“Yours, Truly”

Truly was born at 11:11 on November 11. She was born Truly Amber Devine, but she didn’t tell many people that. She figured Truly Devine was bad enough. The Devine came from her father, not The Father. She didn’t have much to say about that, as she had never met him. Or them, as she hadn’t met The Father either.

Her mother thought that Truly was a beautiful name, she loved sounds with -ly in them, and she told Truly once that names infuse people with power, so she wanted someone who would always be true. But then again, her mother also believed in television psychics, so Truly didn’t put much stock in that. The Amber part, well, her mom loved crystals and rocks and colors. Truly figured Amber must have been her mother’s favorite when she was born, but she never asked. And she knew that her mother had never once uttered her full name outloud before she was born and realized that she was naming her only daughter Truly Devine.

But Truly figured the name you were born is the name you kept,  so she tried to make the best of it.

This is mostly from a dream and from the early morning kind of awake kind of asleep state I was in this morning.

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Spring springs

Spring begins to step out of her shell early here

but still reluctantly

Trees, dipped in cotton candy pink paint, have begun to pop up here and there

Buds and morning dew are artfully arranged on trees like christmas lights

Birds chatter happily to each other in the mornings

while geese fly about sounding bossy

But Spring is still timid, too timid to spring up all at once

and everytime she starts to warm up and allow herself to be seen and felt

Winter grumbles and complains and tries to squash her spirit

And Spring will play along for a while, letting Winter think he is winning

But Spring is not one to hide herself away forever

She is all about making a proper entrance, when she will be most appreciated and loved.

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Good morning

“Mmmm, good morning,” she said sleepily, stretching her fingers toward the sky. “I don’t usually get to see you. You are usually gone by the time I wake up.”

“I know, but sometimes, I just love to watch you wake up. You are so beautiful first thing in the morning,” he told her quietly.

She blushed at that, creating an even rosier glow in the morning sky, as the moon grew slightly dimmer.  As much as he loved her, they couldn’t share the same space in the sky for very long.

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I caught a falling star

I’ve been having lots of nightmares lately, a good sign that I have been ignoring my creativity for too long.

But amidst the nightmares, I’ve had some cool, lovely dreams as well, including one where I caught a falling star. As it has already burned through the atmosphere, I only caught a handful of star dust, that sparkled in the palm of my hand, and was star shaped.

I think the scene is actually part of Staphira’s story — The StarMaker’s Daughter

She keeps coming to me in my dreams. I think she really wants her story told. I will have to help her with that.

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Based on a True Story.com

Jaime grabbed her morning coffee, the first thing she did every morning, and headed to her computer, already thinking about what to write about on her blog. She had no idea when she started it how quickly she would become addicted to sharing the mostly true stories from her life, with snippets of things she made up on a whim thrown in for good measure. She did name it Based on a True Story, after all. Real life isn’t always fun and exciting and glamorous, so she saw nothing wrong with making her life sound more interesting, and maybe mysterious.

Her readers were never really sure what was true and what she made up, and she always loved reading the comments as they tried to guess what was fact and what was fiction. She considered it a sign that she was a good writer that almost no one ever guessed correctly.

She took her first sip of coffee and almost purred at the perfect, sweet vanilla taste. Coffee, in her mind, should taste like a dessert. It made drinking it so much more fun. She started scrolling through the comments, chuckling at some of the responses that had come in from her last post about her late-night walks through the city. But when she got halfway through the comments, she froze and her hands began to shake as she read what she saw on the screen. She didn’t even notice some of the coffee that sloshed out of her cup.

“You think you are so clever. You think no one knows the truth about you. I know exactly who you are.”

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The wild side of the mirror

There is a place, deep in the woods, past the bridge sheltered by the tall oaks, past the stone stairs that stretch up into what seems like forever, past the end of all the paths, where no one ever ventures out to. Here, deep in the heart of the woods, there is an ornate mirror standing on its own. It stands taller than a grown man, with vines in gold and copper and leaves in silver running down the sides of the frame. It looks out of place here, but at the same time, it almost feels like the forest grew up around the mirror. And perhaps it did.

