"It's ok Nissa, really! I'm sorry I worried you. I couldn't find my..." 

"Rah-rah!" Lila interrupted again, stretching her bulgy fingers toward Sara's gurney. Instinctively, Sara moved to meet her reach, until sickening pops cracked midway down her torso.

"God, your poor face. Oh, Sara! We drove by your car; it's so... Jesus, I'm relieved you're safe. I spoke to the officer who found you. God, I'm so grateful he was there!"

"I wasn't arrested, it was a guy with sunglasses. I tried to start the car on my own, but the stupid thing's gonna need another tow." Sara's fuzzy mind tangled with the disjointed logic. 

Nissa placed a loving hand on her friend's tattered arm, "Your car... sweetie, it rolled down a cliff onto a private prison road. Officer Nurelli was the only one scheduled to drive that way today." Salt pricked her eyes, but she fought to maintain control, stopping and starting to make sure she did not upset her fragile audience. "Oh God, Sara! I'm still shaking from thinking of you inside there!"

Broken images scattered beneath Sara's dazed expression, further muddying the troublesome sequence of logic. She squinted until the pressure on her corneas choked-out her buzzing thoughts, then meekly whimpered, "I want to go home now."

Nissa tenderly stroked Sara's blood-scored skin, "Yes, hon, we will take you home with us, okay? Jacob and I will go over later and collect your things, so you don't even have to go back."

"W-why can't I go back?"

"Sweetie," Nissa gulped, searching her mind for every possible way to avoid bringing up Sara's fiancee, "you suffered a major concussion hours before the accident. They actually said that might be the reason you survived and didn't break any more bones..."

This time, Sara only narrowly resisted unconsiousness, "More?"

The bitchy male nurse glowered down at the gurney, silhouetted in a halo of artificial light. He raised a needle-sharp eyebrow and sucked his teeth. 

"Hm. Decided to join us, did you?" His scornful brow arched into a razor-edged point, nearly melting into his hairline. From below, he bore the likeness of a flippant, spectacled bat. 

Sara's vision flickered as her mind reached again for the black cocoon of unconsciousness. But her recent memories were little more than foggy snapshots, and apprehension lingered at the base of her skull. Clenching her shoulder blades, she pulled her elbows to a right-angle, so she might see her surroundings before surrendering consciousness. 

"Oi!" The prickly diva shouted at his patient, "You are not to be thrashing about until we're sure you didn't bugger anything up in the crash." 

"I'm sure I'm fine," Sara's meager protest was disregarded as he pushed her shoulders back to the sheets. His plastic ID badge swung hypnotically in her face, "Marcus, thank you for everything you've done to help, but it wasn't that bad." Recoiling against Marcus' unveiled disdain, Sara's apprehension turned to dread as her mind flung through the countless abduction stories of girls just like her. 

"Are you bloody joking?" He drew a breath to continue an undoubtedly well-rehearsed tirade, but he was interrupted by a shrill, tiny voice, "Rah-rah!" 

Marcus looked up as the security door buzzed open. The little voice belonged to a cherub-cheeked toddler balanced gracefully on the hip of a tall, handsomely muscular woman with deeply worried chestnut eyes. 

"Rah-rah-rah-rah-rah!" The baby chattered rhythmically as her silky, raven pigtails bobbed with each of her mother's steps. 

"Oh God, Sara! I'm so sorry! Lila has been crying for you all morning. What happened? When I finally let her call you, the prison answered?!"

Mirrored aviators and a scuffed brown loafer emerged from the driver's side door. A jacketed wrist reached up to sweep the aviators onto a thinly tufted scalp, revealing the concern knitted into the driver's pudgy brow. 

"Yah 'right, Luv?" He left his car door gaping in the vacant highway as he rushed to Sara's side, placing a kindly hand on her elbow. She winced but did not pull away.

