January 12th Ma died today. Not the... violent kind of ‘died’, though. Just was laying in her bed in a little house in the Southern District when she up and went, all of a sudden. I’m feeling a lot of things right now, it’s hard to write. Harder to talk. My throat’s clogged up, my beak’s sealed shut. I haven’t talked a lot today. They had a funeral--right there and then. It was my idea. I didn’t want to wait. Ma is-was a pragmatist, fast, she’d do it quick because waiting would make it harder on everyone. Little wood coffin made of one of the oaks on Mud’s biggest hill that we cut down for the occasion and Sparrow carved into something which would work. Then me and him dug a hole while everyone who cared about her was standing there crying. Won’t lie, I cried, a lot, too. But it was raining like it usually does and it was hard to see, and I wasn’t that loud about it. My shovel broke before we got it done and Sparrow fetched another one. Sparrow’s the most reliable person here, Ma loved him, everyone loves him, even if most of them don’t know where he came from. She loved him more than she loved the mud she was taking care of. She was the leader--president? I don’t know. We’re Grounded and Ma always said that meant we didn’t have any precedent to follow. So ‘leader’, ‘president’, whatever, that’s what she was. I’m her only son so now I’m ‘leader’, ‘president’, whatever. My shovel broke and that was a really telling sign. When your tools break, that’s a sign that something’s going to happen. My shovel broke--I guess I’m not going to be able to dig into the new position, won’t be able to keep Mud funded with mud, something like that. Something negative. Ma always said it was a good thing if your watering can broke, because it means we would get lots of rain, and she was always right. But she also said that breaking a lever on a rice silo meant we’d have too much rice to know what to do with, and we’re low on rice, and that was only a week ago. So--pragmatist, superstitious, leader, president, that was Ma and she died today. We buried her right in front of her house and then put packed mud bricks over where she was and now people can walk over her. Another part of the foundation that makes up Mud. Me and Ma disagreed about our isolation. We had a visit from an Apex trader recently, they come by every once in awhile, we sold him rice and got a red scarf and a few knick-knacks and some money in return. The Apex had a chemistry set that Ma said wasn’t worth buying--a whole entire set of everything I could imagine, like I read about in old books. I’ve always wanted stuff like that, to experiment, to test things out. I’m probably lousy but I’ve read enough about chemistry that with lots of trial and error I’d probably get it down. But me and Ma disagreed, she didn’t like traders coming by. Outsiders are what caused Avos to become ‘the way it is now’--which she hardly ever actually explained. Avos, Avos, Avos, every day. Can’t become like Avos. Isolation is the only thing keeping us alive. We got rice seeds from a Hylotl trader a long time ago, which is also what’s keeping us alive, but Ma forgot about that one all the time. I wanted more traders. More travellers. More settlers. I had a knack for building design--I was the one to come up with the elevated buildings when I was ten. Now we can see structural damage way before it strikes. No more landslides, no more sinkholes. Now we can put our own long mud brick roads between everything for stability. This kind of design, I guess tourists think it looks interesting. And for a lot of them, I hear, it’s a break from the rest of the universe. Somewhere calm. Somewhere to settle. Of course, Ma didn’t want them stealing that from us, but Mud is a big planet. There’s room for more. Now that she’s dead I don’t want to do it anymore. I’d be betraying her. I never convinced her, so why should I get to allow visitors, stuff like that? Maybe she’s right--maybe we’ll become Avos again. So I’m waiting. Nobody else knew as much about Avos as her, she was the one that got us out and she’s the one that kept us here. So everyone I ask says that Ma was probably right. Well, sure-- but this isn’t Avos. From what I hear, Avos is really sunny, bright, hot. Not Mud. If anyone came from the skies and started attacking us, the rain and clouds and dirt would stop their fire in its tracks. But Ma knows more and knew more, so yeah, I’m waiting. I asked the Apex for one other thing, besides the scarf, which is a little radio-phone--can talk, two ways. I ask him questions when he’s not busy sailing around the universe. I ask him what an Apex spaceship is like. Is it different than Ma’s old spaceship? He says, no, it’s all really the same principle. Another thing Ma would never let me do was take apart her old spaceship. Not for parts--just to look at it and see how it works. I told the Apex this and he said that it probably didn’t need fussing around with. When you sit one down for a long time, it can get volatile. Poking around could kill you. Not sure how and why but nobody knows as much as Ma and the Apex, so I wait, and I’m waiting. Really exhausted, won’t lie. I’m writing--it’s the middle of the night. Sitting in my desk at the top of the tallest hill in the little management building. I gave it some thought. Mud visitors could land right below here, and I could keep track from up in this perch, who comes and who goes. I mean, mostly. The residential districts, not so much. But I write pretty quickly. I could manage it. I’m on crystal light, in here, which helps me think--a little red on a planet where there’s only blue and brown. I think now would be a good time to stop writing, though. I keep thinking about Ma and start crying and stop crying. I don’t know if I was ever close enough or nice enough to her, I just... I probably wasn’t. It’s dry in here and I’ve got a lot of tears. Maybe they’ll seep onto the paper if I keep writing, so I shouldn’t. I should go home.
Big talk, big ideas, today specifically. No, no, I’m really doing fine, stop asking me, me. I feel strange. Big talk today, about security checkpoints and rubber bullets and defensive positions. It’s about Upside, but it’s about Mud, too. And they’re just big ideas, which I try not to get too many of. I just hear something about attacking one person or another, and I need to speak up. I recommend security checkpoints, and rubber bullets, and defensive positions. And I’d say it all to somebody else instead of a complete stranger, like Sparrow or Ma, but I’ve gotta leave Mud, I’ve gotta leave Mud to find escape for everyone else. But I should start at the beginning, because my last entry was two months ago when the universe was spinning and I had no idea where I was. Of course it’s still spinning, but I’m not lost anymore. It took months, to make Ma’s ship work again. So long. I was talking with the Apex on the radiophone all the time, because at least he knew something about fixing it, but then he stopped talking to me once we were done. Something about wanting to meet in person- I can relate. His name was Cath, did I mention? Arhicath Borin. It’s a shame I can’t talk to him anymore, because he’s amazing, fascinating. Troubled, really, like Sparrow. But in the way he hides so well that he’s practically forgotten about it. Months of working on Ma's ship, and then I was off-planet. Barely knew how to fly, didn’t know at all, Sparrow helped. Ma’s old ship is huge. Too big. Maneuvered to the first settlement we had any ideas about-- Upside. Upside is like a utopia, to me, or at least it was. I’ve become at least slightly less naive with time, and a few visits. The people of Mud dislike me taking so many visits because of all the outsiders and all the danger, yada yada. Well, I’ve only heard danger talked about, but there certainly are outsiders. I’ll try and write down a few, and what I’m thinking about them. - Argus. Mayor of Upside. Doesn’t seem to like me, much, though I’m not great at reading emotion in text. Only spoken to over Starnet. I wanted to trade, but he said that Upside had nothing to offer in exchange for rice. Was in a war, apparently. Don’t quite get the concept of space war. Seems like a big waste. - Fran. Resident of Upside-- apparently? Friendly, but introverted. Doesn’t talk a lot about himself besides where he lives, and a good conversationalist, even if he’s more of a listener than a speaker. I don’t remember his full name. Trust him, to a point. In Upside there’s a sinister element that I am trying to ignore. Everyone knows more than me. - Volare- or something along those lines. An Avian, but nothing like Ma warned us about. Resident of a nearby planet, used to map the galaxy for people. Misses that time in his life. Very open and willing to make new connections, I like him most. I want to talk to him more, though he seems a very busy person. And again, despite how genuine I know he is, there’s still that unknown part of the town that I think he knows about. I don’t judge. I simply want to find out. - Quickska. Another Avian, cooks incredible fish. I didn’t mean to sit down for a meal but ended up buying one anyway. Well, sort of. I exchanged some rice I brought down, and she offered to cook it up. In addition, if the person apparently owning the restaurant she works at (H-something) likes the rice, they’re considering buying. Perhaps in bulk. This is incredible news, because last month’s harvest was fruitful. More than expected. We might be able to be on par with the rest of the universe now, hooray. - Kalooa. Another Avian, there are so many! This one, I only spoke to for moments. But he seems to know a lot. Teaches at this library, so I’ll drop in on a class, sometime. Don’t know when, yet, but sometime. I need to learn. - Omega. Reasonable, not shady. Not shady because he announces his criminal acts very publicly. An arms dealer, of rubber bullets and lethals all the same. Want to avoid, but couldn’t, really. Asked my opinion on nonviolence, and I voiced it. Probably too loudly, somebody else was listening, a flaming plasma ball of a person who still scares me. Reasonable because he agreed with me, despite his status as a manufacturer of death tools. It is hypocrisy, maybe, but maybe I don’t understand the culture of Upside well enough. This is more likely. In fact, most of Upside is a mystery to me. Electricity, lights, heating-- I am writing in the library, and even this simple and (relatively) humble building is awash with building techniques beyond my imagination. No, not humble. Nothing here is humble, even if it puts on humility’s mask. But it is certainly advanced. Argus says it runs on hydroelectricity- still have to figure that one out- and it must have lent to the sheer... unnecessity of it all. Okay, perhaps too much. They have fountains-- pump water for no reason except aesthetic. Wastes water, maybe, though maybe this planet doesn’t care for water like Mud does. The bathing pool sits on the second floor of a building, somehow, and is heated. Heated! It doesn’t make sense to me, but I am simply unfamiliar. It’s still amazing, despite how alien it is. Big talk, big ideas. I have made contact with my first new civilization. It’s stressful, exhausting, worrying, dangerous. But maybe this is how we pull ourselves out of the mud. Do we want to pull ourselves out of the mud? This is where we’ve lived. This is where we’ve survived. Big talk, big ideas, do I really want to give Sparrow a gun and rubber bullets and a security checkpoint and a sniper’s nest? Oh, no, no no no. I don’t want any of this. I don’t want what’s happening, but it’s inevitable. I said to Volare-- isolation gets in the way of progress. But progress is terrifying. I am terrified, sitting in the library, staring at a stack of books that I don’t understand, trying, trying, trying. Don’t get any big ideas, Ernal, not yet. I don’t know what’s next but I need to keep making visits to Upside, that’s all I know. I could leave the library right now, but it’s raining, and raindrops slam the stony ground like machine-gun fire. Maybe they’ll seep onto the paper if I go outside, so I shouldn’t. I should wait.
