Blood

Time had ceased to have meaning for Ariana. She had woken in the middle of the night and decided she needed to get out of the house. As much as she loved it, it was the place where she had discovered her body was infected by tiny machines. And as much as she loved Dorian, he would never understand how repellent that discovery was to her. She needed to get away from both of them for a while.

The summer air was still thick, but the darkness was soothing. Hard, smooth stone passed under her feet, making her feel powerful again.

Night can completely transform one’s world, if one is receptive to the transformation. Ariana’s eyes widened to take in the street lights, and she saw hopes and dreams. She stood on the very edge of a bridge. The dark water made her feel like she was suspended over nothing, with only little void-ducks paddling beneath her. She descended to the river’s edge and danced with ghosts in the gathering fog.

At first she reveled in the new world all around her, but soon she remembered why she hadn’t wandered like that since her illness. An entirely different transformation took over. Her vitality waned. Her limbs moved like a poorly-aligned machine - mechanical yet clumsy. She was no longer thinking about her infection, or indeed much of anything at all. All that remained in her clouded mind was the strong feeling that she didn’t want to go home yet, so she placed one foot in front of the other again and again.

Light from a nearby window halted her pace. She immediately shielded her eyes from the brightness, but after peeking around her raised hand she realized that the window was familiar to her. Her barely-conscious body had brought her to Dr. Lane’s practice.

“Well, it makes sense,” she said to herself. “My doctor should know what I found out about the machines. Maybe my instincts knew that. But he shouldn’t be at his office now. It’s much too late.”

No one answered her feeble knock, but the solid, wooden door was unlocked. Before she noticed anything with her eyes, she smelled protein and electrolytes. The odor washed over her brain. She fell to her knees from the intensity of it, not even questioning how she knew what electrolytes smelled like.

The source of the smell was lying in red puddles on the floor. She dipped her finger in a puddle and tasted it. Her jaw muscles tightened, and her salivary glands squirted. She swallowed and savored the metallic tang; she wanted more.

Losing all sense of restraint or propriety, she buried her face in a puddle, lapping and gulping. She sank her taste buds gratefully into the grain of the floorboards, tasting blood, wax, and wood all at once. She licked cold, limp fingers clean and sucked at the gash in the throat where all the blood had come from in the first place. For the first time since her illness, Ariana had an appetite.

A warm, contented feeling filled her body, as if she had been taking morphine. The lights, which had seemed harsh a minute ago, melted until they were soft and comforting. She lay down next to the body of Dr. Lane and slept.

Wind magic

This is a very poetic post. I want to make this clear in case my more rational readers suspect that I have completely taken leave of my senses. The purpose here is not to describe the world as it is; it is to describe how I see the world, and how changing the way I see the world can make a significant difference in my life.

Life makes a lot of demands on all of us. When life got very demanding for me, my response was usually to gather up all the energy I could manage and charge right through it. Looking back, I don't think that technique ever worked as well as I had hoped, and it's resulted in a few breakdowns along the way, but I could kind of get by doing it. I'd always seen myself as a bit of a wimp, but I kind of got by.

That is no longer true. My illness has diminished my energy reserves considerably. I'm not completely incapacitated, but there is no "charging through" anymore. I have often lamented that I can no longer live with the intensity I used to.

I began to form an image of myself as a being desperate for energy. I pictured myself clawing at the walls of my life, hoping the friction would create the tiniest spark I could use. I pictured myself nursing tiny flames of life-force that could be blown away at any moment, leaving me barely able to get out of bed for days at a time.

Recently I viewed a broadcast of an opera with a friend of mine. There I realized that for me, fire is a poor metaphor for my power, and I suspect it always has been; perhaps that is why I have never seen myself as powerful. I drew inspiration from the singers, whose power came from moving air through their bodies, and I have adjusted my outlook accordingly. When life is demanding, I imagine myself becoming lighter, until lifting a hand to a task seems less daunting. When I start to get tired, I focus on keeping myself coasting until I can rest. And when I rest, I truly rest; I try very hard to let my preoccupations float away for a moment.

I don't think turning away from fiery thinking and towards airy thinking has actually given me more energy, but I think it has helped me better utilize what I have. I am a being of wind!