeedy-do.” Ama replied giving the paper in front of her a glare. “So how’s she justifying it?” Drake asked. “As a safety hazard to her house.” Ama replied. “And?” The biologist groaned and rubbed her face. “As far as I can tell the trunk is perfectly healthy. There is an old trash can lid grown into the trunk and a little discolored sap is leaking out there.” “Frass?” “Watch your language!” Donny interjected as he darted up to the table. “Frass is not a bad word,” Drake stated. “Have you let the chickens out?” “Yes, what does frass mean?” Donny asked as he started piling stir-fry onto his plate. “Look it up.” Drake ordered him. “Emerald! Breakfast ends in ten minutes! Get your tukus down here!” “It’s bad health to rush meals,” Em snapped out as he came down a narrow stairway with deliberate slowness. “It’s even worse for your health to skip meals altogether,” Drake growled threateningly. “Shut it and give me some eggs.” Em snapped back. “Emerald Waters Undersun,” Drake hissed out through gritted teeth. “You are going to get your own eggs.” The boy threw himself into a chair and glared at Drake with challenge in every line of his body. “Emerald,” Ama said in a calm tone. “I think you should apologize to your cousin now.” “Sorry I disturbed you Ama,” he offered without breaking eye contact with Drake. “Not me, him,” Ama said. “Sorry you had to hear that Donny.” Em said. Ama heaved a sigh and closed her computer. “Emerald,” Ama said. “Do you want to eat or go hungry?” Drake demanded. Ama glanced at him with a familiar uneasy look in her eyes and Drake fought down a wince. “Now, Em.” she said in a patient tone. “I’ll go hungry,” Em snapped, jumping up and stalking over to the couch. Donny kept his eyes fixed on his plate. Ama heaved a sigh before turning back to her computer. Em wriggled on the couch for several minutes before skulking back to the table. Drake moved to intercept him but Ama stopped him with a look and he let Em serve himself. Drake cast irritated glances at the wall clock as the time crept more and more into school time. Ama closed her computer and stood, then sighed, sat and opened it again. “I need to pick out their report topics,” Ama muttered. “I could do it,” Drake offered. “You do quite enough,” Ama replied briskly, as she scanned the news. “Here you go. For Donny, malfunctions at the Lewis- McChord Air Force Base air show.” A frown creased her face. “Wow, this is pretty serious. It looks like the F-16 demonstration team nearly got killed.” Drake whistled and leaned over her shoulder. “Multiple system failures,” he read out loud. “I am pretty sure that isn’t supposed to happen.” “Nope,” Ama agreed. “Here is a topic on big game management for Em.” “Reports due by next week?” Drake asked as the old printer on the desk began to squeal and grumble as it powered up. “Same as usual,” Ama confirmed. Drake put the printouts on top of the homework pile and moved to wash up the breakfast dishes. “I need to get to work early today so you two be good for Drake,” she called out placing a quick kiss on top of the smaller boys’ heads and giving Drake’s shoulder a friendly squeeze. “Good luck with Mrs. Finney, and stay safe.” Drake called out as she went into her room. The table was cleaned off and wiped down and the clink of forks gave way to the steady scratch of pencils on paper. They broke for a recess after religion and then lunch after history and math, and by the time the Grandfather clock in the corner struck two the younger boys twitching with energy. Drake made certain the internet was disconnected at the router, and chased Donny and Em out into the garden. “And don’t come in until dark,” he ordered tossing two snack bags out after them. Donny as usual snatched his food and disappeared into the small orachard. Low grumbles about troglodytes and the Amish wandered out into the high corn following Em and Drake shook his head in exasperation wondering, not for the first time how the dark haired princeling came from the same gene pool as his little brother. The kitchen being mostly ordered Drake was turning to put the last random dirty sock in the hamper when a gnarled hand clutching a cane head appeared in the corner of his eye, causing his heart to make a valiant attempt to bolt out of his throat. “Abuelita!” he gasped forcing his hands down from the guard position. “Where did you come from?” Smoldering black eyes ran searchingly over the tall youth. An impossibly long mane of streaked silver and black hair was barely contained in a thick braid. A sharply pointed nose perched over a small wrinkled mouth. A vibrant red horse-hair serape hung over her shoulders concealing everything except her brown and gnarled hands which currently clutched the old tree branch she used as a cane. Drake had been more than a little comforted by the fact that both