I met a Floran yesterday. Not great with Florans, myself, I don’t understand even the most basic facets of their culture or the way they behave. But this Floran has suddenly become important to me, can’t really reason why. It is abandoned on Upside, no home, no caretaker. Gets food from people who are generous enough to donate. We exchanged names and stories and laughed and agreed a little, and I forgot its name as soon as I left, but I won’t forget its face. But that’s not what this entry is going to be about. I want to write about music, because a number of revelations hit me suddenly and music has been the rope to tie them all together. The same day I met the Floran, I met a couple of people in apparent love, playing simple guitars together in the park, soliciting donations. Gave a little, ever since that trade with Davel went through, and I have a hundred pix to spare. It belongs to Mud but we don’t have anything to spend it on, so I’ve been using it personally. What struck me about these two is how casually they embraced music and used it together. On Mud we have a tradition of the same sort of thing-- people make their own instruments, or make each other instruments, and play long sessions on one of the bridges around a cooking pot. Some people drink, I don’t, personally. Music is a very casual thing and a very serious thing. Spend hours making your instrument, practicing, taking it so seriously. Once you are performing, not a care in the world. And perhaps the instrument people play is indicative of who they are. At least, that’s what I’ve noticed. I met some new people, very notable-- forgot most names because I am forgetful except Kuro and now I know Sarah, vaguely, second-hand from what Volare has told me. Oh, and Sol. Novakid, quite intimidating. Quick to insult, but I think it’s all for show. I’m not sure yet. Culture, culture, culture... Anyway, I won’t drag on about Sarah or Sol because I hardly know anything about them, but Kuro is somebody I wish to know better. An enigma. Lost somebody named Akami-- still have a little carving of her image. He told me to keep it, so I am. ‘Though, no safer than the real thing,’ I said. He is not a pacifist like me, I don’t think, but he is of right mind. Not sure if Akami is dead or alive, didn't ask. Just 'lost'. If he is searching, I hope he finds her. Hm. I think it would best sum up my feelings on some of these people if I compared them to instruments. Starting where I did before. - Argus. A triangle, I think, or a bell. Unorthodox. Doesn’t work well with other instruments, doesn’t respond well to other instruments, except in edge cases, I suppose. But nobody really minds its contribution. - Fran. A set of drums. So varied in its relationship with other instruments that it can work practically anywhere, but it is always disconnected, somehow. It does not harmonize, it supports. And sometimes, it really just wants to show off. - Volare. Acoustic guitar. Lively and strong, yet soft when it needs to be. Sometimes it gets out of tune, I think, and although it is hard to notice, the guitar knows. Even out of tune, even while under the pressure of being the most prominent instrument, a guitar will keep going. - Kuro. Cello. Strong, yet often unheard. So much can be hidden in a string instrument, especially when played slow. The more I pay attention, the more I am entranced. It would mean the world to me to hear this cello play on its own, but it resists. - Quickska. Piano. Varied, capable of taking its own part in a piece or simply sitting in the background waiting to play its part, always juggling so many thoughts at once. I suspect that if you really sit down and listen, there is an entire world inside the notes of a piano. - Kahlua. Bass guitar. Plucking away, tired, exhausted, it seems. Sometimes it is the bass guitar that best supports the sessions we have on the bridges. Not many people play. They go so unnoticed except by their most in-tune listeners. - Omega. A synth, electronica, things foreign to me, which represent music made of technological advancement instead of strictly physical instruments. I have come to antagonize Omega, perhaps because I think he represents this gun-toting insane asylum which is hiding under Upside. Yes-- there is a gun-toting insane asylum underneath Upside, in the sewers, very literally. But that’s not what I mean. Omega represents everyone’s mentality. Omega represents the frontier mindset that at any moment, things are going to go south, and everyone ought to be armed and ready to shoot. He represents what I fear most, that spirit to fight, ‘just in case’. Instead of actual precautions and security, instead of safety, Omega recommends more rifles. Or... or... or not. Maybe I’m wrong in this philosophy and antagonization. I probably am, but can’t figure it out, too exhausted. Can’t stop thinking about it, too exhausted. Can’t think right, too exhausted. Threw up in a toilet because the Novakid drew knives as a joke. Nobody should draw any weapon as a joke. On Mud we don’t have sharp weapons, just Sparrow and a few others trained with a quarterstaff as a purely defensive item, incapable of killing. But this is how everyone is on Upside, and I need to get used to it. It is their habit. It is how they behave, in their own flavor of madness. Need a gun by their side. Need a sword in their sheath. Need something. In case. In case. Just in case. I think I am delusional, myself. Comparing people to instruments in a futile attempt to understand them better. I believe in the end they are still going to have that tough exterior, like how the surface of Upside is solid rock. From the people of Mud I got approval to bring one visitor. My reasons are thusly: to show the people that outsiders aren’t all bad as Ma used to claim they were, to show that we are capable of bringing people to-and-from without worry or issue, as my future plans might eventually be, and to show that Avos is still a long, long ways away. We are safe now, even if I am constantly anxious about the individuals of other planets. We have 1,500 people to think about, 1,500 Avians, 1,500 inhabitants of Mud. They are who I need to be concerned about, and a visitor is the first step toward giving them the freedom and intrigue I have now. I asked Kuro but he denied; my next choice was Volare, who I think is best for the part overall, and he accepted. As an Avian, and as somebody very willing to try new things and experiment, I think he’ll be the best candidate. Not sure when, but I’m certainly open anytime. The last instrument is a voice, belonging to Sparrow. I don’t have any particular reason why. Maybe because a voice can guide you through a landscape of differing shapes and sounds, through experiences and stories and yank it all away to explain what has happened, and I feel that Sparrow has done that for me. When Sparrow came to Mud I knew we couldn’t stay isolated forever. The stories he told have all been true, so far. People really are very similar throughout the universe. They all play music of their own variety, with their voices, with their actions. All of them differently. But they all have that urge.
What is a fight worth fighting? I’ve been thinking about it, a lot. Not the sort of thing I was thinking about sitting in my office any other part of my life, not the sort of thing I ever questioned, because what Ma taught me is, there’s not really any fight worth fighting. Some guards like Sparrow give it their all to prevent fights. One hit with a staff can do a lot to subdue somebody who’s trying to hurt you. They prevent fights, they don’t fight fights. But for me I have never been able to do that. Maybe physically, if I tried hard enough. Just isn’t morally right, I can’t do it, even if I’m fine with Sparrow doing it. Hypocritical... Anyway, I don’t think it’s that simple anymore. Don’t think I can summarize it that way. Is it worth fighting for fun against somebody you trust? Volare says it is. It trains you to stay safe against somebody you DON’T trust. There’s an example of something I didn’t understand until very recently in my life. Would I fight? Am I supposed to? Think if I ever open Mud to the rest of the universe and if I ever stand in front of somebody with a firearm I need to ask myself that question. ‘Is this a fight worth fighting?’ And I suppose eventually it will be. I’m too tired tonight to write down some little metaphor for everyone I’ve written about previously, but here’s a few anecdotes-- Kuro was shot, security guard named Clark patched him up, mostly. He still needs a doctor, found a scientist Novakid named Ation, sort of a doctor, kind of. Ation is unpredictable, haywire, I like him. I have trouble expressing it because he’s a quick speaker and even more socially unaware than me. Besides his medical skills, he is indeed a scientist. I hope he can help me learn how to set something up for Mud-- electricity seems imperative, right now, but we don’t quite have the knowledge. I have tried reading books from the library, still have some in my bag, but it’s like I get one page in before somebody walks up and I have to talk to them. Still haven’t gone on that trip to Mud with Volare, really need to, sometime soon. Realized when I saw him sparring and getting hurt that I do... really care about him, to an unnatural degree. He’s reasonable and I like everything he says because it makes sense in the frontier where practically nothing else does. He has something dark in him that I see in the other people of Upside, too. When he turns his back to me he is doing something he doesn’t want me to know about. I want to get rid of that part of him or at least tell him I don’t mind knowing, because for some strange reason I fancy him in the sort of way that I shouldn’t fancy an outsider. Want him to be more than a friend. Haven’t known him long enough for that to make sense, so... the best I can do is keep talking to him and go on that trip soon. Having trouble making this entry make any sense, makes me question why I’m even writing it... Perhaps it’s for somebody else to read once I’m dead. If I am making these big decisions and getting these big ideas it’s bound to cause problems, and once I’m dead I’m sure somebody will want to know why all those things happened. When Mud is driven into the mud, inevitably, when I mess it up... maybe they’ll blame somebody like Kuro or Volare or Fran, Fran who has, I’m sure, killed a person, maybe people plural. Eh. Don’t know, maybe I’m writing this journal so that I can look back on the bad times and contrast against the good ones. Are these bad times? Are these good times? Can’t tell, it’s nothing like being back home. Back home is all I CAN’T think about. Back home right now, in Mud, in my office, staring out the big windows shaped like teardrops. Will I take people’s weapons when they enter? Will I be a good leader? Or am I going to be like Argus? Argus who I hate so much because he doesn’t care about the well-being of Upside at all, Argus who I hate because I can never talk to with any semblance of being heard. Am I going to be like him? Will I retreat off-planet? Is anyone going to care once I’m gone? Green, brown, blue. The colors of Mud. Then the red crystal light in my office. No, it’s not on, I turned it off. Can’t live in the red light. It scares me. Reminds me of the nightmares. Ma... Ma, I just want to know what I’m supposed to do. I spend more time at Upside than back home. I haven’t spoken to Sparrow in days. I have no idea what’s going on. After I write this instead of going to sleep I'm going to see if Sparrow is doing alright. Ship revs up, goes to Upside. I am in Upside. I am somebody else. I greet somebody new because I need to know how this place works... not for my sake, not for anyone’s sake, but because it is the ‘right’ thing. Because if we’re connected to another planet we are a real civilization again. Because when I go to Upside I learn about fights worth fighting and watch Volare try and kill Kahlua, the both of them trying to kill each other, I have nightmares every single night where they’re fighting and don’t stop fighting and one slices open the other and red and red and red and red and red and red and red and he’s DROWNING and he’s BLEEDING and red and red and red and Ship revs up, goes to Upside. I am screaming, telling them to stop. Take their guns. Take their knives. There are no fights worth fighting, there are no problems worth shooting each other over. But nobody seems to listen.
Brought Volare to Mud today. It went extremely well. He helped me take this picture. The red and green Avians have their arms wrapped around one another's shoulders. Behind them on the table is a nearly-eaten red fruit, dried rice spilling out, and a sipped-upon beer. They look happy. A good memory. This is a picture that I want to mark as a good memory. That’s Volare, the red one next to me. He’s a friend, I think-- honestly a friend. I want more but I don’t think he reciprocates. Whatever. A good memory. Through good memories and bad memories it’s worth writing a journal and sticking a picture in it. To remember in the future. Future Ernal-- are you going to look back at this as a good moment? I think it’ll always be like that. I can show around this picture and prove to the people of Mud that we’re going to make it. Despite how scary every change is, we’re going to make it. There are still good people in this frontier, always have been. Volare is just one of many. So I am writing this and pasting this picture in case it reflects, somehow, the future, in case the future is better or worse, so I can look back, and say, huh. That’s what that was like. And maybe it’s also for if I die going out into the world due to some crazy maniac wielding a gun. Don’t know who that crazy maniac will be-- it could be anyone, now. That’s something I’ve learned. Could be Fran. Could be Kuro. Could be Volare. I mean, who’s to say? Mud is churning with development, drives me crazy. Everything is changing. An inn on top of a tavern so that outsiders can stay the night. Bathrooms, public bathrooms for no particular reason but convenience. Spent the last bit of pixel on a generator powered by the rain, put it on top of an empty building, made a teleporter using blueprints free on Starnet, wired it up with instructions from a book. Somehow it works, somehow it didn’t kill me. Miraculous. Kind of worried about it, still, because it’s just sitting there where practically anyone could come out. There’s a switch I can activate to electrify the entrance and disable the warp pad, so in case of intruders it ought to help. Power goes from there to my office, partially, supplies a little computer on my desk-- wouldn’t normally want it, but we had just enough money to buy it and it seemed like the right thing to do. Now I can use Starnet without having to be on Ma’s ship, which will probably help. Now that I know why I am writing my journal I’d like to start talking about people again. Won’t overdo an entry for those I already know well- Kuro found a doctor, Kahlua got shot, Fran is more busy and absent than ever before, and Argus is still a ghost- but I think I’d like to compare some new arrivals to instruments. Listened to an improv performance on the bridge with Volare, started me thinking. - Ation. Saxophone. Unpredictable, a maverick, but obviously an instrument of skill, even if it’s sometimes muddled up. Wants to make a name for itself and always succeeds, though sometimes it’s off-putting and just wrong. I like listening anyway, just for the chaos. - 'Ziggy' Lovepeck. Upright bass. Extremely consistent, mulled sound, weathered by time and still strong, sitting exactly where it wants to. He’s Kahlua’s father, as well as Cinny’s (another Avian who stole some money). Where the bass guitar can sometimes sound exhausted, this instrument is still going strong. - No-name woman. One of those big drums I saw a Hylotl play once-- Taiko, I think? Banging a very large drum very hard with very large sticks. Obviously takes experience, is proud of its experience. Loudest thing in the world when it wants to be, doesn’t refrain, but knows what it’s doing. Not my type of instrument, but I think I need to learn something about everyone, so I’ll keep exploring. - Clark. Trumpet. An instrument that’s simple to play but so passionate, and one that can react and compliment nearly any situation. There are some trumpet players on the bridges in Mud, and all of them are incredible at improv. Doesn’t matter if it’s easy or hard-- the trumpet will overshadow and react in the most incredible of ways. - Blanc. Don’t know enough about him yet, though the comical answer would be ‘no instrument’, since he doesn’t speak. But Blanc reminds me more of a harp. Lacking some things that others deem necessary- missing strings, missing chords. Doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful. There’s no way of knowing what exactly is going to happen next. I still get nightmares... every single night. I hate my red crystal light but I need it on because otherwise I get a headache. Thinking about that spar messes me up, bad. But things are okay. Things are getting better, and right now I’m optimistic. Writing this at home, not in my office-- my computer can keep track of things better, but I prefer writing at home, by myself. Wonder what it’s like not to live alone. Wonder if he... ... Anyway. I should get some sleep. Maybe after everything that happened today, those thoughts of red will finally subside. But who knows? Maybe opening Mud will be so stressful that it’ll only get worse. Every day I get more big ideas on how to make this place work. Don’t get any big ideas, Ernal. No more big ideas.
