(A/N: when did I write this!? Like seriously? This version still doesn’t work the way I want it to for this story, but it’s something, I suppose.)

I suppose Vicky has always been my favorite child. A father never really lets go of the love for his firstborn, even if she does end up being the black sheep in the family. She just reminds me so much of her mother, always thinking with her heart first. And like her mother, she never quite took to photography like the other two did. As a child, she suffered through many lessons on camera mechanics and composition and lighting before I finally let it go and moved on to Lewis. But she’s still my favorite child.

I’ve never seen her so at home as she is in the kitchen. I realize this as I watch her calmly flaming a crème brulée behind the counter at her restaurant. This is the first time I’ve made it out to San Francisco since she finished culinary school, but not the first time she’s cooked for me. We had a prime rib roast this past Christmas dinner that was so delicious that Melanie literally started drooling when I mentioned it at New Year’s. Even in our kitchen at home, Vicky looks so at ease—calm, precise, measured. No hint of the sorority girl I worried about while she was in college. I’m not sure what changed, but I suspect it was meeting Nick, then a first year medical student, now her husband. He’s a sensible fellow, just the kind of man you’d like your favorite daughter to marry.

Vicky deftly wipes a drop of raspberry sauce from the clean white border of the dessert plate and slides it onto the counter in front of me. “For your sweet tooth,” she tells me, winking with a hint of sass. I think back to countless midnight ice cream dates in the kitchen at home—plenty of bad grades and secret boyfriends were confessed over a pint of Cherry Garcia. She switched me to sugar-free sorbet when the doctor started worrying about my weight (he tells me to stay off my bad knee then worries when I gain weight, go figure), but we still have our secret meetings in the kitchen at night. There’s less confessing now and more worrying. She worries about the restaurant, about starting a family, and occasionally about Melanie. Watching her move through these stages of life, to see her become the capable adult I knew she would be, sends me back through my own experiences and my own worries when I was her age. It will always be this way, but how much more wisdom do I have left to impart?

I pick up my spoon and crack the caramel top. It looks exactly as delectable as the framed review in the front window—the near cylinder of custard sitting on a crisscross of raspberry and chocolate drizzle with a mint leaf and a raspberry settled artistically in the corner. Maybe those lessons on composition did leave an impression after all. And Nick tells me that Vicky started taking photos of the food for the restaurant’s website. They could have hired someone, but apparently she shrugged, picked up a camera, and poof—just like that, they had excellent photos for the website. What can I say, it’s in her genes. It might’ve taken her a little longer than the other two, but she came around. Even so, I know as I watch her add a dash of seasoning to a pan of mussels that she’d never leave the kitchen. Photography will always be just a hobby for her, never the life it was for me.

The night is cold without you here
The frost has covered the porch
My neighbors ask
Why stand out there?
But I don’t feel the chill
Wrapped up in fleece, plus a hat
Numb toes nestled in the grass

If I had been the howling type
I’d have raised my head and bayed
Baying and singing till the moon fell down
Here in my arms to light your way

That must be why you haven’t been back
I’m not the howling type
(Though if I were, I highly doubt
You’d have liked me much like that)

I searched for you
You know
My dear
I solved the riddles you left behind
And I cleaned the clutter in the attic
Slew the demons that hid our smiles

They’re saying that our rent is due
They’re saying I should go
Perhaps they’re right, I can’t go on living
In this lonely too large for one home

But one day
Some day
I’ll wake up to bacon
And you standing on a kitchen stool
Flailing a dish towel at the smoke detector
And chasing bacon fumes

Or maybe I’ll come home from work
To your keys already on the counter
You whacking the DVD player
Again and again
Until it relinquishes Firefly, disc two

I haven’t moved your things quite yet
(Except those attic ghouls)
Your shoes still where you left them
Your yesterday’s pants crumpled on the floor
I think perhaps you embarked stark naked
Just headed out into the dark

You must be cold
Out there and bare
I hung your coat just by the door
A kettle on the stove each night
Some tea to keep you warm

So come back soon
My sweet
My prayer
The rent’s been paid through March
Come burrow deep inside the bed
So I may find you there

(A/N: Trying to get the dragons out of my head, but I just keep spinning more complexities. And I wasn’t kidding about this dragon world, there’s etiquette and everything. Two scenes, minimal background information — you’ll figure it out.)

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(A/N: based on the story seed “bison stampede” from Seth. I have only the vaguest idea of where this is going.)

“HOLY FUCK.”

I’m on the phone with Tyler, and to say he’s flipping a shit is the understatement of the century.

