The Adventures of a Clumsy Elf

Hello there.  Crazy times, wot?

For the past couple of weeks I've been privileged enough to gather with some friends (virtually) and play some D&D, which I haven't had a chance to do since before The Young Master was born (literally the last time a regular game was suggested was the day I was bringing him home from the hospital.  Obviously I wasn't available.)

Anyway it's been desperately good for my soul, and I've been having so much fun playing and writing up little recaps for friends who expressed an interest to live vicariously through me, that I thought I'd share them here.  Because it's been a while since I've been around, and I thought I should prove that (to quote a good and right but not nice woman) I aten't ded.

Some context: when my DM suggested this game and told us to create Level Two characters ("Level One is boring and dangerous," he wisely opined), I decided I wanted to play a Druid, which I've never done.  And I wanted to be an elf, which I've only ever done one other time (which is... weird, considering my lifelong obsession with that species).  And, just for the hell of it, I decided to roll my stats up rather than going with the default numbers.  Mostly this worked out to my benefit, except for one glaring exception:

I rolled a 2 for Dexterity.  Out of a possible 20.

That's... not good.  To put it mildly.

Picture it this way- a "normal" amount of Dexterity (Dex) would give you a 10.  Elves, being naturally graceful, get to add +2 to that, so they're generally a 12 or better.  And thank goodness for that extra two points, because that means I ended up with a Dex score of 4, which means I only have to subtract -3 from any rolls that require dexterity (like, for example, sneaking), instead of -4.  Which, for those of you making the same face I used to make when I was learning how to do RPG math (and still do, some sessions), means that any time I roll that 20-sided die (d20), I have to come up with a 13 (or better) just to not-fail at whatever I'm trying.  (Whereas if I had the "normal elf" Dex 12, I'd get a +1 to my roll, and only have to roll 9 or better to succeed.  Math!)

The other major issue is that low Dex gives you a low Armor Class (AC), making it super easy for bad guys to hit you.  In the game, a person wearing normal clothes has an AC of 11.  Leather or wooden armor (because D&D Druids won't wear metal) gives you +2.  Which (combined with that -3) means I have an AC of 10, which makes me easier to damage than your average, unarmored humanoid.  It's like I'm naked.  But on the outside.

So yeah, Clumsy Elf.  And when I decided to run with that rather than re-rolling it (a weird combination of integrity and sheer bloody-minded curiosity), her Backstory leaped into my head, practically fully-formed.  I made her young- really young, even by human standards (14 but pretending to be 17 and fooling exactly no one)- as a way to help explain the clumsiness (with the hope that eventually I'll level her up enough to have her "grow out" of some of it).  I had her run away from home to prove herself (her twin brother is sort of a hunting prodigy), and I gave her a Bear form (along with wolf and squirrel) because that's what gives her the confidence (hubris) that she can totally handle herself out in the wider world!  (The type of Druid I chose for Clumsy Elf can turn into any animal that they see, with certain exceptions.  For example, I'm pretty low-level right now, so nothing that flies or swims, and I made my own personal rule that she has to have time to actually study it up close: nothing running away.  [Facing it in combat, however, counts.]  The DM & I decided to start me off with only three animals, since he was having to create additional tokens/stat sheets for each one, and I love my DM and don't want him to suffer unnecessarily.  I mean, not too much.  Anyway, my head-canon is that Clumsy Elf can take on plenty of other forms, but these three are her go-to for Adventuring.)

Shall we?

***
SESSION ONE (which was cut short by technical difficulties)

Our Merry Band (Druid Elf, Fighter Dwarf, Rogue Human) set off in search of a number of macguffins, the first three of which were to be found at the top of a 75 foot cliff. I took one look at it and knew my clumsy self would fall to my death if I attempted to climb it in my normal elfin form, so I immediately changed into a squirrel and scampered up my allowable 30 feet. DM had me do a stealth check, but since I was a freaking squirrel I passed it easy-peasy. There were a lot of squirrel-sized holes in the cliff face, so as my companions began their respective climbs I stuck my head in one to see what I could perceive (ie smell). I was hoping for something like an internal staircase we could climb, but all I got was a snootful of "something lives in here". I pulled my head back out and made my biggest mistake of the game:

I sneezed to clear my nose.