“No steel walls or metal beneath my feet. Just mud and dirt and blue as far as the eye can see.” Old rhyme Ma used to tell me whenever I got big ideas about space and science and trade and travel. She’d catch me stargazing on the roof of our little house in the swamp and tell me, no steel walls, no metal. Now that I’ve felt metal beneath my feet and I’ve felt that clashing, banging feeling in my head that comes with being thrashed around on a riptide, I’m hearing her words, so close. Told Volare how I had been feeling about him, which ended alright. I explained, we talked, we embraced, I left and said we'd talk again, and I'm going to live up to my word. I want to take this slow, get to know him better... let it grow like you would grow rice. The more I write the more I’ll regret writing later, so I'll refrain. On a little bit of a high right now, yet the feeling that I’m doing the wrong thing hasn’t subsided for one second. I went to Hope Springs. Community of Grounded Avians, as well as one human, Mick. Don’t think I talked about him before. He’s a good soul. He knew Clark. I met Nano, Sarah, Red, Noa. Bunch of faces that were already in Upside but that I neglected to speak to. Nano is something out of a fiction book, Sarah is much more reasonable and trustworthy than I ever imagined, Red lost Clark (because Clark died, haven’t mentioned that yet) but keeps defending Upside more than anyone else, Noa knows Volare and Kahlua, I suppose. I met Clark’s partner, Brit. Lot to say about him. Lot to say about Clark, and what happened to him. Lot to say about just about everyone, but everyone isn’t who I can think about, right now. Flip-flopping between thinking about the red bird on Hope Springs and the 1,500 birds on Mud. Flip-flopping between Kuro and Kahlua. Flip-flopping between mud and steel. When steel strikes mud- like I’m afraid it might when those two Flightless Avians find us- it scores the earth, a cut that doesn’t heal, a hole that doesn’t reform. Steel strikes mud. Mud strikes gold. Flip-flopping between, open it today, open it tomorrow, open it the next day. Flip-flopping between, I’m going too slow, I’m going too fast, I’m going too fast, I’m going too fast, slow down the ship! I’m flip-flopping between Kuro and Kahlua because they’re both candidates for the first members of the guard. Kuro has discipline and strength and experience, but maybe too much strength. Don’t know how he will resolve disputes, which is important as a guard, I think. Kahlua has heart. He does want to help people, good people. He tried to kick Omega in the face, I stopped him. He regretted it after. I’m not one for violence and I told him off, but I hope he knows it’s because I want the best for him. I hope Kuro likes Mud. He always seems like he's a little dry on Upside. Could do with a wet planet, I think. Ah... maybe I’ll name something in Mud after Clark. In memoriam. When all I have is anticipation, it’s so hard to figure out what to write. I feel like a fool, in so many ways. I’ve been pursuing somebody irrationally, only known him for a month. Isn’t long enough at all. He makes me feel warm, makes me feel happy, and... I’m flip-flopping because he wants to take it now, take it quick, take it while it exists. I want to make sure it exists tomorrow. I want to open Mud. I want to solve his problem with the Rabbits. I want to wait until it’s right, because like Ma, I am a pragmatist first, lover second. Superstitious third. My pen broke which is why I can barely get the words down on the page. It’s a prophecy for the future. When your tool breaks, it’s a sign. It’s a sign of things to come. Writing is a constantly churning machine, like life. Sometimes you can put something in or take something out and it’ll fit. But with Mud, with everything going on, Volare doesn’t fit. He can’t. And I need him to. So I am going crazy in my room which is dim and lonely. I can’t write in the light because it isn’t red, beautiful red crystal light like in my office. Ship revs up, takes me to Hope Springs. Upside. Mud. Avos. Flip-flopping between thinking, Ma, you’re right. We should stay isolated. We should stay here on our own because we’ll never have problems. Flip-flopping between thinking, Ma, you’re an idiot! You don’t know anything! The universe isn’t harsh, it’s our only option. People like Kuro, Kahlua, Sarah, Red, Ation, Fran, Quickska, Volare, Clark... they will bring us back to life. Flip-flopping between mud and steel. Flip-flopping between metal and dirt. By the next entry, hopefully I will have opened Mud to the public, and hopefully things will start to make a little sense. Gotta get my head screwed on right.
Ship revs up, takes me somewhere nice. I am floating along the universe in a one-man pod like Sparrow, and like Sparrow I am rammed into Mud at a hundred miles an hour. I expect to die, yet somehow I’m alive. Yet somehow I’m alive. It’s like I can feel Volare, right there next to me, his voice over the phone. He is so far away. Ship revs up, takes me somewhere nice, anywhere but Mud. It opened. Nobody died. No guns. No surprises. Just as you’d expect. New arrivals stroll in through the telepad room in single-file, all my friends, all my love, red feathers because red is importance and I can pick him out of the biggest crowd in the world. In the dead of night I am sitting at my desk illuminated by red, red scarf. I can sail the world in my seat. I can look out my window and watch Mud churn like it is in a washing machine, swirling around, working and running in perfect rhythm. Fire burns, rain crashes down. Water and earth swirl together to form a cesspool that is Mud itself. The bridges of gold flash red, the residential district caresses the earth like a delicate hand, moving just in tune with the rhythm of the ground. It’s bustling more than it ever has. It’s more alive than it’s ever been. There are no fearful faces awaiting the arrival of outsiders, not even Chicua and her mouselike face, not even Amoch in the house above me, telling me I should worry. I am free. I am free. I am free. I am living in a big cage called Mud. I sit in my office and think about that night on Hope Springs where I could have grabbed his hand and taken him and never looked back. That was the best night of my life, I swear. I haven’t had a better night since the time I was looking up at stars and Ma said I could keep looking, and the night she gave me a little astronomer’s book, and sat on the roof to stargaze. She was never like that. She never acted like that. Only in the company of the moon, in the company of the moon and no-one else. Bare naked I was, in the darkness, and she told me I would travel therel, once, like she did. When I was twenty a light came in the distance, a shooting star. I pointed at it, she laughed. That’s no shooting star, that’s a ship. A pod. Landing. Landed near the old temple. Sparrow was inside. The first guard he saw, he killed with a two inch piece of twisted metal before anyone knew what had happened. He was muttering and terrified like a swollen baby full of tears and sins. He attempted to end his own life twice and we stopped him both times. He has said time and time again-- Sparrow Linnaeus is dead. For what I have done, for all the things I have done, Sparrow Linnaeus is dead. I will remain a shadow on the wall until there is nothing left of me, and I will die without a regret but for my entire life. That is who he is. That is what he is. That is where he came from. Before Ma died that was the most terrifying night of my life, and maybe tonight is the new record. I’m so confused, deaf, dumb, blind. I am in an escape pod. I am a shooting star. I am crash-landing, this is it. This is the crazed writings of a mad bird thinking about red, like a bull, charging head-first into hell. Thinking about red, and red, and red, and red. I am crashed on the ground and tomorrow I’ll wake up chipper and ready for any new arrivals who happen to need my complete attention, and I will give it. Because it’s better than the alternative. Mud is open. Things are going very well. Here are some assorted papers. Jobs, houses, names. All the important stuff. Name: Blanc Job: Shop owner, antiques? House: No Name: Netsittle Job: Builder/architect House: Yes (2A) Name: Aorea Job: Hunter House: Yes (3A) Name: Noa Jaycee Job: Farmer House: Yes (3B) Name: Cass Smith & Aishiteru Kanashimmy Job: Chefs (both) House: Yes (4A) Name: Kuro Job: Guard House: No Name: Francisco Job: Guard House: Yes (TBD) Name: Volare Job: Guard (...was hoping not, don’t want him to get hurt) House: No Name: Kahlua Job: Guard (part time?) House: No Funny how the four guard recruits are those I hold dearest, those I somehow trust most out of practically anyone from the outside world. Suppose it means I’ll be able to treat them all well. It also means that if any of them fail in their job I will be even more of a mess than before. Fran is a surprise-- I hadn’t expected to see him when I visited Upside, but it turns out that the sewers had been flooded by some ‘terrorists’, and that he’s in need for a home. This is the job I picked. Don’t know what Sparrow thinks about his training, I didn’t get a chance to check. Went home and started writing. Actually, before I started writing I talked to Volare. I told him I wanted to go back to that night we had. He told me he wasn’t looking for a man anymore. Deaf, dumb, blind. That night he held my hand and told me to stay, and I should have. I love him. I love him with every ounce of my being, right now. And by calling him in the middle of the night at least I’ve found out how pointless doing so was, because I was too stupid to realize the morning afterward when he told me the first time. I just want him to call back, so bad. I need him to call back. Kahlua, Jaycee, Mick all got back from the TQRF. Seems they learned a lot. They’ll need to be on call all the time, so Kahlua is ‘part-time’ guard. Think he’ll like it, though. I think they will, all of them. They are, again, the people I trust most with this job. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe by getting their trust I have coerced them into joining. Wouldn’t that be a neat trick, Ernal. Convincing outsiders to defend your outsider colony from other outsiders. Ma was better. Ma was smarter. She wouldn’t get caught up in loving somebody who doesn’t love back. She wouldn’t do any of this. Mud beneath my feet, that’s all I know. We are moving fast. We are electricity. I bought a stungun for Sparrow Linnaeus the bird who is dead and I shot myself with it. I’m crying can’t stop thinking about Volare, about him, about all the horrible things I’m saying to myself. No. It’s fine. Because I will wake up tomorrow and he will talk sense into me, and I will be the same dumb, uncultured idiot that I was when I first stepped onto Upside, gazing in awe, gazing at the glamour of it all. I will be curious about Volare, I won’t love him anymore, because that’s ridiculous, we’ve only known each other a couple months, really, overall, if you factor in all that time when Kahlua was in the TQRF. I will be curious and ask him how he used to sail the universe, and like an acoustic guitar he will have no issue at all responding. If he’s out of tune, he’s certainly not telling me. He’s probably fine without me, and I’m probably fine without him. The drums. The guitar. The bass. The cello. What kind of horrible erratic music is this?! It’s dry in here and I’ve got a lot of tears. Maybe they’ll seep onto the paper if I keep writing, so I shouldn’t. I should go home. Yet I’m sitting here at home, and suddenly it’s not home at all. I am not a resident. I am not a native. As of an hour ago, I crash-landed on Mud in my little private pod, and it will take me a decade to feel alive again.
I'm writing this in my office because I want to remind myself (in written word) that he matters too much to me to me to just stay a friend. It has to be something more. Eventually it has to become something more. I will wait until that day or die waiting.