"Oh," As she responded she could feel her knees giving in to the support of the stranger's crooked arm, "Yes, it should all be fine. There was a critter in the road; it startled me. I don't see him anymore, so he must be okay. I just can't find my phone. I should probably call 'the warden!'" Sara rolled her eyes and chuckled. Keenly aware of the physical contact, yet still unable to muster strength in her knees, she awkwardly tugged at her purse again, this time checking the outside pocket. "Oh! There's my phone!" Her fingers found the weighty shape and clicked to the first contact in recent calls, a thumbnail cartoon of a red devil. The line beeped with a "no service" message and Sara looked back down at the phone in her hand. "Wait, this is the old..."

"I reckon you oughta come to work with me, Luv. We'll get you fixed up in the infirmary, get you some water, and find out who it is you need to call, yeah?"

"Really, I'll be okay. If I could just use your phone for a quick sec to call my fiancee," she dropped the disparaging metaphors and oozed the f-word like she had when they were first engaged, rather than their bitter six-year trudge to the altar, "Then I can just wait in the car for him to come." 

Glass rained in like diamonds, and pristine cobalt paneling crunched against the wildwood abruptly lining the unpopulated mountain highway. Sara felt like a ragdoll behind the wheel, mercilessly flung to and fro, bound by the tightened seatbelt. 

Dusty rays of light shimmered through the silhouetted treetops, and Sara spat a curse. She had been trying to catch the sunrise from the hilltop, hoping to quench the rage burning through her mind, and the handprint burning her left cheek. A morning mosquito landed on the smarting flesh, reminding Sara of what awaited when she returned. 

Damn, His Majesty's gonna be pissed.

Remembering a technique her father showed her during her formative driving years, Sara reached into her purse for a blue sharpie to spruce up the scratched paint.  

"Well, it doesn't look so offensive now." Sara's father jested his then-teenaged daughter, over the unmistakably dented van. Sara hoped her father's old, dry, and subtly optimistic bluff would soften the blow when His Majesty laid his gin-red eyes on the abused vehicle. 

Grime floating at the bottom of the empty bag scraped Sara's fingernails away from the skin, leaving solid black lines beneath the nail tips. Panic clenched her lungs as she clawed at the feckless sack, and nearly turned back to the wreck to search for her essentials when a silver sedan rounded the unkempt cliffside. Sara jumped back to give the driver ample clearance as the smoking brakes squealed to a stop, paying little mind to the painted lines.

Time-battered lead holds the delicately beveled edges of prismatic glass together in geometric harmony. Though chipped and cracked from bearing the brunt of external elements and no longer an immaculate symbol of beauty, the dusty lenses serve as a filter to the world. The tiny window sits in its splintered frame, casting the most brilliant rainbows both inward and out.  

Clothes and dishes littered the floor of the tiny square room. Groaning, Vera envisioned the shin-high trudge to the door, and she shoved her face deeper into the soft safety of her pillow. Her toes curled with renewed pain that accompanied the memory of the steel slinky slicing the tender webs between the first three toes on her right foot. The infernal gadget was concealed deep within in the substrate of the jumble, probably by her youngest, how old was she now? A hazy memory of a recent birthday party flickered around her memory. No, that was Tommy's party, her firstborn. Anyway, she had fought bitterly with her husband over the giving Tommy the slinky, warning him that a coil of sharp metal would not be an age-appropriate gift. 

"This is a death trap! Just look at it, they will slice their hands open, you just watch."

Theo, the perfect vision of tall, dark, and dangerous, was not one to back down. It was one of the things she had loved about him, once. Appalled by the suitor, Vera's mother disinherited her daughter for marrying him. Vera's eyes were so full of starry love, she paid little mind to her mother's bitter objections and happily closed the door to her old world, forever. Together, Theo and Vera fought the world back-to-back, conquering foes and taking no prisoners. Until, one day, they turned on each other and never stopped.

Light seeped in through the cream linen pillowcase, despite pushing it into her face so forcefully, the pronounced bridge of her nose began to ache. Vera grudgingly surrendered the struggle for sleep and cast the useless pillow aside. Her doleful, saline eyes soured behind the squinting barbs of her tawny lashes as her pupils reluctantly dilated to restrict the unfriendly morning rays. The bedframe whined as she wriggled into a comfortable form between the sprung bed coils. Finally flopping into a comfortable position on her back, the automatic sigh of defeat made her realize she had been holding her breath, and her lungs throbbed with relief, and the purple tinge drained from the edges of her vision. The rest of Vera's body also throbbed. It was the aches of motherhood, she told herself. Even before she was pregnant with Tommy, her body and stomach groaned in protest at greeting the day. Theo grumbled that Vera was always complaining about some ache or another. Now with two willful children running her to the bone, she argued that she could hardly be faulted.

