#amelie andrezel

[brandochunderdarkseas]

"How long has it been like this?  How long have we forgotten?" asked amelie, turning her silvered hair to look back at me.  The only human left with silver hair, for no one remembered we used to call it grey.  

"I suspect since a few years after we left, but ask Mel, its her coast," I said in a low voice that barely filled the compartment.  A laugh sounded from behind the hardback book, a faded Gaudy still visible in black atop the weathered shea butter cover.  "That's right bitches, once californian, always a californian.  This is my weather," and a head appeared from its vantage upon Peter Whimsey and re-entered our train compartment.  

Laughter sounded low, and faded out to a silence as we three looked out upon the railed paths along the gardened California of this future we couldn't quite believe.  

"I hear that the redwoods have finally won the war.  The last Giant Sequoias are kept in a sheltered dome in Yosemite.  However, our Coastal Redwoods are thriving ever further from Sacramento Bay each year.  Good to know something has succeeded with all this damn flooding.  San Francisco Island, what a ridiculous sound."  I ended my monologue by pressing my hand to the window, watching the Coastal Range pass by as we wound our way North.  No snow graced these peaks, but the sea smashed into the rocky rises a few hundred meters to our left.  Behind me I could feel the wind from Amelie's eyes as they rolled back in her head, but I knew that she smiled too, watching me watch the world travel by.  She'd always been far too nice to me, for a long time too.  A very long time.  For a trio that spent many of its years on the move, I was afforded a lot of leeway to ogle our various transportation systems.  But trains had always been our favorite.  Amelie and I fell head over heels for trains in far far away Scotland, and whenever we could, we took them.  But no where in all the Coalition were train rides so green.  

Amelie found tickets for us all as a surprise, for this trip.  We'd come home for a farewell tour of the blue-green Earth.  One last trip along the California coast.  We knew that we wouldn't be coming back, it would soon not bear any resemblance to the California we once lived in, and we wanted to leave the memories intact from long ago.  

"I love this band,"  Amelie said, with a tremor in her voice.  I turned and saw tears welling in her coral sea blue eyes.  I slid back and wrapped my arms around her ancient neck and pulled her to me.  

"Babies," said Mel with a teary chuckle.  We all laughed.  

"Its a damn good band," I said with my childhood enthusiasm voice, "the oldest band Earth has ever had.  The only thing older is this marriage, which is even older that we are."  

"Physics bitches."  Said Amelie and Mel at the same time.  The Orion mission had taken us far in space, but even further in time.  

"Today, it is July 16th, 2341.  Which means that we have been married, 330 years, and you are only 280 years old. we will never catch up to our marriage age, even if we never Travel that far again..."

"What does that make you Bran?  25?  Jeez, Amelie, robbing the cradle does seem like a good idea"  Mel pointed at the two of us, and sheltered back behind Shrewbury College's vandal as I threw a red gummi ship at her from across the compartment.  

Still, I thought to myself, as everyone settled back to reading or listening to music, its been so long since we've been home that home has gone and changed.  New York City was abandoned by the engineers, a marsh and an obelisk all that are left.  Damn him for being right.  And we missed it as we sped towards the stars, to return and see the changes, the good and the bad.  

The few left from the old days, our biologist and the laser dancer had stayed home in Thoris City on Mars, respectful of our ancient tradition.  One last trip to where it all started.  The LongLife treatment didn't destroy old memories, but they were so much brighter on this train ride.  I pulled myself away from the window, and whispered to Amelie.  "Do you think Pitlochrie still exists, I think we should see about some scotch."  Out of my pocket I pulled an old ring, the only thing I had always always brought with me.  I looked at my beautiful wife and smiled, and she smiled back.  

Today, today is the day I wear it.  

[brandochunderdarkseas]

alright- heads up about today folks.  Today is the two year anniversary of my marriage to the lovely and talented amelie andrezel.  We have just recently managed to live together in the same state, and the same house, in the little town where we got married.  Just want to post a few thoughts, and they shall continue throughout the day (since neither of us are working today).  