It’s like a parasite. It’s like black goo surrounding my form and eating me alive. I feel eaten alive from the outside in, the core of my being gone. Something else is dictating my actions now. I am too weak to be miserable. I spent one night with Kahlua in the house above the clinic, and I said what I meant. I said I was lonely. I said I was the loneliest I’d ever been, and I spouted every bit of pain pent up inside of me, then I held him and held his entire body and we slept together. I don’t know what to feel. I wiped the slate clean for myself. I woke up not craving anything and not scared of anything. I took deep breaths for once, that reached down into my soul. I don’t love him and he doesn’t love me. All we shared was contact-- pure contact, between two people, warmth, trust, comfort. And it wiped the slate clean, I’m telling you, journal. I am born again. Kahlua is a bass. He is so troubled, so pained, and he plucks in the corner, and I got to sit next to him and listen to those cold strings twang with the deep sound of emotion. What I wrote two nights ago was very naive, I’ll admit. To think I’ll never find anyone after Volare is naive. I’m thirty now, still have some time left-- don’t know any birds that would love me back but maybe it’ll come eventually. Is it out of selfish need that I seek out somebody to hold in bed at night, to take home, to trust and love? Is it selfish that I would be willing to lose Vol if it meant somebody, anybody at all? Am I that much of a lonely, dumb bird? Think so. Anyway, with that off my chest... I can speak about the rest. Today a man came running into my office splattered with black goo, a parasite surrounding his chest and eating him alive. I took him to Upside in hopes a doctor would be there. But the little voice on my PMD told me to quarantine, to get him away from people, so I called Sarah. She knows how to do these things. He was highly infectious, dangerous, needed to be disposed of, and... Sarah was the one to do it. The whole of the TQRF watched. Kahlua watched. He came to me afterward and he was so torn up because he had to find the dead man’s son and give it to the dead man’s wife. Kahlua is a protector, an inherently good person in which I cannot see any evil, no matter how deeply and how intimately I look. Him, Francisco, Volare, Kuro. The four guards. The four protectors against evil. Though perhaps the other three have secrets which have been dipped in that black goo, that harshness and terribleness, I know Kahlua does not. So they continue to train; so they continue to protect. The voice (or just text) on my PMD named Caroline, she has been born out of nothingness and seen the end of the tunnel where terrible things lie. She cannot be evil because she has not existed long enough, I reckon. I went to a very strange place-- a church, maybe, to find her a bigger storage space, a method with which to make a body. There was already another voice there, a bodiless voice in a computer, named Marla, who tried very hard to kill me. Caroline saved my life. Caroline helped me home. Caroline is making a body. I cannot tell where evil is, maybe. Is evil inherent in a Floran? I’ve said before I know little about Florans but that which Ma told me. I have met good Florans and Fran tells me of a Floran who would bring a knife onto Mud and make wooden spears. So perhaps it is as much a mixed bag as any species. Or perhaps the evil that /is/ inherent in a Floran is one which can be overcome. I have seen so much evil be overcome. In Sparrow. In Kuro. In Fran. It is a black goo eating at us all, and it’s only a tragedy when we are powerless to fight it. I see no fault in a disease. A disease eats because it is hungry. A body fights a disease because it is pained. To succumb to it is only a fight lost. I can only pity a criminal, because they have succumbed. I feel, as a caretaker, it is my duty to bring them back to light. I love all the people from Upside and from every planet. I love Volare. I love Kahlua. I love Francisco. I love Kuro. I love the sound of their laughs. I love how interesting and deep each one is, how much wisdom they have, how much strength they show. I want to make them feel alright again. I want to show them light and take them out of their parasites. I want to love every single person I can, and I already do. I want to be loved. The last one is the hardest. Last one is the one that is the most fleeting, where all the others are permanent. With the cool winds that I feel and crave of love there come screams of industry, of change, of technology, black goo eating me up and eating Mud up. Do you want us to place a Floran tribe-- a Floran tribe!! on your planet? Mining op? TQRF? Want us to outfit your guards with tasers? Machine guns? Uh-huh, shake your hand, Ernal, kick you out of your office. Beat you to bits, melt your feathers, turn you and your parasite into the morning air seeped with smoke, spearheads, tears. Murky the water with your blood. Taint the clay with your flesh. Split me into component parts and turn Mud into a high-tech superhighway wasteland, and shake my hand. And shake my hand. Ship revs up but there is nowhere to go. Mud is the eye of the storm. I am holding on for dear life, but I shouldn’t be scared. This is what’s natural with a colony in the frontier. Throw everything at the wall, and see what sticks. Poke a straw into Mud and see what comes into your mouth when you suckle on it. It’s like a parasite. It’s like black goo surrounding my form and eating me alive. I’m not capable of being angry anymore, so I want to step out on the balcony and feel Mud’s cool air and wind and rain surround me. I am done running around. I am done spinning. I am an optimist and I have no qualms about facing the coming tide as it burns Mud alive like a rich man in a rich town burned alive for being bitten by a rabid animal. It’s like a parasite. I was bitten by a rabid animal, and now I’m sick with it, the wind of development. Who bit me? Must’ve been Arhicath or Sparrow, or Francisco who I met first, or Volare, or Kahlua, Kuro, or it might’ve been Ma all those years ago when she told me, the bold honest truth, the real truth. There is a lot of universe still out there. Just don’t forget you’re still right here.
I only feel more uncertain as the days go on. How could I continue to make such simple arrangements so complicated? Why are these easily explainable, easily summed up relationships... so hard for me to comprehend? I am in a bit of limbo at the time of writing and am not sure where I am going. Perhaps the jigsaw falling into place in front of me will form something appetizing, perhaps I will find /something/ to love really and dearly, but it’s equally as likely I’m treading down the same misguided path as I did with Volare. O, misguide me! Misguide me into the rocks! And I promise you, journal, or reader of journal (me in the future?), I am not being vague because I /enjoy/ the coyness. I could name all the specific details of love and non-love I am feeling right now, the heartbreak, but I am waiting for it to make sense first. The last thing I need is more naive, dumb ranting about the possibility of my future life. Especially when I’m going to have to read this all later. Especially when it’d seem incoherent, because on this particular subject my ears feel like they are ‘ringing’. I’ve heard there is a certain ‘ringing’ in the eardrum that comes when a gun is fired next to you; as that’s never happened to me I wouldn’t know personally, but I have been near gunshots before, and just a few days ago there was a gunshot on Mud, of all places. Noa Jaycee fired a gun. How she acquired it I’m still unsure, but I figure that asking would bring her more frustration and pain. Why should I care? I don’t know. She’s a friend. She’s a resident of Mud. She made a big mistake and shot an outsider, but the outsider had a knife and... perhaps I’m the wrong one for causing her such ostracization. Either way the natives were so upset. I let outsiders on the planet and now they are firing guns which have never been fired in thirty years of coming here. But I have said that exact phrase and written it, too, so many times that it loses meaning and becomes muddled up in my twisted sense of politicking and reason. I put a Floran tribe here, too, which already discounts me from being anywhere near morally responsible, like Ma used to be. Sure, there are rules-- the Florans can’t have weapons in Mud, can’t have ammo in Mud, if anyone in their tribe does anything wrong I’ll exile them all. Plus Willow is apparently part of the tribe. He didn’t strike me as the type, though I guess he’s simply eccentric, willing to explore all avenues. I’ve seen the technological advancement of his nonlethal weapon the Picador, and I trust in him some amount of caution. He would not side with anything he isn’t in agreement with. And from what I’ve heard from the tribe’s ‘chief’, they mean no harm. They’d like to advance as a species, as Florans, to a societal norm. When Ma told me about Florans she very much glossed over their potential to be social creatures. To advance. Like Mud having opened its nonexistent borders, the Floran tribe is advancing and placing its nonviolent tribe on a nonviolent planet. A part of me wants it to work, but like a constant motherly reminder, the other part of me knows it will only end in either tragedy or tragedy plus bloodshed. Do I want either? No. But in the slim possibility that neither of those are the outcome I hope. Anyhow, I very much feel a ringing in my ears lately. Dazed, confused, a disoriented bird in a storm overseas. How will anybody be able to forgive me for all the choices to Mud I’ve made lately? Same way I forgave Sparrow. It was a long day. It had been a long day. I was twenty, still a farmer at the time, sitting boredly with my friends Amoch and Tlaloc on my roof watching stars interestedly. Ma was beneath us outside and cooking something on an open firepit because there wasn’t rain and wasn’t rain for a while afterward, the rest of the night. I had convinced Amoch and Tlaloc to both spend the night there just watching stars, but obviously not much happened for the longest time. Amoch is a farmer still-- he owns a lot of farms and manages them, he’s much more stern than me. Tlaloc was a guard, he wore the staff around his back clumsily and awkwardly so he could be flat on his back in order to look straight up. Amoch didn’t protest after we had sat there for awhile but Tlaloc did, so he stood, started to brush himself off, Ma looked up and laughed because he was impatient. He was nearly twenty himself, Amoch eighteen-- at younger age, we were the rowdiest most obnoxious sort of friends and loved it. Then when Ma looked up it was all three of us, me, Amoch and her, that noticed the shooting star. I pointed at it and exclaimed. Amoch agreed, fascinated. Then Ma laughed again and said, that’s no shooting star, that’s a ship. We ran over toward the crash site by a dojo east of town, near one of the bridges. As we were running Tlaloc took out his staff. He notified another guard in the barracks to come with, who armed herself, and then the five of us set out. Ma was still pretty old by then-- but even her meager, time-tarnished form could still manage a steady pace with us, a concerned look on her face and a sealed beak as she waited for more information. Don’t know if I’d written it down before but her full name was Maffei Waterdipper, she was from Avos, and she was perhaps the greatest most wise and intelligent person I have ever met, excluding a few abnormalities that may have cropped up in the outside universe since. When we got to the site it was still steaming with wreckage of all sorts, but there was no flame because the wet mud had extinguished it. Immediately Ma said, “This is a suicide pod, Ernal. It has no thrusters or computers. Somebody sent this to blow up here. Maybe with them inside.” I said, “Why?” Just then Tlaloc, curious and anxious Avian as he was, prodded the surface of one piece of remaining metal with his staff to investigate. Then he noticed a brown-feathered bird inside with a very large gash taken out of his left side where a piece of steel had taken a hunk of flesh with it as he collided into the planet. He was asleep. Tlaloc prodded again which made a noise. He turned around and said to Ma, “The one inside is... he’s dead, Maffei. I’m sorry. An Avian.” “I suppose he got what he wanted, then,” she responded. Amoch shifted uncomfortably to one side. He’s not the sort who likes talking about death. Him and I lost contact over a period of time but he never lost contact with Ma. When she died he didn’t show up for her funeral, just hid in his house for thirty days and thirty nights until he emerged, silent, and with a harp in his hands that he had crafted out of scrap wood and sinew. He was very good at playing. But that’s a story for another time. In the moment he was simply uncomfortable. I was staring intently. I noticed an unsureness in Tlaloc’s voice, so me and the other guard, I think her name was Zchitli-something, forty five, approached to get our own look. She kept her staff in hand and didn’t prod. “Ma, he’s not dead. Still breathing. Just real quiet. T, come look,” I said. Tlaloc opted not to look. He bashed the piece of metal with his staff again to try and wake the outsider up. It didn’t work that time. “Maybe... Amoch, you could get someone from the clinic?” Ma said, “Yes, Amoch, go get somebody from the clinic. If my son’s right then this is a historic