“FUCK FUCK FUCK HOLY FUCKING SHIT GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”

Nothing I say at this point is particularly important. In fact, I’m not entirely sure why Tyler’s still on the line during this freak out unless it’s just to demonstrate his creative use of the word “fuck” in various grammatical contexts.

I should explain. I should explain, but honestly, I can’t. I don’t have a clue what’s going on at the other end of this phone call. Last I’d heard, Tyler had for some godforsaken reason hopped on a plane to Wyoming, of all places, and no one had any idea why. I understand that Tyler has to get creative with his job title of “Senior Palaverous Correspondent” for that blog conglomerate he writes for these days, but really? Wyoming? What the hell kind of story was he looking for in Wyoming?

But I guess when you think about it, his “get me the fuck out of here” revelation may not be specific to the situation unfolding on his side of this phone conversation; it could just be the fact that he’s in Wyoming came up and slapped him in the face. What’s in Wyoming anyway?

“Elk,” my brother informs me from across the living room when I pose this question out loud.

“Elk?”

“Elk. The Boy Scouts make arches out of the antlers.”

Somehow I don’t think Tyler’s steady stream of “fuck”s has to do with elk antler arches, but I suggest this into the phone anyway. Tyler doesn’t seem to hear.

“OH MY FUCKING GOD THE FUCKERS ARE FUCKING—OH FUCK!”

My best guess now is that the “fuckers” he speaks of are either the elk antler arches or the Wyomingites in his immediate vicinity, but it’s kind of hard to tell. There is some kind of vague pounding noise in the background, which logically should be attributed to Wyomingites as opposed to the likely static and silent elk antler arches—but if the arches were falling apart in a tumble of elk antlers, I could see them making whatever that noise is. In fact, considering Wyomingites have historically been described to me as pleasantly quaint, this certainly throws more weight behind the deteriorating elk antler arch theory.

“OH FUCK FUCK FUCK I’M GOING TO FUCKING DIE.”

“He’s quite liberal with the word, isn’t he?” observes my brother. He’s bending over the back of the couch to listen in on the call, in hopes of helping me identify the background noise. He is, after all, the leading expert on elk and elk antler arches in the room.

“Liberal, creative, same thing,” I say, scratching around a mosquito bite behind my ear.

My brother pulls a sorrowfully contemplative face as he scrutinizes the sound under Tyler’s monologue. “He’s really polluting the soundscape,” says my brother disapprovingly. “But if it is one of those elk antler arches falling over, you should tell him to stand back so he doesn’t get impaled.”

I suggest this to Tyler, who of course ignores me.

“You know, those could be hooves,” my brother says. “Maybe he’s betting on a horse race and he’s losing.”

I remind Tyler of the dangers of gambling, rattling off the names of some people who got in too deep betting on ponies. Admittedly, we wouldn’t even have Lucky Number Slevin if it hadn’t been for unlucky betting, but take the subsequent bloodbath as a cautionary tale.

None of this advice seems to have any effect on Tyler or the running of his mouth, so I glance at my brother, shrug, and hang up. If it’s really that important, I’m sure he’ll call back.

Tonight, before I go to sleep, I will be thinking of dragons. I am twenty-two years old, graduated with a bachelor’s degree (with honors) from an excellent university this past June, spent the bulk of my day working on structural biology research on the protein dynamics of the beta1-adrenergic receptor, and for the last week I’ve been going to bed with visions of dragons.

There’s nothing strictly wrong with this. I’m entitled to draconine thoughts — although admittedly it’s more than thoughts, it’s something more closely resembling “worldweaving,” if you will. Dragons, dragon riders, dragon wars, dragon training, dragon etiquette, dragon politics… I’ve made up a lot of words along the way, too. This is what I used to do all the time — this is what got me into writing. I build worlds out of nothing. I make things up, borrowing shamelessly from the world I know. I turn experiences into story lines; I turn wishful thinking into alternate reality. I stretch my imagination, and sometimes people read what I’ve come up with and say hey, I really like that.

So what is it about growing up that makes me feel like this dragon-filled creation of mine doesn’t belong in my world? Because it’s high fantasy*. It’s something no one ever tells us we’re supposed to have outgrown, but one day I woke up and realized I couldn’t take myself seriously when writing a fantasy (or even science fiction) story. As Seth said the other day when we were discussing this, “I don’t get how Tolkein explained his books before everyone had read them. ‘Okay, so there’s this thing called Sauron, and he hates everything. And makes little mud elves to fight humans. All the humans don’t trust each other. So it’s up to these fat midgets to destroy evil.’” Whose first instinct is to take that seriously?