"Vera!" Theo's voice boomed down the narrow hallway, and then came the echo of the smart clops made by his dress shoes on the hardwood floor. She practiced telling him about being right about the slinky, even if it was only she, and not the children, who suffered from it. The bedroom door swung open, but instead of slamming into the wall, as Vera presumed was Theo's intention, the laundry in the corner of the room squished up against the wall, bringing the door to a gentle, padded halt. Vera snorted a quiet laugh at the anti-climax of Theo's entrance.

"What the hell is all this?" He waved his upward-facing palm across the havoc. Then, without waiting for a reply, he continued, "Have you been out of bed at all today? God damn it, Vera, you have responsibilities!" His volume raised with each word, and Vera, immediately inflamed, readied herself to match. Flinging the covers forward and ignoring the pain slicing up her spine, she sat up in bed and met his judgemental eye with a look so full of wrath, the devil, himself, would be envious. Her nostrils flared as she inhaled to speak, but again, Theo raised his palm, this time to silence her. He tossed an unadorned brown folder onto the creamy tatted-lace bedspread. 

"Never mind, this..." he paused, sneering again at the disheveled scene, "... utter hysteria is not my problem anymore. You are on your own from now on; I am filing for divorce." 

Looking at the neatly typed pages in her lap, Vera felt all the breath drain from her body. Divorce. The word slapped her across the face, and she could barely move. The familiar tension crept into her chest, like a snake circling her torso and crushing her ribcage. Refusing to show Theo that her breathing was distressed, she tossed the offending folder to the foot of the bed. Commanding her final reserves of air, she pushed out the words, "Good luck with that." before hurling herself back to the pillows and pulling the covers over her pale, quivering face. 

"Oh, Duckie," Theo chortled, knowing he was in position with the upper-hand, "you should read things through. I have filed on the grounds of your continued refusal to receive the procedure ordered by your physician." The rigidity in Vera's chest spread down her spine and out to her extremities, tingling and tightening like butchered sinew laid out in the sun to dry into strings. 

********

"God damn it! God damn it! God damn it!" Rita screeched so loudly, her dry throat burned in protest. Two of her four children scurried around her, finding rogue toys and brightly colored socks to tidy up out of sight. The eldest artfully concealed herself when the dark clouds of rage started to form on the horizon, and the second-to-youngest, Annie, wailed in the corner of the living room, clutching her blanket to the hot, wooden spoon-shaped welts on her still bare backside.  

"Do you want something to really cry about, Annie? Do you? Why do you make me scream and yell like this? Are you happy now? Why can't we just have a clean home? Why do you make me fight with you?" Wild chestnut tendrils, darkened with sweat, flew out from her carefully placed, black headband. She clawed at her hands, although they did not itch, digging flakes of dried skin underneath her fingernails. 

"Daddyeeeeeeeeeeee!" The syllables sputtered from Annie's lungs as she ran to her father, who appeared in the doorway. Quickly juggling his briefcase into his other hand, he caught his daughter in the crook of his elbow before she plowed headfirst into his kneecap. 

"Oh, Phil... Thank God..." Stammered Rita, gasping for air. Walking toward his wife, Phil motioned to the other two children to collect Annie from his arms, and he placed a gentle hand on each of Rita's quivering shoulders, pulling her close to his chest. Relaxing into the support he offered, Rita fell from the heady rush of rage into deep, guttural sobs. 

"I don't know what to do, Phil. It is so hard to stay calm when..." she grasped at her hands, this time as if she were trying to pull her fingers from their roots. "I don't know if I can handle one more snotty doctor looking at me like I'm hysterical. The guy today, ugh! He was so offensive."