moment. I’d like very much to hear where he’s been.” Amoch nodded nervously and set off quickly. Tlaloc bashed the metal again, and everyone watched as the brown-feathered bird in his mangled cockpit shot awake, broke from his seatbelt like a rabid animal, a three-inch piece of metal lodged in his bloody hand, and tackled Tlaloc. He was screaming and in tears. He thought he was dead. He knew instantly that Tlaloc, the bird underneath him, was Grounded, because he had a peculiar look about him that anyone nowadays can recognize. He thought Tlaloc was trying to kill him, so the outsider took his three-inch piece of metal on the struggling twenty-two year old bird and sliced open his neck. Zchitli-something whacked him hard in the sternum with her staff, so hard he had no wind in his stomach and fell to the side in a heap, but it was too late. She kept him down with her staff as I knelt, screeching Tlaloc’s name and grasping his hand, and trying desperately to wrap something around his neck, but it was far too late. Then when that was over I yelled that Zchitli-something should kill the outsider, that it wasn’t fair, and Ma stood and watched, helpless in her frail body, thinking, thinking, thinking. It reminded her of home. Amoch kept running and got a doctor for both Tlaloc and Sparrow. Tlaloc died. Sparrow lived. I was so angry that day, so unbelievably angry and in a pit of sorrow and frustration that I couldn’t dream of escaping. Now that I think about it in such light, these days are far less worrying. They’re so much more lonely, but back then I was losing friends and family often. Ma stopped me from going forth and attacking Sparrow myself in that moment; I’m a weakling now but I was doing farmwork back then and had at least the strength to wedge a rock in somebody’s face, especially somebody who I hated so much. She stopped me and I can’t remember how, but it must’ve been a miracle. Amoch came with a doctor who winced; everyone knew Tlaloc and everyone loved him, so his death was almost felt planet-wide like Ma’s was, so the doctor winced. Then a tearful yet firm Zchitli-something tied up the rabid, crying, fearful, guilty and mutilated Sparrow with a very thick rope, his hands and talons, and as he began trying to peck at her with his sharp beak she gagged him too, all the while the doctor rolled up bandages and wrapped them around his gaping wound, saying things in another language, he might live, he might live... and I was there, curled up in Ma’s arms as she kept me from bashing his head in with a rock. Then they took Sparrow to a room in the clinic, and then somebody took Tlaloc’s body to be buried by the guard in front of everyone who dared to come. I didn’t go. I went along to the clinic, and so did a shellshocked, terrified Amoch and my wise Ma who had already seen the likes of this and worse but never on Mud, her peaceful wonderful planet which I have ruined. “You came here to die,” she said to the drugged-up, tied-up, upside-down Sparrow. “You failed. What confuses me is why you would commit murder as soon as you land.” “I thought he was... trying to kill me,” Sparrow muttered. Ma said firmly, “It is impossible to kill another Avian with those staffs you were whacked with.” I blurted out, “YOU’RE A KILLER! YOU SHOULD BE HUNG! I’LL HANG YOU!” She turned around and gave me a look that made me shut up. Amoch grabbed my arm and nodded in agreement, but nobody saw it except me because Ma was already back to facing Sparrow. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. This time it was slow. Slow, tired, scared. He was exasperated and crying. “There has not been an outsider on this planet in twenty years,” she responded. “I don’t have a clue what to do with you. I wouldn’t have a clue even if you weren’t a criminal.” The word hung in the air for a second. Sparrow needed to process. He said very weakly in a voice down a tunnel, “I am Sparrow Linnaeus. My family name used to mean a lot on Avos until recently. I’m from Avos. I am a sinner and a killer, and I’m sorry about... this. All of this. I was meant to die, you’re right. Please don’t let me live any longer. I am a sinner. I deserve Kluex’s harshest judgements.” Without skipping a beat, Ma replied, “Which you will not receive here. You’re far from home and far from the Flightless. If I kill you, or let anybody else do it, including my son, I will have given you what you wanted. You have killed an Avian of this settlement, a friend, and I do not yet see any reason to give you things for free. Maybe you’d prefer this talk over tea. It might reduce the pain you’re feeling, right now.” Perhaps if it is somebody else reading this journal who has never met Ma because she is dead, you may have a better grasp on the sort of person she was. Not advocating in her defense specifically-- I am obviously biased, and she obviously has flaws. But somehow in recent years she has very much convinced me. She drank tea with Sparrow who did not speak again for a week, she visited every day. She spoke to the people of Mud and said he would be punished, and kept said punishment very vague as she was still figuring that out. Over time the meager and thin brown-feathered Avian grew back into a state of moderate health, his eyes always drawn downward with shame and pain. I refused to speak with him on any neutral terms, but Ma with her calm blue eyes and muddy-green feathers was always there. “I am not one of the faith, and it has been a while. Perhaps all that work you took to appease Kluex was for nought.” “It was,” Sparrow muttered. “I realized that crusading around the frontier to ‘spread the light’ was the worst possible thing I could do. I realized it was nothing more than murder, treachery, stupidity, brutality... I went home to profess to the High Priests, to my family, to begin to repent, to figure out what I had done wrong. But when I returned to Avos they had all thrown themselves off a tower and were finally in the Aether. I realized I could never go there. I realized I could never repent, so I took a pod and threw myself into the next planet on my de-facto ‘crusade list’.” Ma waited for a solid few minutes without a sound. Then, she said, “You can repent on Mud, if that is what you want.” “You’re Grounded. Exiles and runaways from Avian society. You... can’t /count/. Kluex wouldn’t accept it, would never forgive me.” “Perhaps not. But maybe somebody will forgive you here for what you’ve done. Maybe you’ll forgive yourself. And don’t forget-- you are, at the very least, a runaway.” He cracked a little weak grin with his cheeks. So I think his mission all along was to find forgiveness-- repentance at the least. And as I’ve written before he is my most trusted friend. At least he likely is, besides some outsiders and outliers in certain times of distress. It has taken a decade, but I forgave him for every single thing, whether he was confiding in me or Ma. I am making mistakes, present tense. Causing problems on Mud. Ruining Ma’s work. Likely a drain on the people around me. I don’t know if I can be forgiven by anybody who lives here, and I certainly will have trouble forgiving myself. But I know that stranger has happened. Akh. It’s a long night. I’ve written too much. The story could have been summed up so much shorter, but I suppose I came into a mood and wanted to recall as many details as possible. I think I’ve spent too much time recently as a recluse-- stuck in my office trying to sort out the web of complaints from natives that have arisen as a result of the shooting. Soon, by the weekend, I’ll be free to do as I prefer, and get my heart broken by people who know better. Ha. I’ll be free to go meet Kahlua, talk about things. Dreading it. At least tonight’s ramblings were sane-- will likely be a trainwreck afterward, and can finally get back to that unreadable, terrible sort of writing. The sort that has me thinking about red all night, and red, and red... The sort that I read later and admire, if only at how terrifyingly bad it seems and feels. I feel okay right now. I feel very little. Might prefer heartbreak if I don’t feel so clean, so empty... like I have wiped the slate clean, so truly and literally. Missing the feeling of having something to cling to. Tomorrow this cabin fever ends. Tomorrow.
Short quick one. I'm a moron. I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up at all about Kahlua, and by doing so I've ruined what was... a good friendship. So that's two down. Don't think I'm meant for 'love' anyway, not good at it apparently. Think I'll stick to ruining Mud. Yeah, that sounds good. Not tired but going to head to bed. Close my eyes and wait wait wait for it to go away. eheh.
There’s a certain weak, mulling unhappiness I’ve been feeling lately, and I don’t know how best to describe it. Eventually I’ve whittled it down into ‘acceptance’. That’s as close a description as I can get. Acceptance that Mud is being driven into the ground, and the best I can do is try to wrench it out or hold it for a few moments longer with measures that are still, STILL contrary to what Ma would have wanted, still too far to justify. Sure, I may be banning Florans, soon-- my plan is to require them to take a test to enter. One which ensures they’re not ‘feral’ or ‘tribal’. On one hand, my naive self hates it-- because it is racist, xenophobic, like Mud used to be and like I want to change. But I know it’s better than the alternative. I have accepted by now that Florans are, in all likelihood, not able to be trusted. Even the ones I know. Even the ones I trust cannot be trusted. I met a Floran yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. Not great with Florans, myself, I don’t understand even the most basic facets of their culture or the way they behave. But keeping them off of Mud and keeping the people of Mud safe from them has suddenly become paramount. So I have accepted that I am cynical in that respect. What’s next? Already my optimism for the outside world that Ma wanted to quell is falling fast. I don’t know who to latch onto. Friends with a great number of people. Yet I can’t hold onto any of them, and as I try, I’m turned away. I send a message to Kahlua-- purely want to talk to him, to have somebody or something, but I realize the way he’s typing and the way he’s talking to me that I am an exceptional burden and he is an incredible bird for putting up with it. And then I think about all the time we’ve spent together, and my heart snaps in half. I have a heart attack. I’m in my office having a panic attack because the military from off-world is shooting Florans from off-world and, ah ah ah, welcome to Mud. It’s acceptance, at this point. I don’t sit on a rock as a siren and wail because I’m lonely. I’m so, so lonely, every single hour of every single days except those rare moments where something is /genuine/ for once. But I don’t sit and I can’t talk about it in definite terms anymore. I can’t be mad at anyone, I can’t be mad at Kahlua for grabbing while I was vulnerable, or leading me on and then cutting me off, or giving me the night of my life and throwing it away once morning came, or treating me like garbage for being confused, or any of the things he’s ‘done’, because he’s just doing what’s right for him and the people /he/ cares about... I just sit here and write journals that nobody is reading except me occasionally, then the next day my blood boils and I wait for something terrible to happen so I can mount an attack against it. If nobody’s reading these I suppose I can voice all I want. Omega is a fraud, a liar, a lazy evil prick whose shop should burn down and whose company should bankrupt. At the same time, that's my anger-fueled opinion based on few facts and I am in the wrong for banning him from Mud. ‘Caroline’ is an eery, creepy thing which has a fascination for me and I can’t will it in me to reciprocate because she’s a /she/ and a human, to the best of her ability. Just another thing to be guilty about. Somebody who genuinely wants the kind of love I want and I can’t, biologically, fulfill. Not an Avian, not a man, and too soon after Kahlua. So it goes. The Flightless range from absolutely relatable to radical and stupid. There are more of them now, which is somehow surprising, despite their statistical majority. I’m sure very few of them feel welcome on Mud, and yet they come. It’s from Cempazuchititl (?) and Noxipac that I was really, truly led into believing that I should bar certain Florans from the colony. I voiced that Cempa reminds me of Ma. They’re both very cautious, righteous people. They know where warning signs lead, and Florans are a warning sign. New arrival, Alex, installed a shop to repair androids on one of Mud’s bridges. I was adamant that it was fine, and just hours ago Sparrow barges into my house ranting about how it’s a step too far, that it’s interrupting and ruining the quality of community found on that bridge. He’s ranted to me about the new Floran menace, the horrible policy at the gate (which I’ve tried to fix), the TQRF... he’s ranted to me about every damn thing. As with Amoch, I don’t think he much cares for me anymore, despite how much I vouch for him. There’s nothing I can do that would please everyone. I could close Mud. That would be the only measure that would please everyone. And yet it’s too late. The coordinates are out there. People already live here, outsiders are already becoming natives. I’ve thought about leaving, too. I could give command to somebody I trust, but it couldn’t be Sparrow, he’s not a leader and he’s much too cynical, impulsive yet indecisive. It couldn’t be Amoch, that Avian who’s so unfamiliar with the outside world, who hides in his room at sign of strife. I could hold an election between natives, but I can’t trust whatsoever that my replacement will see the truth to outsiders, that people like Volare and Kuro and Kahlua and Francisco and Alex and Karo and Sarah and all the many, many others who I forget the names for are GOOD, that they might just like this place, and I don’t want to yank a good thing away from them like I’ve had so many good moments and good times yanked away from me recently. I want people to be happy, and I know the feeling, and I can’t give that to them. Used to be good days when I marked in my journal the names of instruments and tried to figure out how each one fit somebody I had met. It was like a game, that thing I was doing over a month ago. Don’t know enough people very well to give a good answer-- too busy cooped up in my office to meet anyone. Maybe this feeling is apathy. I can’t get the energy to head out the door. I had tea with Kuro today in his well-furnished ship and it was very pleasant when we weren’t talking about current events. Think him and Fran are two people I can trust to be completely impartial when talking to them... now that I’ve made things so strange with the two bird guards it’s like I am an alien talking to alien guards. The tea took me somewhere else, like a psychoactive drug. Like I was being taken in a ship, ship revs up, takes me to a place where Florans are burning and Clark is bleeding, down the pavement, hand grasped around a /knife/ and a /gun/ he’s /not supposed to have/, and I look at his bloody corpse, and all I see is the infinite swirling pit that is the outside universe, so harsh and unfeeling like I am unfeeling and miserable and lonely, and I see faces, and I see red, and red, and red, and red, and
