Cans and Cannots

She used to smell of L L.A.M.B.  Now she smells of cigarettes.

I don't like it.

To be fair, it isn't socially acceptable to comment on the smell of co-workers.  I don't even know if the others have noticed the change or can guess its cause.  It's a shortcoming of everyone else in my opinion, not noticing that sort of sensory input.  There are so many stories that are so much more clear when you take into account little cues like that.  It makes life more interesting.  Or at least more like a livable soap opera.

Person A normally smells like 1a, 1b, 1c depending on the day.  Because who doesn't like playing with pretty perfumes?  Person B normally smells like 1b and. . . well, at a stretch maybe 1a.  1a was the initial smell until they took up smoking again and then the normal scent became 1b.

Then person A starts smelling like B1b.  Instant drama!

Except all my other instincts, my other senses have taken an instant dislike to person B.  They had before this happened.  Sure, he pays me some mind and that's all well and good (I'm cute).  But there's always that red flag in my mind, warning me off, saying that all isn't what it appears to be from my perspective here.  Even if anyone else notices, it's a ShouldNot to speak of it to the person in question.  

Most people aren't good at pinpointing the cues.  The body language that tells them everything they'd every need to know.  At best, they may be left with a vague feeling of uneasiness that they can't justify. When people can't logically justify a thing, they have an alarming tendency to dismiss it.  I've never really understood this; isn't that how the entire species managed to survive this long?  Those little instincts that tell them that going to that quiet watering hole is a terrible plan?  It's obvious that they listened often enough then to see the creature in the water eat the unwary.  So why to so many dismiss it now?  

She will have no warning.  She will miss the breadcrumbs leading her to the right conclusion.  The people will listen to the notion that it is a ShouldNot and shroud themselves in silence.

But I'm only the office dog.  I Cannot tell her.  I Can only watch and offer my pelt for the tear-streams when it all folds like a lamb giving up on life before the fox.

Awkward

"Well, this is awkward."  Zachary stared at his friend from a bare few feet away.  Between them was the elephant in the room.

"This?  This is not awkward.  Wearing the same dress as your flavor-of-the-moment girlfriend is awkward.  Finding you in bed with the instructor?  That's awkward.  Finding you standing over a dead body?  Is most definitely not awkward."  The voice started as a low hiss and then moved up the scale in both pitch and volume, ending in a shrill of half-shriek.  It was true.  There were many unsaid things between them, and a dead body to boot.

Zachary nodded along with Taylor's assessment, the crumpled form that he'd not mentioned leaking blood across the worn coarse-woolen carpet.  He didn't seem at all guilty nor phased by the corpse or by Taylor's emotional distress.  This in itself was unusual because Taylor knew that Zachary was about as likely to punch someone in the face over an insult as he was to laugh it off.  She had yet to figure out if the schedule was relating to alternating days, phases or the moon, or what letters the name of the day was comprised of.

"It followed me home."

"It follo-what?"  Taylor spluttered in parroting Zachary, her thought processes trundling to a smoking halt.  Even as she stared at him.  It was said so frankly, so deadpan that she was half waiting for camera crew to burst from the broom closet and for him to tell her that she'd been pranked, punked, whatever.

Taylor could only hope this was a nightmare, some half-vision mingled of a dream, cobbled together with clues her subconscious had noticed the past week.  Because how does a corpse follow you home?  Either it was a zombie. . . or the person it had been when it still housed a spark had followed him and taken a wrong turn into Zachary's fist, landing the stranger a spot in the morgue.

This was far, far beyond anything the word 'awkward' was able to cover.

Turn All the Lights On

It was too dark by more than half for the inhabitants.  But that was the way of things when there are creatures that ate the light.  In the wake of the initial event, the world had gone mad, shattered itself into more manageable pieces, broken populations and their gods in pieces much smaller than half.  A number of people had called them The End Days.

But Days simply became a foreign concept.  There was only a slight change in the sky's luminosity, a sensuous undulation of the sky's skirts from a murderous maroon to a deceptively soft violet.  Like the promise of a predawn that would die aborning, for the shafts of light would never come.

Eleora shivered on the worn floor of her home, arms wrapped around her torso; where there was so little light, there was also little warmth.  Her mother still prayed to an altar shielded carefully, pleading for any god that would answer to bring back Their Light.  The place of worship was ardently protected lest the Gobblers found a sliver of light somehow escaping and know that there was a delectable thing inside the structure.  When she was little, she prayed with her mother; the girl had long since abandoned that fervent hope by now and those gilded memories of blue skies.  They were gone and nothing had been found that could bring them back.  