Then I continued my climb, only to be attacked by flying freaking snakes, who are apparently really sensitive to sound. The others found themselves likewise engaged, and let me tell you those snakes did not get the memo that this was supposed to be a level one adventure. I immediately took enough damage to knock me out of squirrel form, but I miraculously managed to save myself from plummeting 50 feet to my death. My human rogue comrade was less lucky, and ended up decking into unconsciousness (which, if you've never played, is so super annoying because then you just have to keep making "please don't die" rolls while the rest of the party keeps fighting, and even if you manage to "not die", you're only stabilized, not actually up and fighting again). The dwarven fighter clung to the cliff with one hand and smote a stupid snake with the other, as you do when you're a bad ass.

And me? I was so pissed that I turned into a bear, killed one of the two snakes targeting me with a bite, and then scrambled up to a ledge where I let out a "You wanna dance?!" roar that drew most of they other snakes away from my comrades towards my suddenly much higher hit point (HP) self.

And then I got bit a lot, but between me and the dwarf we killed the remaining snakes and I climbed back down, changed forms, and force fed the human some magic berries that healed her up enough to move.

But then I was stuck back at the bottom of the cliff, unable to do any more transforming until I got a four hour rest. Whomp whomp.

The dwarf (who had managed to get to a ledge, herself) threw down some rope to help us climb, which I comically failed to do (imagine That Kid on Rope Climbing Day in Gym Class). But I'm nothing if not determined, so I tried again and just barely made it. So then we were about 35 ft up and thank goodness the hermit we were trying to go see took pity on us and dropped down another rope to help us up the rest of the way. And then he fed us and I tried (and failed) to find a marmot so that I could add that to my "shape library".

But hey- at least now I have flying snake! (if I ever level up enough to take a flying form...)

SESSION TWO

After bearly (::cough::) surviving our encounter with the flying snakes, The Bumble Buddies headed up river to the creepy-creepy spider’s cave hidden behind a waterfall, in search of the next batch of macguffins.  I started to blithely enter the cave, then checked myself ‘fore I wrecked myself, and invited the actually-sneaky Human Rogue to go in my stead (but not until I’d made enough Clumsy Elf noise to alert the resident kobolds! Winning at Adventuring!).  She went ahead but again- there was no undoing my noisiness, and she found herself faced with a bunch of high-alert kobolds.  I told her to be cool and see if we could maybe not fight these guys.  After a bit of back and forth (with our Dwarven Fighter sensibly staying out of sight so that there was at least some element of surprise, should we need it) we finally asked, “What would it take for us to just sort of come in, find what we need, and leave, all without having to fight you?”

They gave this some thought, and eventually said that four pieces of gold seemed like a good deal to them. So in my typically-helpful manner I offered them two now, and three when we left safely. This more than satisfied them, so they just “went hunting” to be out of our way.  Woo!

The Rogue helpfully pointed out the pit traps in the floor, so we got to skirt those, and then she peeked into the next chamber and reported back that she saw a kobol shaman.

You guys, the shaman was not interested in bargaining.

Instead, like a giant jerk, he attacked and trapped our Fighter in a bone cage.  So naturally I hit him with some magical fire.  Which pissed him off enough that he called down the creepy-creepy spider we were all wary of, and do you know what that bitch did?  She spat web on me, rendering me immobile!  Luckily, webbing is flammable, and as soon as I burned it off I popped right back into bear form because giant spider = giant nope.  While I was dealing with that, and our Fighter was brute-strengthing her way out of the cage (it put me in mind of an mini caber-toss), our Rogue kept popping up out of cover to shoot at things with her crossbow, for all the good it did her.  Oh, did I not mention that the jerk shaman summoned mist to hide him and all but one of the spider’s legs?  Because he did that. Jerk.

And then Spider Bitch foolishly left the mist to take a bite out of Grumpy Bear (aka me), and it did some damage.  But not nearly as much damage as our Fighter did when she got her axe a’swining!  In a series of rolls that had to be seen to be believed (including two nat-20s), she killed it dead.  It was a thing of dismembered beauty.  And then I, using my superior ursine olfactory receptors, sniffed out the shaman in the mist (lightly scorched as he was) and ripped him apart with my claws.  Very satisfying.  Jerk should have just taken the money and not put anyone in a cage.