The wedding itself was pretty awesome.  I had all my siblings there, and much of my family.  Amelie was gorgeous, seeming to glide through the sunshine.  It was a very sunny day, just like today is; however, I am hoping that today will not get quite so high in the Stygian heat index.  I think the wedding weekend was the hottest on record in minnesota: ask Ajay, who claims it is the hottest place he had ever been and he spent two years in Bangkok.   

I'm not really a ring wearer, it just doesn't seem to work for me.  But the ring that I got married with already had some seriously emotion ties for me, since it was my mother's father's ring.  A large blue lapis in a gold ring, and it takes me to happy places when i wear it: to my grandfather's voice, and to the wedding chapel and day with amelie.  I wear it twice a year, on the anniversary day and on my grandfather's birthday.  Today is the day.  

I remember taking photos before the ceremony, walking around the campus in a sort of humid disbelief.  It was really happening.  

That is probably my favorite pre-wedding photo of just the two of us.  Looking forward.  Love.  Flowers in an observatory, doesn't happen that often.  Just like people like her don't happen often, and why she would ever want to look through a telescope with me boggles my mind.  

[brandochunderdarkseas]

dammit andrezel!

[brandochunderdarkseas]

Again, it is the power hidden, revealed only to awe, like flashes of bright sunshine on the freeway.  It coiled deep beneath that medium frame and dapper coat, laying drowsy upon recliners in the reptilian part of his brain.  Confidence he had, moving like a waltz spliced to the driving bass beat of deep London.  A confidence so ingrained that he did not go around exercising it to prove to others, or to himself; there always at beck and call was the commanding spirit of agelessness.  Unseen like the air you breathe, he could bale you in the gale of his eyes amid whispered promises of majesty.  But more on that later.

*** 

Mel walked into the bar and cautiously looked around.  It wasn't cautiousness born of fear; it was a studied cautiousness, an emotion that flitted across his face like a man returned to find himself a stranger in his childhood home.  Swirls of tobacco twisted in serpents along the walls and rafters, this bar of Wolves on Parson street.  Hooded hoodlums languishing in their security.  He leaned to the side and pressed his ash walking stick, his favorite with the amber globe as a handle, into the mottled floor; he swayed effortlessly and strode toward the rear office, this den of grey thieving wardens.  The circling yellow eyes followed his trail like the lone prey in the glittering night.  Mel opened a leather wrapped door without a name plate and took in the room.  I sat in the corner, barely worthy of a blink.  Instead his stance weakened and he closed the door while taking his weight onto the amber rod.  As he turned, a mirthless grin exposed his teeth.  

"Well, Alpha we have a problem, don't we?"

Seated across the fine desk was not a show or a stunt, but the king himself.  In front of the desk, expecting to be addressed or observed was his regent, his cousin, tossed from his usual perch for this meeting.  

"Do not address him like that you petty scum, where do you think you are," came out in the menacing, sandy growl, which shifted neighborhood politics and put deputy Constable commissioners on the defensive.  Mel's eyes flicked to the mobster, the thieving prince, and flicked back to the king, hands steepled upon his chest in deliberation.  The prince moved forward, sinews snapping to attention to awe this pompous fool.  In a spin and a hazy slide, the amber globe caught my prince in the neck, pressing between his apple and his neck muscle, pushing him back.  The king looked on.  Unbalanced, the prince fell back two strides in a hopeless quest to flee.  His legs slammed into the wooden desk, and he could flee no further.  

"Unless you are a rider of the Host, and have furled your might into that greasy coat: get. you. gone.  You are beyond matched, and my words are not for you, you are dismissed."  

My elder and now humbled prince walked from that black shimmering fire without asking leave of his liege, a whimpering in his eyes that would never be removed all his days.  

The king then spoke to his dowsed flame, "Do you fear that fabled host?" came words in measured interest from our youthful king, ringlets upon his head.  