Phil breathed a staccato laugh through his nose, making Rita's ear bounce against his moving chest. "Snotty, huh?" he joked, "You mean, like Annie when she wakes up in the morning?"

Rita's sobbing elevated to broken chuckles for a moment, and then back to the dispirited tone of an aching soul. 

"Shhhhhh. It will be okay." He said nothing more but held her, stroking back the frayed tendrils of her glossy hair until she shuddered into the realm of restless sleep. 

********

Alice blinked in disbelief. Like a cassette spitting out lengths of gnarled tape, her mind struggled with a sudden overflow of information after spending a significant portion of her adult life ignoring her crippling pain and fatigue, and the other half losing jousting matches against doctors, boyfriends, bosses, teachers, friends, and others who punished her deficiencies. 

"Lazy bitch." The scathing voice of her ex-fiancee led the chorus of accusatory recordings inflexibly preserved within the most critical parts of her mind. Each time her body failed her, she wondered if their piercing remarks were justified, despite her most earnest efforts. Impossibly complicated medical terms swam around the warm New Patient Intake pages Doctor Samson printed from her mobile workstation where she still stood, clicking notes into her integrated system. Tilting her chin to see over the top of the glowing screen, Doctor Samson paused her typing and noticed the glassy expression Alice wore as she stared at the forms. 

"It's a lot to take in, isn't it?" She pushed her thin, navy wire-rimmed specs up her forehead to rest atop her silver-stranded ebony locks. Alice jolted at the break in the quiet, hypnotizing lull of the clicking keyboard. Her glassy eyes stung with salt, but she swallowed the lump of breath that would have sent the tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Uhm," Alice swallowed hard one more time, "yeah, I mean... so I've had this my whole life?"

"It's entirely possible. As with most auto-immune cases, this is a genetic condition that usually develops during late adolescence. We will have to wait for the test to come back for an official diagnosis, but just from our initial examination, I am confident they will show what I am expecting to see. The research on this is relatively new, and there is still a lot we don't know, but the symptoms you have been experiencing in your hands combined with the overall pain and fatigue are the tell-tale sign. Hopefully, with the supportive diet, physical therapy, and prescriptions, you should start to see some relief soon. If you can believe it, doctors used to treat this with hysterectomies. You know, the whole 'crazy woman' thing."

Alice drove in silence after she left the clinic. The noise of the car stereo raked against her raw nerves, so she punched the power button with more force than was necessary. 

"Call Mom." 

"Calling 'Mom.'" the mechanical voice confirmed the order. 

"No, end call." One ring trilled through the speaker and then beeped to indicate the end of the call. Alice spun her steering wheel hard to the left and whipped her car into a hasty u-turn across the double yellow line. The mysterious lineage her mother worked so hard to reject was the obvious source of a genetic condition. Unanswered questions and a lifetime of her mother's denial swelled like moistened cement inside Alice, crushing her internal organs under the pressure. 

"Mom?" Alice flung open the heavy olive door to her childhood home, catching the brass handle at the last minute before it slammed against the beveled glass windows that framed the entry way. 

"Whoa! There's my favorite oldest niece!"

"Uncle Tommy!" Alice, for a moment, forgot the angry swarm of wasps raging inside her and jumped to hug the tall shoulders of her beloved uncle.

"What are you doing here? When did you fly in?"

"This morning! Your mom picked me up from the airport, we tried to call you to meet up for breakfast while we were in your neck of the woods, but we couldn't get through." 

"Yeah, I was..." Alice trailed off, "Where is Mom, anyway?"

Tommy sucked a deep breath into his diaphragm, cocked his head back and hollered to his younger sister, "RIIIIIIITAAAAA!" The deep bellow resounded through the wooden house. 

"Goddamit, Tommy! What?!" Rita's voice approached from the upstairs hallway before she appeared on the landing. 

"Oh! Hi, honey! I didn't know you were coming over today!" Her bare feet pounded down the stairs, and she smothered her daughter in an awkwardly long embrace. Alice shifted her shoulders several times before finally pulling away. "We tried calling you this morning. Sweetie, your GrammieVee died yesterday."

"What? How? She was only like, 80?"