We hunted around for our macguffins, eventually realized they were stuck with webbing to the ceiling, which might have been a problem if we hadn’t already learned that (say it with me!) webbing is flammable! #actuallywinningatadventuring

So I made some more fire and we got our macguffins and headed off to the Ghost-Filled-Forest.  Which I did not like, not one bit, because it felt Very Unnatural, if there’s anything a Druid hates, it’s Unnatural Nature.  So I helpfully commented on that a lot (“I don’t like it.  No sir, I don’t like it.”), as we made our way deeper and deeper, until we came to a little clearing through which ran a river, on the other side of which was something that looked… suspicious.

And then we died.

Not even kidding.  Total Party Kill, from a damn wolf pack that popped up out of nowhere.  I was taken out in literally two bites, because Clumsy Elf is a Hella Delicate Flower in her default form.  It was frustrating as hell, but since we’d already jokingly agreed ahead of time that there was a “save point” outside the forest, our DM benevolently let us "restart".  But his grace only went so far, because he did not let us go back to the outskirts of the forest, but instead had us restart from when the wolves began their attack, with their unfortunately-higher-than-ours Initiative (ie turn-order, ie all three of them got to attack before any of us could make a move).

We rolled better this time (or, rather, the wolves rolled worse and I actually had a chance to roll anything) and I managed to survive the initial onslaught and pull my Grumpy Bear trick.  And then we were on equal footing, combat wise.

I killed some, the Fighter killed some, the Rogue provided support from the top of a dead tree, like a sensible Rogue. (Rogues are generally pretty squishy. Hence the stabbing-in-the-back thing.)  And I felt such goodwill towards the Fighter (Clumsy Elf is developing a bit of a hero-worship crush on her) that I gave her a bear-back ride across the river, to the Suspicious Thing that turned out to be the tomb/sarcophagus we’d come looking for.

The Ghost popped up, lookin’ ruhl annoyed, but damned if our Fighter didn’t turn out to have a Silver Tongue, and said exactly the right thing to get the Ghost to immediately turn over the macguffins!  Brawn and Brains!  Good job, Fighter!

Now we just need to make it back to town, and use our little macguffins to unlock the Bigger Macguffin!

***

And that's the end of Session Two! We're scheduled to play again next weekend, and I'm planning on writing up that session, as well, so here's to me not having another eight-month blog-radio-silence (without even a secret pregnancy to excuse it!).

In all seriousness, now that TYM is approaching a full year (and TLG will be five what the actual hell...) I'm starting to get a little of my time back, which means more writing. Which is good, because I need it (and art) for good inner-self-hygiene.

Fighting Back

(A note: I had fogotten that I started drafting this until I came on to do the 06/20/2020 update.  I'm going ahead and posting it because I still like it, but keep in mind, when you get to the next entry and I make reference to my "eight month silence", this was nor originally here.) (because I have so many readers that care so much about my blog consistency...  >_<)

My maternity leave is rapidly dwindling down to nothing, which means that I'll soon need to get back into Working Clothes.  Since tomorrow is Cyber Monday, I decided today would be a good day to put on my big girl pants (as it were) and try on my old work wardrobe to see what needs to be supplemented (and then buy it on discount tomorrow).

It was... not a fun experience.

I'd been feeling pretty good about my body, overall.  Strong and healthy and feeding a baby, and all that, looking pretty good in the clothes I've been wearing (a mix of leggings and the pair of wide-leg Goodwill jeans I picked up a month or so ago paired with a variety of larger-than-my-"normal"-size shirts, and the occasional sweater.)

But, uh, my professional work wardrobe isn't really... "forgiving".

First I tried on the blazers, and was pleasantly surprised that I can definitely keep wearing them, so long as I don't try to close them (nursing boobs are nursing boobs- what are you going to do?)  Then I pulled on one pair of pants after another, none of which are going to work, but I'd expected that (to be honest, the fact that I could even fasten any of them was an unexpected victory, unsightly bulges aside).  Most of the shirts are right out, too (see above re: blazers), but again- expected.  I didn't try any of my sheath dresses, because I am not that great a fool.  But what I did try was a wrap-dress that normally looks quite respectable on me- closer to the business casual end of the spectrum, but pretty sharp.  It fit, but... I looked in the mirror and felt lumpy, frumpy, and the furthest thing from professional you could imagine.  Jerk Brain had a few nasty things to say about my image, I tell you what.

I felt defeated.  And I wanted to cry- not just over how I looked, but over how I felt about how I looked; I talk a good talk about the importance of strength and health over being svelte, yet there I was, being shallow AF about my appearance.