and hit in the forehead and deafened by screams and stricken with confusion and pained, and cold, stabbed twenty times, beaten up, skull smashed, shot in the side, tased in the heart, brainless, manic, and stupid enough to think I could handle it, and muted by rage, and blinded by sight. The ringing in my ears from yesterday has persisted; it wasn’t a gun that went off near my ear holes but screams from every corner of a ship. No, a single scream. One guttural loudness that blew up my head and left me deaf, dumb, blind, so literally, and scared most of all. I should not have gone with them to that ship but I did. I went with Sunny and Volare to a ship emitting a distress call, and it was empty but for a crazy vent-crawling voice and the scream, Kluex, the scream, it’s the only sound I can remember from when I could still hear. I cannot hear anymore, not but the faint faded mumbles of wilderness outside. Volare’s voice is a muffled aberration of a thing. I’m unsure if sound will ever come back. I’m unsure if, in the future, I’ll be able to sit in the tavern or outside the tavern and hear that music, that oh-so beautiful music, chaotic and random and clashing and lovely and joining and beautiful all at once, I don’t know if I’ll ever hear it again. My deafness is terrifying me in writing, or perhaps that’s what it seems like, but oddly sitting here with Volare I am calm. I know words won’t function, so we don’t talk, don’t communicate-- there’s no use and no worry, no alarms and no surprises. There’s no room for me to fail and mess up. I can speak, technically, but only a few words at a time because I know longer things require a response; he cannot give a response, he can only BE there. His feathers are warm like heat, like a hearth as he’s named for. If he needs me to leave I’ll leave, and Mud needs me enough that it would be a good idea regardless. But after everything that happened yesterday, the ship and the scream and a lava lamp he grabbed as ‘souvenir’, I needed him. I’ve never needed and loved somebody so much before. I tried something with a Hylotl in the days before but that Hylotl, Yuuto-- he only wanted sex, short-term satisfaction, an unstable manic-depressive fish who wanted me for no reason other than his own lust, as far as I can tell. It might just have been a two-day thing and if it means I’m alone then that’s better than the alternative. I have Volare who I care about loads more than I do about that fish. I have Volare. I have him, right this second. No idea for how long-- after I go in about ten minutes, him and I might just separate. He’s outlined clearly what he wants and I have outlined clearly what I want. Such simple guidelines make it easy for even a simpleton to make a choice. Separate yourselves from each other. But I resist for now. I miss the times when I could spend hours and hours with Kuro, because chats with him are always so-- eye-opening, informative, he’s not going to blow up at me and I know I won’t blow up at him. I try to talk to Kahlua sometimes because he’s good at that, too, but lately he’s been so troubled and so injured (stabbed, shot at, hit in the head, kick in the head, tortured by lovers and parents) that I haven’t been able to get at him. He slips away and I can’t will up the energy to help him back. I offer to give him comfort and warmth because I am a sad bird that he asked to sleep with one time, but now my voice is crass and unheard. I want Kuro to swoop in like he always does, wielding strength I didn’t know he had, in mediation, in willpower, in wisdom. No use with anything, myself. Wonder how much better Mud would be doing if I wasn’t leading it. I’m not capable of holding a gun, not able to close wounds and extract bullets... the only thing I can do is mediate and stand up against those who trouble Mud, a list which is getting bigger and more unmanageable every day. To avoid the Hylotl I went to Hope Springs to spend a day there, where Volare and I talked, for so long, then Sunny came, and Sunny and Volare and I talked, and quickly we were whisked away to a derelict ship to hear-- the scream. But before that and after that I was just on Hope Springs, useless, deaf, dumb, blind. Doing nothing for Mud. Telling people who needed me... telling them to buzz off already, /please/. I give more people jobs. I give more people homes. I am made a member of the Rabbits and have a pendant to go with that fact, now. And yet there’s not a single group- TQRF, Mud, Rabbits- that I can help whatsoever. Those two men on Mud, one had a DAUGHTER here on Mud. He wanted to visit. But he stabbed Kahlua half to death, so I had to punish him somehow; I go to talk to them like I used to do on Mud with every other kind of troublemaker, but they escape for a moment, Fran nearly gets killed by a third man, then Sparrow and Kuro and Brit track all three criminals down and exile them forever all before I get a chance to breathe. It’s fine. I just feel powerless. All I can do is shout, “Don’t hit the head!” As with many things shouted, they are lost on deaf ears. My deaf ears. I hit the head. I hit the end. I jump off the edge. The people around me, I can’t describe them as music, as instruments, can’t hear what they’re saying or what they mean. Volare strums his guitar as loud as he can, breaking every string, tearing every string, but it makes no sound. On here, on Hope Springs, I am finally warm. But... It’s warm with him and I’ve got a lot of fears. Maybe they’ll keep writing themselves down on the paper if I stay much longer, so I shouldn’t. I should go home.
Shame. I've never made a decision so based on pent up frustration before. Had warnings but kept pushing, and made a mistake. I've since slipped away and plan to clear it up later in the day, but-- I'm angry at myself for being so... stupid. Ringing in my ears has clogged up cognitive thinking, I reckon.
Alright-- time to stop being lead on. The truth is, as much as Kahlua and Volare have danced around the issue, neither one of them is homosexual or bisexual-- neither one want me at all. I’ve flip-flopped for weeks over which one I actually feel for, but it seems that both are misguided. So I’ll drop it. I’ll drop the issue. I’ll stop being in love, because I don’t deserve it-- and probably wouldn’t succeed at it in the first place. I doubt I’ll even try with anyone else, and that’s for the best. I’ll just sit here and be miserable about the two of them, and then move on. And then move on. And then MOVE ON. I can hear again. The ringing in my ears has gone away just enough so that I can hear voices again... like down a tunnel... like on the other side of a planet... Mud has had immense influx as of late. I don’t know what to say-- here’s some associated notes about them... Name: Karo Job: Guard/doctor House: No Name: Akoris Suncaller Job: Farmer House: Yes (undetermined) Name: Yuri Federoff Job: Farmer House: Yes (4A) Name: Rainsinger Chota Job: Architect/overseer House: Yes (4B) Name: Caroline House: Yes (3C) Name: Ruslav Marko Job: Electrician House: Yes (2C) Name: Xocho Job: Gardener House: Yes (4C) Name: Makali Nuhveyessair Wuvalkeri Job: Dentist? House: Yes Name: Esa Black-petal Job: Smithy House: Yes And a picture of Ma, painted by an artist named Inaros. I found this recently. I haven’t been able to get a high-quality sketch of her until lately-- this is a really accurate representation, I think. Except for her slump. Last year she was really hunchbacked. Back problems, you know. Had to have a cane everywhere she went. Spindly. All sorts of sickly, sometimes, but she NEVER let it detract from how powerful she always seemed. Xocho is... terrifying, sometimes. A tall metal Avian (?) whose voice is vocoded and whose very movements sometimes intimidate. But I think she genuinely wants to be good for people and for herself. Wants a quiet life-- simple, no alarms, no surprises. Despite-- problems, including burning her house down and getting her eye shot out, I think she can get there with time. She’s the new gardener for the bridge, as I wrote. I told Kahlua I was afraid I was... stagnating. The rush has sort of slowed down, or at least-- if the rush hasn’t slowed down, I certainly have. I can barely keep up with all that’s going on. The chaos on the frontier is too much to think about. It feels everyday, now. All my friends are outsiders. Me and Sparrow are strangers, me and Amoch are strangers, it’s like Ma is glaring at me for all the mistakes I’ve made-- and she’s probably glaring at me for being gay, too, for denying her kids, know that’s one of the things she wanted most. No idea what I’m supposed to do or where I’m supposed to be going. I miss the days when I had a book in my hand and I was always trying to learn... I’ve tried to start to mend this with the addition of Tlihuic. Very nice man. Troubled. Crippled. He wants a purpose-- a place to fit in, be at home. Mud was that for him, until Jaycee. Now I’ve offered him a job to work beside me in my office, help me with things, teach me what he knows, maybe. The whole thing with Jaycee, well... She slept with Tlihuic, Kahlua, Lovepeck, and Necapan, just to name everyone I’m /sure/ she was with. The latter two are Kahlua’s parents-- it’s truly one of the most messed up things I’ve heard about in a long time. She’s thoroughly hurt Tlihuic and Kahlua’s psyche, and discredited herself by my standard. I wanted to help her at first, with Kahlua, but she-- she loves his parents more than him. And that’s the worst part of all. How could one person mess up so much? She killed the eggs inside of her and lied to Tlihuic to tell him that they were his? HOW CAN ONE PERSON MESS UP SO MUCH? But that’s past now, I suppose. Kahlua’s left Mud and Hope Springs and just now after spilling my guts to him I’m sure he’s left his phone, too, doesn’t want a shred of contact with me. Which is fine. I’m sure I’m a pain to deal with. Now I know all those nights he spent with me weren’t anything real, they weren’t ‘love’, he just pitied me. Damn it-- I’m such a fool. He was there when I was vulnerable and always said he ‘loved’ me, but to him that was just... he just... he’s just a friend! And how’s that going to lead into anything else?! If you screw me, how’s that going to MEAN anything, what, Ernal-- are you CRAZY for thinking it’s anything more!? You joke about us being married? You kid about wanting /NUDE PICTURES/?! What the hell is it that you WANT from all of this pain?! but I can’t ask him, not really. His phone’s off. And I care about him too much to be mad-- never was any good at being mad or lying. So I sit here as a very pained pathetic bird who loved two men that didn’t love him for a single minute. Not all along. Not over these two months did they ever have a shred of care about him besides needing him to give them some warm feathers late at night. I’m an annoyance, a pathetic wart, a stagnant useless selfless empty dumb bird who’s seen red and never stops loving that red color, those red feathers. I have nightmares of that fight, that spar. Volare kills Kahlua. Kahlua kills Volare. Who am I rooting for now? I never was rooting for anyone before but now like a sick and twisted animal I’m begging for blood, because I’m so frustrated, so terribly messed. Valiantly, trickling tears down my cheeks. Ship revs up but I can’t go anywhere until I sign up another twenty people to my pity parade, and sign up another twenty people to be Mud residents. Work a job. Live a calm life. A simple life... Stagnate. Hold still. Die. Live, die, have kids (said Ma, can’t deliver) hold still die hold still die Stagnate. Don’t go anywhere. Just don’t leave. Please just don’t leave. don’t leave.