Em and Donny had admitted to having the thought ‘witch’ every time time they saw her as well. “From the hand of God by the bodies of my sainted mother and father,” she replied after a long, uncomfortable silence. She always spoke in a low husky voice that suggested years of smoking, though Drake had never smelled even stale smoke on her. “Right,” Drake blinked and grinned at the response; the one she always gave. “So you are here for their Spanish lesson? I have their grammar books ready and-” The narrow end of the tree branch rapped against the concrete of the floor causing Drake to jump. Abuelita glared at him, locking his gaze and holding him in place with it for a moment. “I am here for their lessons,” she finally stated, “and you are there for my payment.” Drake thought longingly of the repair and maintenance manuals in the cab of the truck and the new tool he was itching to try, but he forced a grin on his face. “Yes ma’am,” he said. “What can I get you today?” Abuelita pulled out a bag of woven grass from under her serape causing the indistinct patterns on the cloth to shift and change. “Take this,” she ordered him, “and collect me the cobalt blue berries that grow on a single stalk close to the ground. They must come from the mountain to the south east of here by the crystal brook.” Drake nodded, and took the little bag, he didn’t quite manage to infused his gestures with enthusiasm he supposed. The old woman, probably wouldn’t have noted it anyway. She turned and moved towards the garden door without waiting for any other reply. However she called out over her shoulder as he turned to find his own way out of the rambling structure. “Don’t dawdle little one. A storm brews in the distance.” He tried not to roll his eyes at that, the weather forecast was clear and eighties for the next week according to the morning fire report Ama had printed. The youth only nodded and slipped around the corner. He circled the barn and pulled a set of loose tan pants and tunic out of the cubby. The soft worn leather almost perfectly matched the forest floor for color as did the moccasins he pulled on after them. His morning running clothes were modern stuff that wicked the sweat away from him and let him speed through the forest. These were his free day clothes. The ones that let him disappear into the forest and wander. Abuelita, for all of her demands, would tend Em and Donny until he returned no matter how late that was, and with the Park’s yearly budget talks still under way it was highly unlikely Ama would be home until long after the sun had set. Despite still hearing the call of the half restored truck he felt something lossening in him already. The soft cotton and smooth leather rested easily against his skin and Drake slipped into the forest. Freedom; for the moment at least, blissful freedom. Pushing aside the guilt that accompanied the thought as well as any lingering worries about his charges the youth let his legs carry him through the trees. He shunned the man made paths, following the faint animal trails. This close to the barn they were as clear to him as if they were named city streets. Being animal trails, they invariably led him to water. Today he stopped at a trickling stream, took off his moccasins, and rolled up his pants legs. The youth turned and followed the thin flow of icy water upstream, letting it steal the heat from his body through his feet. Some distance upstream, the stream widened and pooled under a boulder. There Drake paused and pulled an old black compass out of his pocket. Behind him he knew every trail and tree. Ahead was a broad swath of National Wilderness he would have to cross, or possibly Bureau of Land Management or even state managed forests where he more rarely wandered. It was hard to tell where the boundaries were from the ground. The clearing he wanted for the berries was solidly in BLM land and he still had quite a ways to go to get there. The stand of timber that stood between him and his goal was dense with young tree and branches that frequently formed impenetrable hedges he had to track around and he checked his compass regularly as he climbed in elevation. Even so the youth found he had wandered too far off his route and had to correct when he spotted the boundary fence. However he was in no hurry and he reached the clearing long before the sun told him it was time to turn around. Sometime in the past some unknown force had carved a shallow trench across the side of one of the small mountains that that dotted the wilderness. It had puzzled Drake at first. The scour was at the wrong angle to be an old rock slide, and terminated in a near perfectly circular clearing at the lower end. Centuries old Douglas Firs abruptly gave way to a second ring only a few decades old. Those were in turn beginning to produce