But then I took a deep breath, told Jerk Brain where it could go, and said,

"Self, you're going to have to put in some effort, that's all."

So I took the traitorous dress off (what happened to universally flattering, wrap dress?), and took the time to take down my slept-in-it hair, comb it out, and dress it attractively.  Then I washed my face, put on lotion, and brushed my brows.  I'd planned on putting on mascara, but decided I didn't really need it, so instead on went the glasses, my favorite armor-leggings, and a SERE hoodie that my brother gave me.  And then I added lighting-bolt earrings, just to give myself that extra little ornamentation.

I looked back in the mirror and felt better.  Still not professional, obviously, but definitely not frumpy.  And tomorrow I'll order two new pairs pants based on my new measurements (or maybe I'll order some more maternity pants- you're not the boss of me, society!) and I'll keep rocking my sweaters for as long as the cold weather will let me get away with it.

Power Pose

I'm Parental Leave right now, but due to the nature of my business (and, uh, my personality) I have a really hard time staying completely Hands Off.  One of the ways I am keeping a toe in the game (who... who is writing these metaphors?) is by staying involved with my networking group (this is aided by the fact that I am allowed- nay, encouraged- to bring the Youngest Spawn along).  Well this past week we had a fun little "challenge" during our meeting, in which we were to swap 60-second "elevator pitches" with one of our peers.  We had about two weeks to prepare, and I was pretty excited to do my Bit.  So excited, in fact, that I volunteered to go first, and my attempts at humor were a great hit (or else my friends have gotten really good at making Pity Laughter sound genuine).

The next person went, and then the next, and we're all cracking up at the impersonations and different twists on the familiar presentations, and it's great good fun.

And then we got around the table to the gentleman who had taken on the role of Jenny O.

He stood up as he normally does but then- then a giant grin split his face as his chin went up, his chest went out, his legs took a dynamic stance and he slammed his fists onto his hips, proclaiming loudly "I'm Jenny Owens!" and I about died laughing (as did the rest of the room).

Try not to judge me too harshly, Gentle Readers who know me in Real Life, when I tell you that until that moment I was actually unaware of the percentage of my life spent in various Power Poses.  I've been to my fair share of Corporate Rah Rah Events where they talk about the importance of Power Poses to confidence, and encourage you to get up and get into one, and I've always complied and thought, "Yes, it would be good to do this more often," without realizing that... uh... I do.  But as soon as he started his impression of me something clicked in my brain and I realized, Oh my gosh I do do that!  Later on one of the others in the room laughed and informed me, "Basically you're Wonder Woman at all times!"

I think I can live with that.

Leisurely Thunderbolt: Another Birthing Story

August 18th, 2019

It's 0330, and I'm awake.

Not because of contractions, or anything like that- it's nearly two weeks to my due date, and I haven't had much in the way of Braxton-Hicks this time around.  No, no, I'm awake for your standard old middle-of-the-night-pregnancy-pee-break.

I've gotten to the point where I can more or less take care of things in a sort of half-slumber (it's great practice for when the Spawn actually comes along and needs feeding and such), but when I get back into bed I pause- does that feel... wet?  The question wakes me all the way up, and I pop back into the bathroom.

Oh.  Well would you look at that- I've lost my mucus plug!  Huh.  Didn't have that experience with TLG.  Well, no worries- mucus plugs can come out weeks before the baby.  I mean, I saw my doctor on Friday, and he seemed pretty sure there wouldn't be any action this weekend, so I clean things up and head back to bed (for real this time) worry-free.

It's Sunday, but Nathan is only playing one service this week, so I get to sleep in a bit, which means I don't get up until closer to 0800 than 0700.  Heavenly!  But then, around 0830, I spring a leak.

Huh, I think.  I... I think my water's broken?  But it's hard to tell, because it's not a gush- it's just a trickle.  And really even that trickle is hard to pin down, since I'm wearing a liner.  But eventually I do confirm it for my Self (by walking around sans pants for a while, whee!), and so I let Nathan in on The Situation.  "It's possible I'm going to need you to stay home from church," I say mildly.  Mildly, because I still haven't had even a twinge of a hint of a contraction.

Nathan looks a touch skeptical, and I can't blame him.  "Yeah?" he asks

"Well..." I hedge, "The internet says I ought to call my doctor and see what they want me to do, so we'll go with that.  You can probably head to the service- if they want me to come in I'm perfectly capable of driving myself since, you know... no pain."