Not even humans were safe.  The light in living eyes was enough to draw notice.  That was why people emerged outdoors only with thin blindfolds of muslin to draw the curtain on their humanity.  When. . .if Eleora survived to be of age, she would stow her muslin blindfold of plain, stout material and don a cheesecloth one instead.  It was enough to deflect the eye light, but enough to give the impression of her eyes, a daringly attractive feature.  With the world being cooler, one could not look at body shape with people layering their clothing.  Fashion was always a thing to adapt quickly.

Eleora was practicing with the cheesecloth blindfold in preparation.  She would be seventeen before long, according to the Morse Machine.  The little machine shivered with information to all households in their area, updated daily.  Who sent the messages and how, Eleora didn't quite know; the best she knew is that learning the code had been part of their school studies these past years.

One week.  One week to turn seventeen.

Seven Days.  In a world where Days were a unit of measure all but forgotten, dreamed of, hoped for, despaired of.

And on the Seventh Day . . .  

It's All in the Look

I'm highly prized but fragile.  That's generally how it's termed.  It comes from the fact my Kindling is linked with glass.  You would normally find that most Kindlers are fond of wood, maybe clay.  GlassSmithing with the aim of grabbing power isn't really a time honored tradition any more.

Not since the Fall.  I can't say I mind.

I do mind my dress, however.  Marcus dressed me himself, made sure my hair was placed appropriately, that the family ownership tattoos were displayed to their best effect.  When I noted that I would be trussed up like a pheasant, I wasn't aware of how right I would be.  Apparently Marcus has decided to play on my impression of being fragile by incorporating feathers into my clothing.  'His little bird' he called me, fluffing my likewise brown hair.

It'll be hell to get the feathers out of my hair later.  Marcus doesn't really think about that as much as he thinks about the image I present for his family.  But that's what I'm for.  Against my shadow-paled skin, the brown and russet feathers look almost tawny, edged with gold.  That might, in part, be because I look in the reflections of polished brass.

I try to not look in glass mirrors.  I'm scared of what might look back.

*~*~* ON THE FALL *~*~*

Ah, the Fall. The night terror that the nobility like to lord over us with.  Not that it didn't happen.  There's too much evidence, too many accounts that show you that it did. . . right?  Well, here's the big secret.  Here's the thing that the nobility, the benevolent ruling class never mentioned to the masses.

The Kindlers and Keepers are figureheads.  They have no power, not since The Fall.

That's right.  It's all a lie.

And then there's me.  I'm Stella and I'm a grand secret.  Marcus says I'm a Glass Kindler based on a pile of dusty books that haven't seen the light of day for ages.  I'm not so sure.  I don't even know what I do, let alone how to classify myself.  All I know is that it gives me some headaches that I wouldn't even wish on my worst enemies.

Given that I belong to a noble family, I have a few enemies.  By default.  Some people inherit pretty necklaces or massive debt.  I inherited enemies of Marcus' family.

. . . Hurrah.

Marketing Moonlight

You could say that the little store cost her and arm and a leg.  And maybe a measure of her pride.  But Mallory would just tell you it was worth it, that her remaining pride had latched onto the store the way a tree graft catches onto its new home in the winter.  Gradually, slowly at first.  When spring comes, the newcomer takes or it does not.

The court with its plethora of little shops had unexpectedly welcomed her, even the unusual man who spoke to the streets.  The homeopathic shop of goods had flourished in the mishmash of ancient cobblestone and unique ventures just when Mallory had been certain she would have to file for bankruptcy.  Running this little business used to keep her up at all hours; now it was the very thing that let her sleep easy.

The shop had kitschy little dream catchers hanging over its doorway inside, the web glistening in the shadows; really, not many people noticed them there and that was just how she liked it.  They were meant to catch dead dreams and moonlight, not the attention of patrons.  The people would never notice their dreams departing or, if they did, they would probably welcome it.  Dead dreams were a burden in themselves, always present but never with a chance of fulfillment.  Some days the little dream catcher would jangle as the last customer left, desperate to be relieved of the burden itself.  Those would lead to busy nights.

The stories normally say that eye of newt and puppy-dog tails went into cauldrons; Mallory didn't like that side of the business.  Not only was it messy and would never come out of her wood floors that still needed a good waxing to seal them, it was generally frowned upon.  So Mallory turned her talents to goods of a different sort.  It was a stroke of fortune that cosmetics and homeopathic goods were not as strictly regulated as medications.  People didn't ask questions so long as you labeled it 'hand-made' or 'animal cruelty free.' 