cones and a smattering of knee high saplings. The rest of the space was completely given over to wildflowers. No matter what season Drake visited it he found a riot of life. There had been an early spring and many herbs that normally would have waited a month or more were already in full bloom in the mountain meadow. A white wave of foamflower washed in from the deep forest surrounding the clearing, sending up knee high stalks covered in the delicate white blooms. Late trillium hid close to the roots of the great firs, many having shed their white corollas and begun to put forth their bulbous seed heads. Fuzzy white baneberry blossoms nodded gently in the breeze. A riot of yellow and purple spread across the ground as vetch and buttercups and a host of clovers competed for space in the open sun. Great stalks of lupine as high as his head thrust up their purple and blue proudly from thick clusters of palm shaped leaves. Pink shooting stars and violet harebells crouched under the protection of the larger plants. Indian paintbrush lit the scene with flames of red and orange. Where a spring seeped into the meadow elephant’s head flared neon pink and corydalis bushes put forth blushing blooms. Pale green wild orchids stood along the wet spot and the swarms of bees danced from them to the glacier lilies. Sometimes, as he bent over a tiny blossom and traced the intricate network of veins in the petals, drank in the scent, and felt the smooth surface of the leaves an otherworldly feeling would come over him. It was as if there was another world just out of range of his senses. If he could only really look, the thin illusion that was blocking him would slip away and reveal the real world underneath it. “Look Awiegwa,” his father would whisper, pointing at a deer mouse perched on a fallen log. “What does it see?” Awiegwa would screw up his face and squint. Trying to find the answer to the question. Awiegwa had often wondered how so many flowers had come to be in the relatively small area. He had identified dozens of species and there were more he had yet to determine. The clearing was always the first place to bloom and the last to go dormant. Many of the flowers seemed to utterly defy their usual blooming patterns. However, as time passed he had simply come to accept it. It was one of the small good things that brought back the memories of his father. If it didn’t quite follow the rules Ama had taught him, well an impossible clearing in the mountains wasn’t a place for rules. The particular bloom that Abuelita had requested had taken full advantage of the early sun and had already put forth a few cobalt blue berries; easily spotted at the edge of the clearing in the delicate sea of white flowers. However before he left the shade of the forest for the meadow the youth paused and closed his eyes. Bole wasn’t always here, but he was often enough that Awiegwa always checked for him. Carefully he reconstructed the clearing in his mind; marking every tree and boulder on the edge. Three years he had been coming here and each time it was easier to recreate the clearing. Breathing evenly he opened his eyes, letting the mental image merge with the actual. There was a brief moment of confusion as details like the play of light through branches and the trembling of small clusters of flowers fixed themselves but there was only one truly jarring note. Awiegwa didn’t let his eyes focus on the disparity; he never did anymore, but a warm smile spread across his features as he slipped silently into the meadow. He was here. As the youth moved in a low crouch, gathering the first fruits of the Queen’s Cup, he let his peripheral vision linger on a particular snag. There was nothing obviously interesting about it, other than the fact that it had not been there the last time Awiegwa was here. He had named the wanderer Bole, because it most often appeared as a thick tree trunk; sometimes living, sometimes dead. Occasionally it would be a boulder or simply a mound in the dirt. Often it wasn’t in the clearing at all. If the youth moved forward and tried to closely examine it he could never find anything to suggest it was something other than a tree or rock. He had thought about taking a sample occasionally, had taken his knife out to do just that more than once, but something always held him back. Bole was a part of this place. Dissecting him would be too much like attempting to dissect his sense of his father’s presence here. The youth had never told anyone about this place, not even Ama with who could get most things out of him easily enough. Down at the house, in town, when he was Drake; solid, reliable, first up in the morning, two grades ahead in school with a penchant for science Drake, a productive member of modern society with a promising future and his mother smiling at him. Here