In laughing reply, Mel flipped the amber cane over the desk into the lap of the unstartled master.  Deftly removing the baton from the air, the king looked deep, his eyes leaping toward Mel and back to the amber.  Staring from the inside of the inside the orange globe was the triangular head of a snake, fangs bared.  

"Fear is beyond us all now King, for the ending prescribed is swiftly coming upon us, just as i was there in the beginning, shield and mail gleaming, will i stand at the fall of Night."  Not menace, but Grace showered this room a fear from Righteousness.  

 "The question Alpha," Mel said in a friendly tone, all heat removed from his voice, "is will you stand upon the side of righteousness, for honor and justice, and choose to stand with The Fall to oppose the same host.  Will you give up your apparent crown for a lasting lordship?"  

Mel turned, and opened the door, obscuring my view.  The king gaped, mouth open at the space behind the entryway, as the room fell into cold darkness.  

"Keep my cane, and call me when you decide.  Beware assuming the Snake delights in deceit."  

[thereisthisgap]

for Unreal Cities by Amelie Andrezel

[Source images here, here, here, and here]

[aandrezel]

Changeable

She moved from the interior window, setting the shears on a pile of books and making her way toward the noise coming from outside of the open balcony.  The protesters milled about on the avenue like colorful eddies on a swirling current.  Their signs bobbed on the tide; the scuffing of their boots on the pavement made the sound of water over stepping stones.  Some of them rested against the stoops of houses on the opposite side of the street, sharing stubs of cigarettes between them and passing newspaper articles back and forth on the wireless.   She recognized a few of the youngest, barely more than boys.  Only months before, she had smuggled them into Greifswald.  How changeable, she thought sadly, we could be.  Then again, she knew that one body often harbored two people, diametric opposites sharing lungs and veins and ventricles—but not lives.  It was our nature.  How could she begrudge them that?

(Amelie Andrezel, Mementos of the Fall)

[redcanbewarm]

How to Write a Cover Letter

You open your eyes to the sound of a motor.  There is sun enough today, you think, that my neighbor is mowing his lawn.  You shuffle to the window and you greet the cold, slick rain.  Across the street, a generator forces air and paint through the nozzle of a power spray-gun.

You put on your Sunday best. 

You must wash it away—you tell yourself—the stink of all your unfinished work.  A reminder: be sure to get under the nails, for it lingers there, sickly and brown.  But be quick about it, now—it’s already five of one and she’s due back at two.

Round the corner with a bright red umbrella.  Mind the puddles for it will not do for your boots to be wet until dinner.  

Sit on a stage.  The patrons are around you, with their coffee and their books.  They open their books and they open their ears and they await your performance with the stiffness of those words.  Be a little nimble with your chatter and your wit; extol the virtue of this gay and profane little world of ours—so flippantly grave, so exuberantly serious.  Do it with a little craft.  They are listening, after all.

And then, good-bye! —She is gone to the street with the cold and the rush and sting of the traffic going by.  Try to remember the warmth of red booths, of the coffee and the patrons and the chatter.  Red can be warm but it does not last.  The last warm things in life can all be found, abandoned at the bottom of empty cups.

You hum a little; it gives you strength.  Strength can be real but it does not last. 

You walk out into the rain and make something out of nothing.  Nothing is what there is until you’ve poured some something into it.  The universe is closed.  In from where; out from what?  You walk into the rain.  You wonder about nothing.

Here is a full stop.  There is the road.  Here are the vines and there are the envelopes, full once with words but now empty of rain.  The river is swollen and it bears no regard.  Departed; left no addresses. 

You think with your eyes.  They are tired.

—Your hands are scrubbed raw but you still see the stains; the flowers have all gone to seed.

You try to work but you sleep instead; fall asleep to the sound of a motor. 

Dream a dream where the sun is shining—and your neighbor is mowing his lawn. 

-Amelie Andrezel

[bookcoversproject]

Alternate book cover for Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman.

Source photo by the oh-so-talented Amelie Andrezel.