#doing the

[radberry-ink]

pov I found your straw page

[ometochtli2rabbit]

[theriverbeneaththeriver]

this is just

everything

[jumpthensfall]

welcome to this episode of me crying over you are in love at 1am

[randomlyjay]

The Wind Talker

I make friends when walking down a street, because a Jay is pretty good at that and I talk with lots of things. And some of them are pretty surprised a Jay can talk to them – sometimes even that they can talk! – but my new friend isn’t at all.

“I have an uncle who is a tornado.”

“Oh?”

“Everyone talks about him. Not just other winds. The waves. Storms.” The zephyr let’s out a sigh smaller than it is. “Even the earth knows his name.”

“Oooh! So you’re all kinds of sad-face about being a gentle breeze?!”

“Yes. I’ve felt you change winds. Move storms. Make things – more. Bigger. Terrifying!” Each word a gust, and after the zephyr barely manages a whisper: “Change me. Help me.”

“Jaysome is jaysome; it doesn’t have to be like that you know!” I stop walking so it isn’t tired when following a Jay. No one else is about. “Honcho knows that change isn’t always a helping. Sometimes help is learning to be you, not wanting to be other things. It’s a happiness if no one knows your name like they know tornadoes and typhoons and lots of other things starting with t I bet!”

“But I’m so small.”

“Uh-huh. And they were too once. They grew, and you can too: but you don’t have to grow the way they did. You can be big and not be feared!”

The breeze quivers when I’m firm like a Jay, but keeps on going too!

“But you are big. You are Jay, of the bindings, and the wind that howls between the worlds knows your name.”

“Well, I am jaysome. But that’s me being me and making friends and doing loads of helpings. Being big is more this -.”

And I reach, for a moment. Down inside, but also sideways and upside-ahead as well. It’s not waking up. (it hurts.) It’s not – it –

rememory stirring-undone being-wholeness input-GIGO-output darkness-light flight

I let go. Push it away, and back, and far to the edges of jaysome. I think I almost don’t manage it, but I’m not sure because it’s the biggest binding I’ve ever done! I’m sweating and I have a headache, which is pretty new and my head doesn’t want to stop aching.

“... that is very big,” the zephyr says in a voice so small I almost don’t hear it.

“Uh-huh! There are lots of kinds of big, and some bigs even a Jay doesn’t want to be. Being small is better since it’s hard to big like a storm and not hurt and have people scared of you!”

“Thank you,” the breeze says, and goes off to be a breeze and nothing like a storm at all!

I head back to the hotel and hope Honcho can help with my headache.

[randomlyjay]

The wind has picked up, the sea churning up sand as it dives in toward the land. The clouds charge in. Not rolling, nothing so small. Wild shapes plunge over the land, covering the long wall that rises up toward the sky. The white and purple flowers exist only in memory, obscured by the darkness cast by the clouds. The green vines seem to twist in the wind as though reaching for things without names. The bluff overlooking the sea feels as though it might crumble at any moment but somehow also as if it was the only sturdy thing in the world.

The chipped-paint faded blue door far behind creaks as it opens and shutters in the force of the wind. You are checking your phone, but there is nothing about storms. No warnings, no information. The weather report a lie, a damned lie and carrying nothing statistical at all.

Then you see the boy.

He is on the beach, as though he was always there. Walking, and the wind and storm and cloud seem muted about him. Tamed in some fashion that defies understanding; there is only acceptance. He walks into the side of the bluff, into shadows that are something more than that.

And then he is beside you. “I was in your den,” he says proudly. There is no cave under the bluff, and certainly no den. At least not in any world you know of.

“Oh,” you say.

“Uh-huh! Unless!,” and he flings the word out happily, “the house is your den, cuz you are the den mystery woman, right?!”

You say yes. Some certainties one can only respond to with an affirmative.

“And you’re taking a break from Tumblr and I don’t understand that at all! Because you could lose bindings and that’s never jaysome at all!”

“Oh.” Your voice in funny in your ears. Somehow quiet, but also louder than the storm. There wasn’t a storm a moment ago. “Sometimes bindings only get stronger if we move away from them.”

“Honcho left me and it wasn’t like that!”

And for the first time, there is something about him that has edges you’ve never heard in his voice before. There are deep waters here. You crouch down. “Sometimes it is, Jay. Sometimes people need a break, even from being jaysome. We can’t all be – sometimes we have to go for a little while, or some day we’d go and never return at all.”

“Oh. But you will?”

“Of course,” you say, and Jay grins and the storm is gone and he offers up a hugey hugging and is gone too a moment later. The wall had cracks in it: they are gone, and the door no longer creaks at all.

You have no idea if there is a den off the beach. You have no idea what might happen if you looked.

The wind has died down.

[mortiz888-blog]

Auto Draft — Key details at a glance. Read more: https://ctneighbors.blog/?p=16891 #CTNeighbors #ShorelineCT

New Haven Works Hard. We Make Sure People See It.