Taylor looked so worried and guilty that I had to give her a
hug. “Come on. We can’t do anything until we talk to the
Gray One, but for now, you need to relax. How about a game of —
Tag! You’re it.”
I know
it’s bad manners to laugh at one’s own jokes, especially hoary old
chestnuts like that, but Serenikha’s amusement poured through our link
so strongly that I couldn’t suppress my giggles for more than a moment,
and then we kept setting each other off.
“I like being a nagini well enough, just on the physical level,
but — well, I don’t know how other people in my country will react....
Even if people are getting used to seeing magical stuff happen, they
might stare at me a lot.”
The guards wouldn’t let
the Knowing One in to the women’s quarters, though, until
he transformed himself into a woman, or maybe put on an illusion of
being a woman; I had a suspicion it was the latter, given how fast the
change was effected and the way “she” walked.
“Happy birthday dear Priya,” everyone sings, at the prompting of the Indian girl’s middle-aged father. “Happy birthday to you!” Priya blushes as she holds her long black hair out of her face, before blowing out the fifteen candles on her rich chocolate cake.
“Fifteen years old,” Mr. Malik says with palpable pride. “I almost can’t believe that my little girl is really growing up.”
“Dad!” Suriya says, making everyone giggle.
“’Little’, not ‘littlest’!” Mr. Malik says, making both Priya and Suriya blush.
My psychic link with Serenikha had held steady all through high
school, growing no stronger but no weaker, ever since my first trip to
her world. I still shared dreams with her, and I still had occasional
moments of aphasia, where I couldn’t think of a word in English,
only in one of Serenikha’s languages. And then, my first
semester in college, it suddenly seemed to get a lot weaker — I
shared no dreams at all with her, and had much less aphasia than
usual.
When my mother died and my father, someone that I had never met in my life, proposed to take me in, I actually believed that I was going to live with him. That of course wasn’t going to happen. That man, without even meeting me once, was sending me to a boarding school - a boarding school that apparently didn’t even know my name or gender, because in the letter they sent me to tell me I was accepted, they kept referring me as Miss Brooke Falconer.
That was completely ridiculous, I mean, I was Brook Woods, a tough (yet slightly short) guy!
Along life’s journey we each encounter those events where all that we know, all that we do, and all that we are may change. But even as we approach such events, we don’t always notice their markers until we look behind us and see them for what they were.
One boy is about to learn that he has already passed such an event, and nothing will ever be quite the same…
I'm not the unluckiest boy in the world- far from it, in fact- but every morning I wake up cursing my life.
My name is Ashley Nathan Moore. I was born on the 12th of May 2003 to two very loving parents, who would subsequently have three more children- three girls. I'm the only boy in the family... And the frustration that it causes me is immeasurable.
Not that I don't love my sisters, of course, and they love me. Cassidy- the second of my three sisters- is always telling me how glad she is that I'm her big brother.
Lee's adventures continue. His old life is careening out of his control, his new one coming at him head-on. Can he survive the clash of old and new and still keep his sanity. Will his mother's attempts at helping make matters better or worse. It's anyone's guess. For sure, Lee doesn't know.
"Fred, I think we're lost." Almost as soon as Margie van Arndt said it, she was sorry. Most men won't admit that they'd messed up directions or misread a map, but Fred, well....
"I'm not lost," he said through clenched teeth. "This road is just the long way to Wheaton. It's such a nice day that I thought I'd --"
Checks can be made out & sent to:
Joyce Melton
1001 Third St.
Space 80
Calimesa, CA 92320
USA
Note: $6000 is the operating, maintenance and upgrade budget. Amounts received in excess of the $6000 will be applied to long term debt accrued over the last 19 years.