"I don't know, honey. I hadn't talked to her since that last time we saw her when you were little. I think it was before Annie was born, she probably never knew she had two other grandchildren, now that I think about it. But, you know, she always thought she was dying. She kept going to doctors insisting there was something wrong, but obviously, there wasn't, otherwise they would've found it. Anyway, Uncle Tommy is here to help me clear the crap out of her apartment at the facility because I just cannot deal with it. You know how I get about clutter."

Her mother prattled on for a while, and Tommy followed with a response, but Alice had gone numb. She pictured the gaunt, frail woman she had not seen in twenty-five years, alone and unvindicated, slipping away from her life of pain surrounded only by garbage and dirty laundry. Hope quickly turned to grief as all of Alice's unanswered questions perished along with her misjudged grandmother. 

Examining the hapless soul before me, who was quivering from bewilderment and exhaustive deliberation, I considered how to revise my approach. The current strategy was proving to be an intensive exercise in futility; degenerating as each elaborate explanation only yielded further lines of questioning. Newcomers were an increasing rarity among those who returned, time after time, to continue their work. In recent memory, the process for most required little more than a friendly voice to welcome them back and a brief run-down of the routine. Somewhat deflated from dissecting and rehashing fundamental concepts, I peered wearily at the flighty creature.

All-knowing, I scoffed to myself silently, knowing more hardly equates to knowing all. The notion of a single, absolute point of knowledge offends the nature and purpose of that which is knowable. Despite the intimate and notable experience of creating the universe itself, imparting understanding upon an inexperienced soul is a delicate process, extrinsic to the bare iteration of facts and events.

It had not been this difficult in the past. The early-cycle souls, in the beginning, were less discerning, and more readily accepted the truths of the universe. Outside of the undisturbed purity at the center of life, exists the precise and delicate conditions necessary for growth. Suspended within a frenzied whirl of chaos, the pristine nuclei souls absorb and react to their respective environments, amassing vital elements. When the phase finally comes to term, the physical body expires, and the quintessence is drawn back to the center-- to me, imbibed with deeper distinction.

I pitied this callow tenderfoot emerging as an infant into an advanced growth environment. Over lifetimes of development and preparation, the majority population currently thrives in a terrain rife with sensations, options, proximity, and a constant stream of disjointed dialogue; mass-publicized and filtered through the lens of each individualized aggregate composition. To be fresh at such a time, it was no small wonder when young soul professed to glad to see the end of life.

Life has not ended, I am life, and you are of me. As I bleed, so are you born. You are life! The words inside me felt as though they should be deafening throughout the cosmos. Eternal life is not a commodity that is inherited or bartered for, like a diamond necklace. Rather, it is fluid and stimulating, like flecks of snow hurling through the forces of nature. Agglomerating new resources from the environment, the ice crystals are fused together as millions of microscopic chains. The crystals continue to form and amass as much as the elements will allow, before drifting, settling, melting and evaporating back into the cycle.

The composition of matter within a single snowflake functions as a map, tracing the lifecycle journey of the flake all the way back to the source of origin, illuminating the fantastical twists, turns, and climate changes along the way. By the end of the journey, the matter is transformed by the experience but is no less water than it was before. As a drop or flake may bond back with a river which may lead to the sea, so do all the billions of droplets come rolling back into the fold of my embrace.

With the solution to my tempestuous residual now brilliantly clear, the words flowed away. I shifted, unknotting my salty expression to open fully toward the soul. In the stillness, the energy between us had changed, all the tension of misunderstanding dissipated. I could see a similar change from the frothy, ill-formed wisp who had flustered vexation throughout the otherwise sterile sanctuary, not long prior. Now, our common chemistry was magnetizing, as it should, as it always does when tension is released, and natural order is allowed its due course. It will be alright. I told us. Next time, and the time after, it will be alright. Without effort, our molecules drifted together, melting like a snowflake on the surface of a still pond.

#ProseChallenge #getlit #itslit #creationstory #missedthedeadline #postedanyway 

*Certain details may have been altered to protect undisclosed material. 