Thankfully things were never labeled 'human-made.'  It would get a bit more awkward then.

Her craft room was equipped with a few feeble light sources if she were particularly intent on a project, though she used these only when absolutely required.  A number of her ingredients were 'shy' of harsh light and were prone to sublimation before they were affixed to the appropriate material or suspended in the right mixture of materials.  There was nothing more troublesome than sublimated materials because the gas would just glow and hang in the room for days.  You couldn't have customers catching glimpses of that; they would be convinced the area was radioactive or something of the sort.

That sort of talk was terrible for business.

Marketing moonlight was one of the wisest courses of action Mallory had taken in some time, the woman playing with a short curl as she looked up at the rows of little jars.  And it was so amazingly varied a resource!  Of course, this presented a different set of challenges.  The moonlight that spilled from a wet moon was different than the light of a full moon that was different from the light of a blue moon. . . and so on.  Each had different material requirements, each had different properties.

Each was suited for a different sort of client.  Mallory made it her business to know the difference.

Looking Back is Always Strange

When I was younger, I spent many Saturday mornings on the floor of the living room, watching the TV.  This was a normal enough pasttime for kids in my age group (somewhere between 7 and 13 years).  But this is me and this is specifically me looking back at my childhood and being more than a little puzzled.

I spent Saturday mornings watching QVC or the Home Shopping Network (Clearly I was not the one in control of the TV).

But more than this, I got excited about it.  "Only three hundred left!  A limited quantity!" and it was this amazing thing.  You'd watch the numbers climb and think, deep down that it wasn't likely, it was an underdog sort of chance, but that they could do it.  They could sell out.

. . . Oh my god, what the hell was I so excited about?

Maybe this is why I don't often recall my childhood.  Because I recall at strange times (like at work today) and there's this moment of ". . . what?"  Surely there's no way I was ever so excited over so strange a thing!  But no.  I know that I remember rightly.  I must have used up so much of my excitement when I was a kid because I don't get that riveted now.

Unless you want me to talk about Brandon Sanderson and his ability to world build.

. . . You don't want that.  I sound like a girl having a massive crush.  Just of the literary sort.

So.  Maybe I do still get excited about things.  My strangeness hasn't decreased; just changed.

Keeper and Kindler

Tap.  Tap tap tap tap tap.

“God, can you stop that?”

“What?”  He looks up from his rhythmic tapping at the piece of fractured glass, messy brown hair nearly obscuring the equally brown eyes.  Based on coloration, he wasn't the least bit remarkable.

Me?  I know better.  Behind those eyes is a personality as inquisitive as a cat and with all the survival tendencies of a lemming.  Thankfully, Marcus has the intellect to back up that curiosity or else he would be liable to drive me completely insane.  Because he was gifted in the manner of science, I could rationalize suffering him to live.

Most times.  It by no means completely allayed my desire to punch him in the face sometimes.  Like now.

“Marcus,” I began, my thin patience fraying at the edges of his name.  “I still have a splitting headache from the last go.”

“Oh.”  There’s a slow blink, the idea that what had been going on being sufficient to give me a migraine being integrated into whatever else went on in there.  He turned his attention back to the glass fragment, spider-webbed with minute fractures.

Tap.  Tap tap.

I take a deep, bracing breath.  And then two, just to convince myself that I really am trying.

Tap tap ta-

"Marcus!"  The force in my voice causes the fractures to glow briefly and catch ghostfire in some areas.  Even that much gets a response from my pounding skull, the pressure ratcheting up a few notches.  It also causes Marcus to drop the glass and sit back from the scarred wooden table a little, laughing incredulously.

"Brilliant, Stella!  You can still commit that much energy, even after today!"  Marcus' tone is excited and pleased.  Sometimes it's hard to remember that he's my Keeper.  But then Marcus will go and do things like this and it sort of serves as a reminder.  We balance the line, Keeper and confidante.  Kindler and . . . well, whatever else I am to Marcus.  I might be little more than a source of first-hand information for what it's like to be what I am.  But I've chosen to trust Marcus.

Sometimes I question that, just the way I question the stylish network of necklaces and bracelets I was placed in by his family when I was made a gift to him years ago.

"Yea, great."  My voice sounds grouchy even to me as I press my fingertips to my temples.  The hard work was done for today.  But tomorrow was the Month Summit.

Tomorrow I would be stuffed like a trussed pheasant into a dress and shown off, an expensive piece of a wealthy family.  I sort of prefer the headache.