he could be Awiegwa. Here he could believe in the ancient medicines his father had dug out of dusty old tomes and brought to life from the forest litter. Every time Awiegwa left the clearing and headed back towards home reality would reassert itself. Bole would resolve back into a figment of his imagination, created from pride in a somewhat better than average memory and what the social workers had called an “intriguing imagination”. When he reached the house and become solidly Drake again flickers of embarrassment would begin eating at him for letting his senses trick him like that, but as long as the blooms nodded around him in this garden Bole could exist even on a Thursday. The little woven grass bag filled up with the berries fairly quickly and Awiegwa soon stretched out of his crouch and let his gaze wander contentedly over the clearing. As it always did, the warm space was working its special magic. Worries about Em getting out of his schoolwork, of not paying enough attention to the quiet Donny, of letting Ama see his petty resentments: it had all melted away from his muscles, thoughts of college costs and abandoning his duties dissolved into an acute sense of the now. The leaves rustled softly in a barely-there breeze, the heavy scent of some unidentified blossom filled his lungs, a dozen shades of green framed the rainbow of flowers, and over and above it all the creaking of the firs as the wind played over them. It was at times like these that he felth he could almost see into heaven; that something wonderful that existed just beyond his senses, and all he had to do was reach out and claim it. The youth took a deep breath and let himself fall backwards onto a handy rise in the forest floor. His path had taken him to the foot of the snag and he shifted slightly to align himself with the gnarled roots. One hand gripped a time smoothed root. “Ama trusted me enough to go out of state,” he murmured. “That’s the first time she’s done that. Usually she has Abulita stay with us to fend off the Harsh, but she said it’s long past legal now.” It was his imagination of course that made him think the root vibrated in his hand in response. Many a long hour he had spent in this clearing with the wanderer. He had poured out his frustrations and anguishes over life’s injustices, had shared his secrets as he grew, and had shouted his triumphs. Sometimes he felt closer to Bole than to any of his human friends. However, something that sounded like his mother’s voice warned him that there was something odd about this and that awareness was the main reason he had kept this place secret from Ama. Their mother hadn’t exactly liked stuff like that. She had never objected to his father’s digging up the old stories of her people. Making cross generational connections between elders, who more often than not lived isolated lives, and the next generation, was an admirable goal in of itself in her eyes; objectively a social good. Storytelling was only the natural course for these relationships to take, but subtle looks had warned even a very young Drake that it was best to cautious what he shared with his mother. At least of those things that couldn’t be placed on a microscope slide. So this was Awigewa’s place, and while his father’s spirit wanders the flowers with he had never felt his mother here. He let his focus drift up, and up. Dark blue Lupine nodded over his head framing the faint crisscross of jet contrails that threw a light haze over an otherwise cloudless sky. His clothed grew deliciously hot from the spring sun. The ground too had eagerly accepted the energy and now it conducted the heat into the muscles of his back. Bole’s wood beneath him was warmer even than the surrounding ground and an idle thought traced across Awiegwa’s awareness; something about it being odd for the light colored wood and relatively dry wood to retain more heat than the darker soil surrounding it. His mind was filled with the impression of a goal. He had been meaning to do, something. Something fun, yes, exploring, he’d meant to see if whatever had dug that den by the second boulder was cubing this year. He would just get up and do that in a minute. His back was so warm and comfortable. “Flying Sparks” Another foray into the lives of Drake McCarty, Ama Love, and the rest of their siblings as they discover that something alien is out in the forest around their home. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flying-sparks-a-novel-of-dragon-bear-and-boy/coming_soon #FlyingSparks #ScienceFiction #Scifi #Story #novel #book #DrakeMcCarty #AmaLove #Donny #Em #Bard #Bole #Aliens #Spaceships #Crystals #fireflies #NPS #NationalPark #Doctor #Sever #family #storm #writing #reading #drama #literature #author #BettyAdams #DyingEmbers #Dragons #ThingsThatGoBoomp #Indiegogo #CrowdFunding