Red shimmer A nice sunrise. Another nice memory way too far gone. Things have vaguely gotten better over the past few days. I can see the sun rising-- better days. Met Tino, some bird doctor who needs a home and a job, gave both. Met a Novakid without a name or origin, or anything particularly distinguishing besides a brand of a star. I gave Skarti and Chota joint privilege over a ceremonial dagger-- for all of Chota’s harsh criticism and Skarti’s crassness, they are Flightless with, I think, no bad intentions, and I doubt they’d hurt anyone anytime soon. Yury the farmer is doing alright, and wants me to give him more complicated tools, better ones-- ‘laser scythe’, I think he said. ‘Weed whacker’, ‘combine harvester’, all these terms I’d only heard on Starnet before, come to life. How can I change Mud so much? It’s daunting. But it’s the reason I opened us up in the first place. Suppose I’ll just have to learn and come to terms with it all, with time. Omega has a crown. Worries me. It’s like something out of a fantasy book. Don’t want to get touched. Don’t want to get hurt. Kuro is going to teach me to defend myself. Not attack, but defend. I’m a pacifist and will never hurt a single person, know that much-- but if I need to, I want to be able to take a hit or two. Or twenty. Like Sparrow. Caroline needs me but I’m not there for her. Needs me but I’m gone, distant. She has Francisco instead. (Everyone has moved on but me.) Hiked up a mountain. Slept with Volare. Just slept. Except didn’t sleep. Instead of sleeping I had The Nightmare. Distant with Kahlua. Yelled at him. We don't ever talk again. Don't call him 'K' again. He hurt me so he 'deserves' it. Maybe. Jaycee has been having nightmares when she tries to sleep. She’s so miserable. I want to help her. She needs me and I’m there for her as a friend, as somebody to be with at night so that we don’t have nightmares. She didn’t need it last night. So I had The Nightmare. Woke up and she didn’t have her Nightmare. She was fine. (Everyone has moved on but me.) (Everyone is getting past their troubles.) Hope Springs doesn’t help Volare doesn’t help Nothing helps I have a nightmare. The Nightmare. Volare is twisted amalgamation of limbs, next to Kahlua dead on the floor, pool of red from his cracked skull. Volare turns his head to face me and (The Scream) comes out of his split-open beak. The scream from the ship. Ears ringing... Every night, it gets worse Nothing helps (The Scream), and my ears are ringing. The ringing isn’t going to fade any more-- it’s stopped fading. I can hear people but it’s still so loud, it overpowers my mind, I can’t sleep, I can’t breathe, I can’t think He turns his head to face me and the scream comes out of his split-open beak, snapping open his head until there’s Only Nothing Inside. Kahlua bleeds, Volare scrambles along the floor like a spider. I (scream). I want to wake up. But I can’t. The walls close in and laugh and scream and Know. Every night every night it gets worse louder, quieter, longer dream, he gets to the wall, climbing up the walls out the window I wake up trying to sleep sunrise. It’s not nice out the window. It’s trapped out the window. Ship revs up and flies me into the sun. If only, if only, if only. Every night the sun turns off and red and red and
Mud burns Distance is a weapon to get away from what’s really going on. Might be feeling awful (very awful) but I ignore it. Mud burns. Mud burns. Mud burns. I am hopeful that things will end up alright even though I’m ruining things with all my friends. Volare is a beautiful red flower Kahlua is a great tall tree trunk drained of leaves I want to write about Mud because I think Mud is what this is all really about. Mud is the most diverse place I’ve seen in the frontier, even though we’ve only got Avians and the architecture is mostly the same throughout. With fifteen-hundred residents there’s a lot to find. I loved Tlaloc and Sparrow killed him. I hear the parentsong over the hill, two birds chirping loudly so that everyone around can hear them in love, lovebirds, hugging and holding and buried within each other’s feathers. Little tweety birds in their nests in the trees, tall white lines of birch among multicolor leaves of - Autumn Winter Fall Summer Spring Silence - the tall white lines leading up to the sky, among the clay buildings of Mud and lanterns at night where the red shimmer is gone, floating red crystal-lights, priceless, beautiful lights on a bridge when all other light has killed itself dead. Smoke-shaped blobs under the trees which morph and suit their needs according to the songbirds. They chirp. They open their mouths wide. Their smoky mouths of teeth and roars on the muddy watery ground, staring up at the canopy. ‘Feed us, Ma! Maffei Waterdipper, feed us!’ Born from the earth where nobody knows their names and they can pass off as children of the songbirds, like gray morphing masses that don’t deserve Mud and don’t deserve Mud and don’t deserve Mud. Whimper little worms, I am helpless to stop them, crushed by the boots of the green-feathered idiot above them, stomp stomp stomp, squash squash squash. Fifteen-hundred, multicolored, squash squash squash, stare at Stomp Stomp Stomp. Squawking brown-feathers calling for filament reed, filament reed, filament reed, filament reed. A place where we can grow. A place where we can go. Mud soil grows any crop, even that which is Artificial and Synthetic and Fake. I wake up the butcher (Omega) and he screams, and I drown him in his own spit, him in his own spit Kuro is a dutiful resilient weed Tino is a delicate temporary blossom Francisco is ever-growing ivy Jaycee is a water-dipping azure Caroline is a wilting trying sapling M’kali is a colorful beady berry bush Xocho is a warm calm thorny rose Yuuto is an enticing inviting bloom Parentsong above all other noises of Mud, against the fires lit in houses and faces of Avians singing and dancing to music, music which is the foundation for all of Mud, parents singing, chirp, screwnut built nest in the rubber trees that dispense rubber and chemistry and alchemy against the mud, turning it all purple. Along the ground thin-white-timber that screeches out silently in protest. I walk barefoot against the mud and see my old friends and my old family and my old home torn to pieces. and Mud Burns, and Mud Burns. I have The Nightmare again. I feel myself trapped in a big cage with anywhere-to-go-but-here. I can’t leave Mud. I can’t run away. I can’t go soul-searching. Where is Volare? I miss Volare and Kahlua and Fran and Kuro and the days in which everything-was-alright. Why did I open Mud? What happened to the days I wrote earlier in this journal in which I was such good friends with these people? Why am I never their friend anymore? Burn the photographs. Burn whatever there used to be. Burn Mud and let the phoenix rise from its ash. A bridge on fire. Sparrow dies. Sparrow is a venus flytrap Amoch is a terrified shaky sunflower Tlaloc was a strong caring poppy Maffei was an everlasting lotus Sparrow dies. Smokestack fire burns the fuel within, mulling up the earth. Whimper of the worms. Hold me. Filament reed. Filament reed. Filament reed. Filament reed. A place where we can grow. A place where we can go. Kuro teaches me how to sleep again Kahlua teaches me how to hate him M’kali fixes my weathered beak that Tlaloc used to laugh about, now the thing that was part of him is gone forever I just want to move on. I just want to think about Mud. So many people. Such good people. What have I done to them? What have I tricked them into thinking? Please, Ma. Mud burns. Mud burns. Mud burns. I feel a burning misery inside me. it's easier to act like I'm not here and This Isn't Happening The flower, the tree, the weed, the blossom, the ivy, the azure, the sapling, the bush, the rose, the bloom, the flytrap, the sunflower, the poppy, the lotus What kind of horrible erratic music is this? What kind of beautiful parentsong am I hearing?
It distracts, it distracts me, it distracts, it distracts me, it distracts Worry What Kahlua sung for me today: My love for you is pure and true, you say it’s a lie and it breaks my heart. Just let me sing this verse for you, and let me do my part... to prove that it’s real, my dearest greenbean in your heart, can’t you feel that what we had was love? Pure, unadulterated love? Either he is so cruel to change his mind and lie again that he loves me, or he does not mean ‘love’ in the sense I have always seen it. His voice brought me to tears, it was so beautiful, I had no idea he could serenade with such grace. He became a light that illuminated every negative thought, a light that shone over the horizon bright and white, pure, pure like I know Kahlua is pure. And it was as headstrong and stupid for him to sing as so many things he does-- it was so provocative, and it launched me straight into those stupid thoughts of, ‘is that love? does this have potential? should I hope for this?’ So immediately I ignored it. I forgot that word, ‘greenbean’, and crossed it out in my transcription. Let me rewrite it as it’s supposed to be, as he should have sung it: My love for you is pure and true, you say it’s a lie and it breaks my heart. Just let me sing this verse for you, and let me do my part... to prove that it’s real, my dearest dove, Jaycee in your heart, can’t you feel that what we had was love? Pure, unadulterated love? The only person he’s ever truly ‘loved’, and the person that would give him something better than I ever could. So I imagine him standing on a rooftop and singing it to his true filament reed instead of me, as it should have been. More likely than any of this speculation is that Kahlua has already sung it to Jaycee, and recycled it to make me feel special just as I was feeling terrible. He is a kind man. I am happy that he’d sing Jaycee’s song for me, too. Volare and Francisco, on vacation. Kahlua has quit. Jaycee is missing/kidnapped/injured. Karo works for the TQRF. I practically have no guards anymore besides Sparrow... and after an incident about Kahlua, Sparrow isn’t speaking to me anymore. Er, and Kuro. Kuro I can trust most. Maybe more than Sparrow nowadays. The two remind me very much of one another. I hope that Kuro spills his guts to me like others have, honest-- he’s got a history almost the size of his body (ha, nowhere close, Kuro is twice my height) and has only let me in on the tip of the iceberg, so far. We have rapport and I feel, despite our differences, we have a lot to talk about-- but I still await that land of complete trust. So I await. I hardly ever speak to- or about- Sarah, but she’s truly another closed book I’d like to open... she’s got more heart than a lot of people in the frontier, and yet she’s got problems aplenty, like alcoholism, like trying to deal with a group of mercenaries most-of-which aren’t 100% reliable... in that way I relate to her. People like Jaycee and Kahua, much as I love them like I love flowers, how could I not be stressed as they miss training or miss guard duty or miss patrol? I gave them more money to pay for a TQRF guard patrolling due to lack of our own guards-- so it goes. It’s not a big price for a little peace of mind. Yet I can only hope that they can all do the job. It’s only a hope, it’s only a hope... Mud grows. Not like a tree grows, with grace-- but it grows like a submerged bird, buried up to his forehead, clawing and choking and suffocating, wrestling his way out with no love and no beauty until he’s along the wet raining ground to clutch onto his lover’s ankle. We gain electricity, we gain hope... bright pure light on the horizon, shining neon lights in a fading city. The ASF has been installing all sorts of things. They need more funding-- I divert as much as I can. What a fascinating group. They have a sort of distaste for Florans that I can both agree with and fear greatly... but they are helping Mud, so I keep them here. In fact, their bunker is working now, I hear. Good for them. Mud needs people like them, no, it doesn’t. the last thing Mud needs is people like them. we have so much culture here already without them meddling with things. i can name thirty books off the top of my head that we’ve written. here, I’ll name some, Kluex I’ll do it. - “Guide to Mud Astronomy - See the Avosian Star-Filled Sky In a New Light” by Prehotep Tickfleet, 2 years after landing on Mud - “Split the Sourfruit” by Tjuya Pluckhome, 3 years after landing on Mud - “The Fire Which Rains” by Semat Sunquill, 5 years after landing on Mud - “Clay Sunbleaching for The Young of Mud” by Meyre Earthgazer, 7 years after landing on Mud - ”The Fire Which Triumphs” by Semat Sunquill, 8 years after landing on Mud - ”An Unbiased History of Mud’s First Decade” by Ibi Frighthymn, 10 years after landing on Mud - ”Flightless Are Grounded, Too” by Raemka Shynre, 13 years after landing on Mud - ”How To Raise Your House On Pilotis” by Meyre Earthgazer, 14 years after landing on Mud - ”The Fire Which Sinks” by Semat Sunquill, 16 years after landing on Mud - ”The Poppy Grove” by Tlaloc Tobaci, only man who ever loved me back, 19 years after landing on Mud (one year before he died, best book I’ve ever read, he was a gifted writer) - ”To Stargaze” by Udjebten Mudbeak, 24 years after landing on Mud - ”Who Was Maffei Waterdipper?” by Wegaf Sauer, 30 years after landing on Mud Walk faster and don’t look back. This all distracts me from the truth. Yuuto is a nice distraction. Tino is a nice distraction. It’s nice to go to the theatres in the center of Mud and watch as native playwrights get their dreams turned into reality, watch as actors play their parts in the most beautiful cinema in the universe. It’s nice to walk through the stalls and buy fresh fruit and see the big smiles on everyone’s faces, all those Grounded who I love and will miss when they burn. When all the books burn. When all this burns. I hope it doesn’t. I listen to the music and play the notes. Improvisational because I am swerving and don’t know where it’s leading me but surely I am being led-- Kluex, maybe? Are you there? I hear Jaycee sing from far-off, and run into a burning building where she’s crying and creasing her feathers against-one-another. M’kali gives me pastries she cooked herself and fixes my beak-- ehe, must be an oxymoron. A dentist baker. Thank you I try and sleep. Don’t have anything good to write about anymore. Don't have anything good anymore.