I’ve learned a lot over the years from fantasy and science fiction. I probably wouldn’t have kept reading after my plateau in reading level around 6th grade if it hadn’t been for A Wrinkle in Time and The Golden Compass. There’s a basic allure to fantasy and scifi, that escape from the world we’re stuck in, which readers like my adolescent self gravitate to. Maybe it stems from a lack of maturity, an inability to see the thrills and struggles of normal life and fiction compared to the epic conflicts that arise in fantasy. And those epic conflicts can (and do) tie themselves into the real world.  I’m not entirely sure which came first, but the life history of Bean in Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Shadow played some part in stoking my love of genetics. Philip Pullman explored some really interesting tensions and fallacies in religious text through His Dark Materials, Roger Zelazny dances around concepts of metaphysics (and relates technology and computer hacking to magic) in The Chronicles of Amber, and Orson Scott Card eloquently lays out some key bioethical issues in Speaker for the Dead and the Bean quartet (just to name some of the many topics these authors prodded with their writing). But who’s going to take you seriously if you write a dissertation on any of these themes?

My best guess as to why this stigma exists is this: in fantasy fiction, there is a fundamental disconnect with reality. That’s practically the definition. And yes, there are plenty of cases of people losing touch with what’s real and taking things too far. (I risk offending some people right now, but hear me out, I have redemption for you.) Cosplayers, fanfiction writers, Harry Potter unofficial online trading card game players, the people who contribute to and update the extremely detailed entries on Wookieepedia — I could go on. However, there’s a difference between productive hobby and unhealthy obsession. Some of the cosplay costumes I’ve seen are really impressive costume-making that perfectly normal people made in their spare time, and plenty of fanfiction writers have spun incredibly inventive, moving stories based on characters that someone else started. The difference is knowing your limits — knowing that okay, there’s a world separate from this fantasy. This goes for anything, really — plenty of us are wrapped up in completely fictional story lines (I’m looking at you, Grey’s Anatomy fans who had serious meltdowns after whatever season finale it was) or waste our time on the strangest things (watching endless animated gifs of cats?). The point is there are plenty of things we do to entertain ourselves that no one else — or at least, a select few — quite understands. But it doesn’t hurt anyone, so why the hell not?

In light of this, I have decided to take this tack: I spent the bulk of my day working on structural biology research on the protein dynamics of the beta1-adrenergic receptor. I’m a high functioning and contributing member of society. So you know what? It’s okay that right now I’m obsessed with dragons.

* It says something about me that I know the distinction between “high” and “low” fantasy. For those who don’t, think of fantasy as a spectrum from our world to a completely made up world:

**LotR is weird because Tolkien has stated that Middle Earth existed sometime in our past, so it falls a little closer to the middle than other high fantasy

Yes, I made you an explanatory diagram. There are nerdier things I could have done.

(A/N: A middle(?) segment to a new short story? See also: Ravenlight)

The last chord of the song faded into applause, the crowd whooping and cheering. Dan glanced back at the band—they really should have put together a set list, but they’d never made a set list before. Why would they start now? Logan caught his eye with a slight jerk of his head in Esther’s direction. Dan raised his eyebrows, as if to ask, Now? Logan nodded.

Dan turned back to the audience, feeling how the whole room had settled after that last song. Not in a bad way—settling was a good sign. It wasn’t the awkward bustle of boredom; it was the lull of contemplation, the aftermath of a good song. He let his guitar swing loose in front of him and flipped the pick over the fingers of his right hand.

“So,” he began, stepping back up to the microphone, “some of you might not know this, but Esther and I go to boarding school together.” He turned to look at her, his mouth still against the microphone—he wanted to watch her expression. “And something I learned about her, that I did not know before, is that this girl can sing.”

He grinned half at her, half at the audience. Esther looked ready to kill. A wide smile was trapped on her face, but her eyes threw daggers at him.

“So we’re going to get Esther up here to sing a little something for you…”

The audience broke into applause as he stepped back from the microphone. A small pocket in the back corner by the counter started cheering her name, but Esther stood still by the bass amplifier, staring at him and laughing softly in disbelief. He nodded his encouragement to her, even unslinging his guitar and holding out his hand for the bass. She shook her head slightly and mouthed, “I’m going to kill you,” before giving up and handing him the bass guitar.

Dan watched as she stepped up to the microphone. She was being the quiet, indie, a little bit fragile girl in the rock cover band, not the girl she’d become at boarding school. He’d forgotten how vulnerable she could be, how soft and gentle compared to the strong, capable girl she was growing into. So what was this, an act? Or just slipping into habit? He watched her shake back the bracelets on her left wrist and lay her delicate fingers on the microphone for a moment.