"Cool," says Nathan.  "Keep me posted."

I call the doctor's office, and they tell me that they'd really like me to come in within 3-6 hours of my water breaking, regardless of whether or not I have any contractions.  The doc explains that studies have shown once you go past a certain amount of time with ruptured membranes but no contractions, the chance for C-section starts to go up, and they'd rather I not have to have a C-section.  Turns out I'd rather not that, myself, so although I grumble about induction, I tell Nathan that we'll be heading to the Birthing Center sometime after noon.

Then I call my Mom to tell her what's happening, and she just starts laughing.  See today, August 18th, is my Oma's birthday, and my Opa has been saying for nearly eight months that this baby will be born on the 18th.  I kept telling him, "No, no, that's like two weeks early... maybe the 22nd but certainly not before!"

"You tell him this is all his fault!" I growl.  But it's a loving growl.

It's a little before 1pm when we pack TLG into the car and head to BurgerVille to grab some on-the-go lunch (this isn't my first rodeo; I know they won't let me eat once things Get Started, and I also know it takes a hell of a lot of energy to birth a baby, so I'm Fueling Up, damn it).  We waltz into the Birthing Center around 1:30pm, and I am still 100% Contraction Free.

Well, it turns out that when you show up to the BC not in the throes of Hard Labor there's a lot of  testing and paperwork do be done before they'll take you to your birthing room.  I get it completed while Nathan manages to keep TLG from braining himself on hospital equipment more than, like, twice...

Eventually we make our way down to my room (I get to walk without assistance!  So novel!) where I change into a gown and they start my pitocin drip at the lowest possible setting.  It's about 3:20pm, and things are very boring, especially for a three-year-old, so I soon take pity on Nathan and TLG, and send them home.  As for me?  I work on some embroidery.  Yes, embroidery.  That's how not-having-contractions I am.

My contractions finally show up around 4:20 (after they've upped the pitocin a smidge), and for all that Common Knowledge is that "oh pitocin contractions are so much worse than natural contractions!" I am here to tell you that statement, in my personal experience, is some grade A bullshit.  They feel exactly the same level of excruciating, so I guess I'm glad I'm not one-upping the worst pain in my life?

Mom shows up not long thereafter.  This is a bit of a coup for her, having completely missed the entirety of my labor with TLG, despite flying in over a week early (her plane was literally landing as he was being born).  She and the nurse sit with me through a couple contractions, and then the nurse asks if I'm ready for my epidural.  At first I'm ready to refuse, to wait a bit longer, but then I think, "...but why tho?"  For real.  Why in heaven's name should I continue to be in pain like this?  I think back to them trying to give me an epidural through my continuous contractions.  Nope.  Far better to get it now, while there are still breaks.

It's about 6:20 when the anesthesiologist comes in to give me my epidural, and immediately I can tell he has a much better bedside manner than The Other Guy.  As a result (and possibly because I'm not forced to hold still through contractions) the process is smooth and as painless as possible (although we still have to do the roll-to-the-the-side trick).  It takes effect and the doc checks on me- I'm 100% effaced, but only 4cm dilated, so she decides I'm still a ways out, and I send Mom home to relieve Nathan on TLG duty.

As I lay there alone, calmly watching my contractions on a monitor, and listening to Little Brother's heartbeat, I muse to myself what a different experience this is from the last time, when I was pushing as soon as the epidural took effect.  The chance to just sort of... chill during labor is... a bit surreal.  But nice!

The doc checks on me again around 8:40, and declares me 7cm and fully effaced, but the baby is still stubbornly at a -1 station, which leads to her saying, "I'll come check on you in about two hours if there's been no action."

The nurses keep telling me that I should let them know if I feel an increase in pressure, and a while later I don't feel an increase, per se, but I feel a definite shifting, away from my rectum and towards my bladder.  When I mention this they hook up a catheter to empty my bladder, and that's that.  Nothing to see here, move along.  They ask me again about any increase in pressure, and I say, "I mean, I feel moderate pressure, but nothing like what I'm feeling during the actual contractions."  

And then... the quality of the pressure changes again (still not increasing, just feeling different) and I'm getting awful heartburn before each contraction, which strikes me as super weird, but I do the sensible thing and call in a nurse so I can request some heart burn relief.  And then for some reason I cannot quit understand, I reach down under the covers to feel around, and it seems to me that my labia are, like, unusually distended, and in fact it sure does feel a hell of a lot like what it felt like when they asked if I wanted to feel TLG's crowning head.