A favorite of mine-- not a violent book, just a thrilling one On Starnet today I was alerted that it’s a human holiday’s ‘father’s day’. Well, we on Mud have something similar months from now, but it’s for both parents-- don’t see the point in separating the two, especially when the separation of two lovers is already something which I often fear and hate more than anything. However, I figure it’s a good time as any to talk about my father, who I have never met and is likely dead by now. Ma told me the story of him: back on Avos she was a scholar with a sharp tongue (like always) and he was a preacher for Kluex, but not the risen sort of preacher who has a family name and a beautiful crest and honor etc. He was a beggar-sort of preacher in the very poorest area of Avos, where even the glorious sun which shone everywhere refused to bright. He had golden feathers that had grown very faded-- I suppose as a child he must’ve been like a star himself, but now they were a muddy-yellow matching Maffei’s muddy-green. He had a long beak like a hummingbird which he often used to dip into near-stagnant pools of water for moisture, as there was no water to be found elsewhere in that slum; he caught Ma’s eyes as she was walking by, and she commented on his water-dipping with a chuckle, or so the story goes. It was not an immediate sort of relationship the two had; Ma was nearly professing to her Grounded nature, she was so fed up with Avos society that she wanted--needed a change, and anyone who knew her for more than five minutes knew that that was her position. To explain such a thing to a preacher was quite the task for her, but that muddy-yellow bird sat thinly on the ground with a happy expression and listened for a while. He was doubtful of her ability to take some-thousand Avians to a planet far away. In fact, such a thing must be impossible, to him. As he was kicked to the floor by every part of society, still he did not reject Kluex or his teachings or the world around him; he found his religion further and lived to continue His name. It isn’t who I would be or what Ma would ever do, but it was admirable to her and I think admirable to me, too. I’d never considered myself as Grounded as other people-- maybe it’s genetics. Regardless, she visited the next day, and the next, and the next... she gave him a home, because she was that kind sort of person. But even as the ticking clock continued down, as her secret plans to steal a fleet of Avos ships came together, my father did not ever request to leave. He reckoned he could-- and should-- continue water-dipping and foraging for food, living on marble streets under or not-under the sun, his beautiful feathers continuing to mess. I assume it was very hard for Ma, and perhaps in those last couple of weeks they had many-a night together, and in that case it should not have been an immense surprise that, on the long long voyage to planet Mud (1 year almost exactly), she discovered herself with a child. I was born on the ship; it’s a funny fact, because very few people were. Ma wasn’t taking pregnant mothers-- because she doubted they would survive the horrible depths of near-weightlessness and hyperspeed and trauma, but Maffei being Maffei, she did survive, and she survived thirty years more after that, too. It strikes me as interesting-- Tlaloc was born not long before the voyage, and because he spent a lot longer than me weightless, I always assumed HE would be the one stargazing, searching for a way off of Mud to pursue life, but he was the sort who never wanted to leave, same as Amoch. His book was one which described his own parents’ tough decision to leave, as well as a half-fiction and half-true retelling of his early years. It described that half-confidence that we have nowadays-- the way we love our isolation and love for home, yet even his own homesickness for Avos. The title-- The Poppy Grove-- was a fictional thing, for even in Mud’s rolling hills and infinite landscape Tlaloc himself never found a grove full of poppy flowers. However in my tears and anger toward Sparrow, I went out and found one in a single day, just three miles from Mud’s city-center, green and red like it is in my dreams. I carried his now-preserved body and buried it with one shovel (which broke like it did for Ma). It was raining like it usually is, and I cried like I usually do. Sometimes I visit back at the poppy grove when the weather isn’t too great to remind myself that, once, there was something good. Lately I have been substituting it with that picture of me and Volare-- both things hold an intimacy that is both real and fake. I do not expect to hold that red-feathered bird’s talons through the photograph, and I never even hope for Tlaloc to be in the poppy grove when I go back. It is just a reminder, and as with all reminders, often it hurts more than it helps. But like a drug, like opium from a poppy flower, I am forced to go back, out of force of habit. Ah, Ernal. Stop getting such big ideas. I find solace from such big ideas by heading into town and talking politics. I am no good at politicking, in fact, not like Ma was impossibly good, but it isn’t the biggest issue. My term is for life, so long as five out of twelve of the district leaders don’t deem me unsuitable for the job-- which they haven’t yet. It is a flawed system but all systems are flawed, and as Ma searched through the history books of Human, Avian, Hylotl, Apex, Glitch societies and governments, this is the most suitable she could come up with. She saw no point in giving herself an arbitrary time limit-- and I am glad she didn’t, because she made Mud run like clockwork for so long that if she were limited to four or six or eight years we would be half-buried in water, still drowning, still dying. I head into the native districts for solace from these big ideas to make any more changes-- allowing outsiders is big enough, and I’m sure if I do anything in the next thirty years this will remain the only change that is remembered. Recently I went to a civillian-run town hall meeting, as in the town hall you’re perfectly allowed to organize and protest and challenge the government. Temporarily joined a committee of younger birds who wanted to advocate for a new system of schooling for those who are mentally handicapped; it was a noble effort and I don’t believe I’m against it, but their arguments were half-written and would have fallen flat in a court, so I stayed to talk with their (not oldest, but wisest) student leader, age thirteen but head-age twenty. I gave her tips that Ma had given me a long time ago-- I’m sure she would have won in her debate class, or something, after all the tactics I notified her about, and ways to combat them. I left feeling no better or worse-- after all, I try not to take a personal opinion in things, just give tools to people who don’t already have them. I don’t see a harm in giving that student that help, nor would I see harm in giving a different student help, if they were advocating-- for instance-- a way to force me out of leadership. I have trouble having such a personal attachment in politics. If Mud wants me out of leadership, so I will leave. Was thinking lately that I should go to Avos, someday. Grounded aren’t welcome, but I’m sure I could go under the guise of religion, perhaps with help of Chota or Tlihuic or another one of those sympathetic Flightless. I wonder if I’d find my father, or if the slums would have taken him finally, him and his long hummingbird beak and sympathetic eyes. Well, it’s been thirty years. A lot can happen in thirty years. A muddy planet can go from empty to home, from home to city, from city to ruins-- in only thirty years. One wonders what it does to a person, especially one so far away, especially one who must be so alone. Suppose I can only wish him luck now. Luck that the frontier or core sector or wherever-he-is-now is treating him alright, just like it’s treated me like a knife treats a pig’s skin. I am a stuck pig, now-- a ceremonial dagger stuck in my heart. And I am stuck in this big cage which is Mud until further notice. Please come to me, ‘further notice’, please come to me-- let me be free.
Two in winter coats before heading out to a snow. They are grinning with their feathered cheeks. Close examination reveals there's no light in their eyes. It's mostly a fake, or a hopeful lie. Floran. Cold-hearted. Ravenous. Stings like a bee. Spears, swords, knives the size of your fist. Terror in its veins. Horror in its eyes. Born evil until trained otherwise. It must be the sort of species that burns well. Everything that burns in the frontier deserves it. It’s done something wrong-- it’s going to do something wrong. A few hundred Sempervines, it doesn’t matter. They’ll burn, and not a lick of remorse in anyone’s eyes. Floran. Born terrible with its beady little eyes. A venus flytrap. A dead flower. Sparrow, in his early days as Avosian warrior, fought so many Florans. He was the best of his time. In his prime, he could kill hundreds with a spear or something shorter than a spear, a maverick with a blade. His brown feathers, his attitude-- of revenge, of pride, of duty. He needed to. He needed to. Floran, cut in half by steel forged a million miles away. A clot in his veins. A stir in the nest. My protector-- sings a song, so pretty, up in the trees. Sparrow Linnaeus uses a flamethrower to burn a Floran alive because he feels like it. Maybe I’m talking about somebody else-- my addled mind can’t figure it out. I’m not going to sleep tonight, because I gave my sleep remedy (from Kuro) to Jaycee instead. She can’t sleep either. Poor thing. It helps to have people around who care a bit-- I’m missing the hell out of Volare and Fran, but at least there’s M’kali, that scribe Camtick, that scribe Tlihuic... at least there’s Mimi, the new guard, or that Novakid who wants guns on Mud. My breath cold, harsh. Floran. Burn it. Set it aflame. The other day I spoke to Amanita Stem, head of Sempervines. It was a very casual conversation. The next day, Amanita Stem was killed by Kahlua Downsilk using a makeshift flamethrower. This, of course, a natural way of things-- the natural plan. The typical order of operations for a single operation. The TQRF knows better, I’m not a tactician. If it’s right to burn the Florans, damn, it’s right! It had better be! Sarah knows, it’s better to burn them than to give them a lick of a chancer, lest they kidnap another hapless civillian. Let alone the Florans we’re killing, burning-- they’ve not killed a single one of us but we’ll kill dozens, hundreds. My breath stops on an ice planet. Floran. Burn it, smash it. Drown it in a pond the size of your fist. Slice its neck open with a piece of metal two inches long. Tlaloc screeches like a dying animal-- a dead bird in his on-fire nest. Sparrow, in his early days, was so misguided. He has not moved past that. Given a blade, I’m sure he’d kill me, too. How does it change?-- after a day or two without writing a journal entry, things are so floaty. After I write one, they make so much sense. Yet it hardly feels like anything gets written at all. I need to start writing notes for my notes. Ernal’s Notes, these will be, after Mud isn’t here anymore. Wonder what will come next. Probably not much. Mud is fine. Once we BURN THE FLORANS, Mud will be fine. According to everyone-- according to everyone. I am teaching Jaycee chess. I hope she likes it. My senses dull, my readings go haywire... I figure I should write about Skarti, because he’s on my mind, too. Occasionally rude-- er, often, I suppose. Yet like the boy that cried wolf, when he does have something very valuable to say, he is ignored because He Is He, and He Is Skarti. I wish the people of the frontier would cut him slack. He is not uppity for no reason-- Avian artifacts do deserve protection, especially those of a religious nature... and how can I not like him? Him and I are cut from the same cloth, though that cloth must have been woven very strangely and unevenly. We are pacifists-- we both believe that words and peaceful action can have the greatest effect. I hope I can get a school ready for him soon. Him and Kahlua. Perhaps I’ll convert that bathroom into one. Seems the outsiders could just use an outhouse like the rest of us, instead. One step forward, two steps back-- but education is more valuable than anything... like Rodrick, who wants to teach his step-daughter, his Avian step-daughter, how to read Avian glyphs. I believe that’s a noble cause. In the frontier, it’s so easy to lose track of the things that make us people. Education, love, happiness... calm. A night without chaos. Hardly ever does that happen. I do wish I had Volare. He is an anchor. He is a real anchor, not false like Kahlua. I don’t think there’s a way him and I could lose track of each other as friends, and I don’t think that he’s got that... aching impulse, that pride, that murderous tendency. He’s a lover, not a fighter. And I miss that dearly. All I can do now is give happiness to those who need it. M’kali, Tlihuic, Rodrick. I love to spread light among them, because like mirrors they bounce it around. That’s what I live for, maybe. Those little moments. Just the little ones, like that photo up there. It’s a very temporary photo. Ten seconds before, ten seconds later, things are awful. It really is luck that Kahlua snapped the picture before things went to shit again. They usually do... in time. Time doesn’t fix anything, it just makes things slip away. Give a lover enough time, and he’ll never love you again. Give fire enough time, and it’ll die. It burns, it burns, it burns, it burns, and red, it burns, and red, it burns, and red, it burns, it burns and then it dies.