“Well,” she said to the settled room. “I’m going to kill Dan later.” Rob and Logan chuckled a bit at that, and she glanced back at them. “I know you guys were behind this too, but Rob, I’m about to get my revenge.” He smiled and shrugged while some people whooped. She turned back to the audience.

“So I know we usually play alternative rock stuff, but I’m going to switch it up a little bit here. Rob’s going to go play keys on this song—” She looked at him pointedly here, waiting as he theatrically shuffled over to the keyboard. “And Rob, I know you know this song because your mom says you sing it in the shower.” The audience laughed. “This is a beautiful song by Sara Bareilles, and I really hope I can do it justice. This is ‘Gravity.’”

Rob started off with the first few notes, and Dan sat back on the amplifier as Esther began to sing. God, he loved the sound of her voice. Even after a year with Ravenlight, she never so much as hummed a backup vocal, so that late night in the Academy’s piano lounge with their friend Meg had been a revelation. The first thing he ever heard her sing was an old Simon and Garfunkel song, her voice strong and perfect as it rose and fell over the notes rising out of the grand piano. He thought of that moment now, remembering the way she smiled while her voice harmonized over Meg’s. He watched her rest her hands on the microphone, eyes closed as she pushed the rise and fall of the chorus. She had a light, effortless control over her voice that Dan had never quite learned, and her voice had just enough quaver to sound a little less than polished, making it sound and feel so real.

He caught Logan watching him stare at Esther, so he looked down at his guitar and dedicated himself to adjusting a knob. Logan knew, he was pretty sure, about him and Esther. Well, maybe he wasn’t that sure, but there was no sense in helping Logan along by staring at her if he only suspected it. He chanced a look back at Logan, and found him raising his eyebrows, impressed, as Esther nailed the bridge—a long, drawn out high note that wandered up higher without a breath. Dan smiled. Yeah, try not staring at that amazing girl.

She sang the last few lines of the song and stepped back from the microphone to tumultuous applause. She was smiling, her shy, hesitant smile that meant she was embarrassed and a little pleased. Dan straightened and met her near center stage, handing the bass to her as he pulled her into a quick hug.

“I’m proud of you,” he said into her ear.

“I’m still going to kill you,” she said softly.

He held her at arm’s length for a moment. “If I kissed you, would that make it better?” he asked, hoping the audience was loud enough that Logan and Rob wouldn’t overhear.

“Right now? I’d beat you to the ground—and you know I can.”

He laughed and wrinkled his nose at her. She wrinkled hers back and retreated to her corner of the stage while Dan took his place again at the microphone.

“Let’s hear it,” he called, and threw in some flourish, “for the lovely Esther Lynde.” The crowd roared back. Dan glanced back at the rest of the band and mouthed, “Ramp up?” They nodded. He turned back to the microphone, riding Logan’s drumbeat into the next song.

She’s a girl used to her hair being longer than it is. You can see it in how she gathers it over one shoulder, flipping it, like there should be more. I’m watching her from across the coffee shop — watching her type for a bit, then frown and stare out in my general direction before gathering her hair over her right shoulder again and typing studiously. The papers I’m supposed to be grading are nursing a coffee mug stain in the upper left corner, but I can’t stop watching this girl, wondering what exactly it is she’s missing.

(A/N: Nothing like procrastination to get me writing/posting regularly again. This was originally written as a note on my phone, might continue it later.)

(A/N: forgot to post this when I finished rewriting/reworking it from this in English190. According to Lucas, it’s still very much a snapshot, more like the setup to something more.)

Jay stood on his driveway, hands akimbo, staring at his car. Under normal circumstances, this summer afternoon would have disappeared into a haze of video games and internet poker, but his mom had kicked him out of the house with a sharp reminder to clean the car. Easier said than done—he’d been putting it off for the last three years, as long as he’d had it. Most previous attempts had ended with a trip through the car wash, where Jay skipped his chance at clean, lemon-scented carpets out of fear that he’d clog the place’s vacuums.

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(A/N: a revamp and completed version of this)

“God, you sleep like a rock.”

Will lifted his arm from his eyes, squinting against the glare of sunlight pouring in from the window. He searched for Kate, blinking furiously until her silhouette took shape. She was standing by the other end of the couch in a tank top and pajamas, one bare foot resting on top of the other as she surveyed him over a glass of orange juice.

“What?” he asked, rubbing at his eyes.

“Your alarm’s been going off for the last half hour,” she said, throwing his phone onto his stomach. “Don’t you have some lunch thing to go to?”