For as you might have guessed, this is not an ordinary mirror. It doesn’t reflect back what is visible to normal eyes. Instead, it shows a different side of whatever it reflects.

Dogs that have gone off wondering from home, perhaps chasing a rabbit or following an interesting scent, would not appear as the beloved pet their owners see and know. Instead, in the mirror would appear a wolf, wild, untamed, restless, a fierce, lethal warrior. For the trees that surround the mirror, what is reflected back are trees, but darker, more menacing, leaves that look as though they could cut flesh. And if you keep watching, you see the trees in the mirror pull up by their roots and begin to move off, possibly hunting, or maybe just exploring.

And when a little girl happens upon the mirror, a prim, tidy little girl with her hair pulled back tightly, perfectly into a braid, her clothes neat as a pin even though she has been wandering in the woods for more than an hour by herself, she does not see the reflection she is used to seeing. What she sees looking back at her is a wild little girl, red hair in wild curls and tangles everywhere about her face, with leaves and twigs sticking out here and there. Dirt on her face, clothes with tatters and tears, mismatched shoes on her feet, and a wild gleam in her eyes.

But you might be wondering by now. Which is the true reflection? There is only one way to find out. You have to cross over to the wild side of the mirror.

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If our sole focus was on material advancement

Journaling prompt: What would we miss out on in life if our sole focus was material advancement?

If everything we did was just to make more money, to acquire more stuff, we would miss out on so much.

You would never paint just for the fun of playing with colors on paper

You would never write just because the words inside of you insisted on coming out, or because you love playing with words and language

You would never dance for sheer joy and happiness

You would never stop to take a photograph just because a moment, a scene, was so perfect,  you had to capture it the only way you know how

You would never experience the satisfaction in pushing your body physically past all limits, just to see how much you could do

You would never experience the quiet calm of meditating in the early morning light, or revel in the sun coming up out of the ocean

You would never experience the deep joy and comfort of waking up in your love’s arms, content to stay there and snuggle and not get up and Do

To me, that’s not a life at all

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Creative writing prompt — the last tree standing

Write from the point of view of the last tree standing in the forest

The silence is everywhere now. The rustlings, the whispered conversations, the settling in at night and stretching in the morning to greet the sun, the deep drinking after a rain, all gone. The wind tears through here now, and the sound is more empty, louder, almost harsher. I have lost parts of my self, I have bled and stretched out to reach for a brother, only to find more space. I felt the silent screams, I cried out with them, but no one seemed to hear. I stretch my roots as far as I can, when the sun alights in the sky and when the world grows dark and close at night, but find nothing. The birds, friends all, used to always talk, quietly in the early light and louder when the sky grew brighter. Now I rarely hear their voices. But I am here still, and I will keep waiting and calling out, waiting to hear conversations in the leaves, waiting to feel the presence of another when I drink deep.

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The goddesses who walk with me

One walks along and flowers spring up at her feet

One can talk to the birds and animals and trees

One can call the wind

One is one with the sea

One can stroll along on the tops of clouds, seeing the sunshine that rides above the storms

One can gather those storms when angry

One hears the music of the earth

One brings joy through her dancing

They walk with me, they are a part of me, they are me. They are all women.

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Some recent writings

Darkness comes rolling in on the wind

and sensible people hide and take cover

but the storm watcher has no fear

she wants to taste the wind

and ride it wherever it will take her.

She grins and waits to catch the storm,

on to her next adventure

— inspired by the way North Carolina thunderstorms roll in

And two things inspired by hiking in the state forest recently:

Just because you can see my roots doesn’t mean they don’t run deep into the ground.

**********

“Try one if you like — one of my pretty mushrooms. Some might give you dreams, some might give you nightmares, some can make you fly and some do nothing at all, but the only way to know is to try one. Oh yes, and one might make you die. Do you still want to know their taste?”

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