I say tentatively to the nurse, "Um, I think maybe the pressure is increasing?" even tho' it isn't- I just want her to check me, and don't want to look like an idiot if I'm wrong in my suspicions.  She glances at the monitor and sees that the baby's heartbeat has disappeared, so she goes to move the monitor- and can't find him at all.  Then she lifts up the blankets at the foot of the bed, lets out a shocked gasp along the lines of, "His head is out!", and slams a button on the wall.

Suddenly there are four or five very serious, fast-moving, efficient people in the room, swarming around me, and one of them says, "This is happening right now!" and by the time Nathan has made it the eight feet from the couch to my bed, the baby has been born!

And then the doctor walks in, looking very shocked at the situation at hand.* 

But my eyes are all for my new son, who is a dramatically darker purple than his brother was, and then they're toweling him off and putting him on my chest and he's red as a red, red rose, and softer than a moth's wing, and I coo and call him my Sweet Velvety Thing.  Later I will take note of his lovely dark hair, so like his father's, and his adorably cleft chin, so like mine, but for now all I can do is love him unreservedly.

*(Nathan later jokes that we should get a discount since we didn't have an MD do the delivery.)

6 Weeks

Yesterday marked six weeks since I gave birth, and I cannot help but acknowledge that milestone with a profound sense of gratefulness that I do not have to go back to work today.

I remember hitting this point when TLG was small (back when he was still Neeps), and thinking, "How on earth could I be expected to leave him, when he's still so small and helpless?"  Now, Little Brother is much less small than TLG was at this age (like, shockingly less small, who is feeding this child?), but still... how could I be expected to leave him?  And yet that's exactly what my Mom (and countless other mothers) had/have to do.  And it sucks.  So I just really want to appreciate the fact that I have this freedom to keep my career on track and also spend the first few months of my child's life extra-bonding with him.

The Lady and the Milktiger

Once upon a time there was a Young Lady- twenty years young, to be exact- who was, for the first time in her life, going to live alone.  She was an introvert, so this wasn't as daunting as it might have been, and anyway several of her best friends were living in the apartments across the hallway and directly beneath her- but still, it was going to be odd, to come home to an empty apartment every day, and so she decided to get a cat.

She went to the animal shelter with her grandfather, and when they got there a small, pale orange kitten yowled at them, and reached out and popped the Young Lady's grandfather on the head: they took to one another immediately.  The Young Lady, however, diligently walked through the entire shelter and saw all the available cats and kittens, before coming back to the noisy one, who was still "talking" loudly to anyone who would listen.

It would be nice to have someone answer when I say hello, thought the Young Lady, and so she adopted the kitten, whom she dubbed "Milktiger Kink" for his stunted, kinked tail, and the fact that his markings made him look like nothing so much as a tiger cub who had been dipped in milk.

She called him Kink for short, and brought him home to the little one-bedroom apartment, where he did, indeed, fill it with noise.

Kink, as it turned out, was a bit of a hellspawn.  An evil, demonic hellspawn that gave the Young Lady (and others) a number of scars over the course of his kitten-and-young-adulthood.  But the Young Lady had claimed responsibility for his life, and that meant sticking with him, no matter how bloodthirsty and vicious he could be.

Fortunately for the Young Lady, Kink finally mellowed out around age seven.  How much this had to do with her moving him 3000 miles cross-country so she could get married, the world may never know.  But the fact remained that Kink eventually settled down into a perfectly reasonable, non-attack-cat, who shared his human with first a husband, then a second cat, then two rats, a dog, and eventually two small humans who could be a little hazy on the concept of "gentle"- and not a one of them was ever so much as bloodied.

And then one day, about eighteen years after he'd come into her life, the Lady noticed that Kink seemed to be... going blind.

And she knew that the Downward Spiral was beginning.

Or, rather, that it was Accelerating- after all, it had been nearly a year since they'd had to start giving him fluids, and changed his diet to support his kidneys.

So the Lady took Kink in for his annual check up, and the doctor confirmed what she'd feared: he had gone completely blind, his blood pressure was high, and his kidneys were failing.