He yawned. “What time is it?”

As if to answer him, his alarm started ringing again. 11:40! it announced on the lit up screen. He swore, cushions and bedding falling with him as he tumbled off the couch into an unceremonious heap on Kate’s dorm room floor. He flailed for a moment, tangled in the comforter, but managed to extract himself so that he stood victorious in his boxes, hands akimbo, surveying the mess of the couch at his feet.

“I’m okay,” he declared. “Where are my pants?”

Kate took a stoic sip of orange juice and gestured vaguely behind the couch. “You fell asleep in your clothes, but evidently you stripped in the middle of the night.”

“Oh.” He found his jeans in a pile on the floor, and his t-shirt inside out on top of his shoes. Now that she mentioned it, he did somewhat recall waking up around five and deciding it was too hot. It was mid-May after all, and even with the window open—but there was no time for explanations. He was supposed to be in Woodside in twenty minutes, and preferably better dressed than this.

It unnerved him that Kate was watching him pull his jeans on, not that he had anything to hide. Usually she would say something to break this kind of silence, to jibe at him even when she knew he was in a hurry. Usually. Who was he to say what she would usually do? This was only the third time he’d seen her in the past month, and before that, it had been almost a year. And whose fault is that? he reminded himself. He pushed that thought away and forced himself to think about his dress shirt. It was still hanging in the backseat of his car. He’d have to make do with yesterday’s t-shirt for now.

“Sorry to skip out on you like this,” he apologized, flipping the shirt right side out and pulling it over his head.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I mean, I knew you were planning on leaving in the morning.”

“No, I’m sorry, I would’ve stayed to have lunch with you, except I mentioned to my boss that I was coming down here, and he wanted me to have lunch with him and his wife—”

Kate set her glass down and went over to him. “Will,” she said, putting her hands on his shoulders, “it’s okay.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry. We’ll hang out again soon, though. I promise.”

Resigned, she smiled wanly, and he could still see a wistful sadness in her eyes. That, more than anything, pushed against that stowaway guilt hiding in the back of his mind. But again he buried the feeling and instead bent to pick up his wallet and keys from the coffee table.

“We’ll see each other soon,” he insisted. His shoes took a little stomping to get into, but they gave way by the time he reached the door.

She nodded and gave him a quick hug. “At this rate, yeah. I will be seeing you soon.”

“Yes,” he declared, placing a hand on top of her head and looking into her eyes. “Take care of yourself?”

“Always do.”

He left her standing in the doorway and pounded down the stairs, his footsteps echoing wildly in the cold cement stairwell. I’m sorry, he thought again, hoping somehow he could beam his apology to her. He threw open the stairwell door to the courtyard between her building and the one next door. Trees shaded the lawn from the harsh morning sun, though a light haze of pollen and dust filled the air. He looked up through the branches and thought he saw Kate watching him from her window, but a glare crossed the glass and when it was gone, so was she.

His car was already baking. He fetched his dress shirt from the backseat and stripped off his t-shirt right there in the parking lot. A Range Rover passed him while he was undoing buttons, and he thought he heard someone yell, “Sun’s out, guns out!” but ignored it. He checked his reflection in the passenger window—good enough. He probably should have done something with his hair—wet it down or something—but it ought to flatten by the time he reached Woodside. His engine started with a grinding roar, and with a steady hand he steered his car out of the parking lot. He hit the gas and sped around the corner, Kate’s building disappearing from his rear view mirror. See you soon, Kate.

The lights were all green to the highway, and Will sped through each with a silent thank you, one eye still on the clock. With the on-ramp in sight, he shifted into high gear, taking it a little faster than he usually would have. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d taken this on-ramp leaving campus on his way north towards the city. Accelerating down it was second nature to him—but it had been a few months since he’d last driven it, and now a narrow strip of newly paved cement crossed the curve of the ramp. His tires hit the dip just wrong, and Will felt the car lurch under him. In slow motion, he saw the world tilting—

He was going too fast—

The road was sliding away from under him—

He saw the pale blue sky for a suspended moment and then everything went black.

(Edited 6/19/11)

Will had wandered these streets before. Or maybe wandered wasn’t the right word. It definitely fit what he was doing right now, but he couldn’t remember why this particular tilt of light on the stone facades of these houses struck him as so familiar. He passed cascades of bright flowers tumbling from second story planters, and turned his head up to stare at an inky red blossom that sought to kiss his hair. Hello flower, he thought at it. It nodded in the breeze and bobbed sadly when he wandered on.

A/N: Started working on a novel. This is about as far as I got before something else demanded my time.