There were things that could be done to extend his life, the doctor said- but the Lady chose not to do them.  Instead the Lady chose to bring Kink home so he could have a few final days of cheese and tuna and goodbyes to family and old friends.  And then, two weeks later, she took him back to the doctor for his Final Visit.

Because the Lady had claimed responsibility for his life, and that meant sticking with him, no matter how painful.

Good With People

It's been way too long since I put any fiction up, so I thought I'd share this little bit I wrote back in May.  It was a story seed that arose from a discussion about the sorts of people you'd want on your Team in case of Zombie Apocalypse (my Special Forces brother is 100% my Team Leader, so I'll be just fine), and after listing a variety of specializations (hunter, gardener, spinner, carpenter, etc), I was feeling like I'd more or less be dead weight.  The only thing I might have going for me is, in the immortal words of Martin Blank, "a certain... moral flexibility".  Which immediately got my writer's brain a'spinnin' about how White Collar Peeps might survive the Apocalypse, and I sat down and pounded out the following.  And then left it there, because I didn't actually have an idea for a narrative, just the characters for what would essentially be a glorified fanfiction of myself (in which my stand-in is way more bad ass than me, and those inspired by others in my life are slightly less so, so as to make more room for my stand-in's bad-assery).  I recently had a conversation that kicked off a tentative idea for what the point of the story might be (hence this was back on my mind again) so we'll see.  I'd like to do NaNo again this year, all 50k words since I'm on Parental Leave, so maybe I'll use that time to dive deep on this one...

Anyway, enjoy this unearthed noodling, and hopefully there will be more fiction in the near future!

***

The Apocalypse happened about fifteen years ago, while my mother was pregnant with me.  I don’t remember life Before, and my brother- four years older than me- doesn’t really, although occasionally he’ll surprise me by having a personal familiarity with something like “milkshake”.

We don’t live “near” anyone.  No one does, these days. Well, some people do, people trying to rebuild the Cities, but Daddy says they’re short-memoried idiots.  But there’s about a handful of us families that look in on one another, none closer than about five miles, and we all get together about once a month for trading and courting and that kind of thing.  Mama says they’ve all been carefully vetted, they’re all the “right” kind of people, by which she means sensible folk. My brother says dryly that the Apocalypse did a pretty good job vetting our species in general, but talk like that always makes Mama angry.

“There were a lot of good people who died, a lot of smart people who just got unlucky,” she’ll say.  “Not to mention the smart people who got lucky enough to survive, but were a hell of a lot worse for us than the dumb ones who died.”

Daddy says we were smart, and that’s why we made it through the Bad Years.  Mama says we were smart, but also lucky.  “Being smart just lets you take advantage of good luck when it comes along,” she says.  “And good luck comes more often to those who don’t count on it.”

“Smart, and lucky, and ruthless,” Daddy will say, and kiss Mama.  Mama says nothing. I know she considers being ruthless part of being smart.  And I know she considers the biggest piece of luck having been married to Daddy.  Daddy is the one who knew how to survive in a world suddenly stripped of modern technology.  Sure, it was theoretical knowledge, knowledge he’d gleaned from a passionate interest in history, but between the two of them they turned theory into practice, and even refined it in places.  And Daddy’s the surer shot when it comes to hunting anything on the move. Mama has said multiple times that we might have survived without him, but we never would have been so comfortable.  Daddy always says we’d have done just fine.

“There’s no stopping your mother, boys,” he’ll say.  “Once she puts her mind to a thing, it gets done.”

Daddy used to work with computers, before the Apocalypse.  People would have problems with their computers, and he’d use his to fix them.  He’s explained it to us a couple of times, but it’s sort of hard to understand. And Daddy says there’s really not much point in trying to understand, because we’re not likely to get computers back on any sort of a widespread scale anytime soon, and even if we did, they’ll be different.

Mama was something called a financial planner, which she says was even more worthless than what Daddy did.  “I made a lot of money helping people prepare for retirement,” she says. “But when the Apocalypse made money obsolete, it became apparent that all I really did was tell stories.”

Mama is good at telling stories, tho’, and she’s a super-good planner, so I’m sure she was good at her job, even if there’s no such thing as “retirement” anymore.

Mama had a passing interest in history, but not like Daddy.  She always liked art and literature and philosophy best, which she says are all very important things to individuals and societies, but not very good for building shelter or putting food in our bellies.  She’s much better with people than Daddy is, tho’. Better at charming them, better at bargaining with them.

Better at killing them, when it needs to be done.