Language is primarily applied, by the human race, to effuse immediate thoughts and needs, though the deeper function is far more extraordinary and sadly neglected. Through language, our minds may categorize otherwise arbitrary sounds and symbols into a system of socially shared meaning. Letters and symbols coax forth memories of other images, and each sound carries a unique vibration that is capable of influencing tangible results. A simple utterance has the potential to affect the imagery, perception, hormones, concepts, and decisions that comprise the extensive range of human experiences. 

Yet, the most potent force upon any individual's sensations are the vibrations created by the sound of their true name. 

My given name is a loving, and carefully tailored tribute to three key influences; my remarkable grandmother, a great queen, and the desert my parents loved to share. Eclaire, the pen name I have chosen for this platform, flirts with given name, embellished by my own influence and perceptions. In certain circles, this is my affectionately nominated nickname. 

But this is not my actual pen name. 

Meticulously scribed on ivory stationery, sealed in a matching envelope and tucked securely into the inner pocket of my phlox leather notebook, is the full account detailing the story of my alias. The particularly remarkable binding of this notebook was designed with numerous pockets, zippers, and expansions to effortlessly change and grow with the progressing seasons of life and safeguard the language of my soul. Metallic swirls monogram my given initials in polished contrast against the jewel-toned leather. It is one of my most beloved possessions, and since the day it was presented to me, it stays within scribbling distance or my right hand. 

Or, at least as long as this body draws breath in this world. As long as my arms have strength to reach out and caress the love-softened binding of my most precious words, the contents of the ivory envelope will remain my cherished secret. 

Sworn to silence by the sheer delicacy of musings, I may only taste my most precious words under the rose, lest they are ravaged by foreign ears. In those moments, I speak her name aloud, and she begins to materialize off the page into articulated meaning. The sound and feel are not like speaking my own name; it is sweet and obscure, resonating as if from the gentle lips of a lover. 

For she is not a reflection of me. More than a literary self-portrait, she has evolved into her own character. 

Contrary to the glamorous and frothy existence my youthful drafts identified as the key to her success, she dwells in the shadow of my material life. She cannot create experiences, but she can expound upon fragments of mine in ways I could not. When my physical body expires and begins to fade back into the earth, she will cease to live through me, and my meaning will live on through her. It all rests on the chance discovery of the prized notebook containing the tangible manifestation of my experience.

And the unspoken story of my true name.

I won first place for a story I wrote in third grade, about the pepper tree in my front yard. My great-grandfather planted the tree as a young man, when he built the house for his wife, who was brimming at the arrival of their first child. A century and a smidgen later, the tree was enormous. Aromatic, black peppercorns the size of raisins, covered the ground and burst with spicy redolence when they were crunched underfoot. The trunk was solid, stout, and knotted, boasting several strong, gnarled branches that had browned and hardened with the test of time. The kernels swayed in bunches from the younger, supple, weepy stalks that billowed with millions of emerald fronds, adjoining mid-rib in fluttering geometric arrangements. On dreamy afternoons nestled in the branches, it was easy to believe the gently swooshing branches would lift the roots out of the ground, and tucked in snugly, I would be whisked away to wage fantastical, far-off adventures in lands only recounted by tales of fantasy. My tree was the perfect spot for a ten-year-old to hide from the world, while imagining and creating millions more. 

The 117 year-old house and tree, which once sat in the humble acreage next to a craftsman piano workshop miles from the edge of town, had seen the urban jungle grow and flourish around the tiny fenced-off plot. Liquor stores and nail salons changed hands in ways I did not understand as a child, and my mother lost moths of sleep agonizing over reports of local crime and the potential moment our worlds could be torn to shreds. Flippant to my mother's anxiety, I often climbed up my tree and out onto the bolstered, heavily foliaged branches growing over the tall fence and shaded the sidewalk on the other side. I eavesdropped on the passing pedestrians, learning key phrases in foreign languages. I imagined what their lives were like between the fragments I plucked from their fleeting conversations. Then, I transported back in time, through the thick leaves to sit in the unfinished lot, surrounded by the raw materials of his legacy, and converse with my young ancestor about the present landscape. 

Mr. Brewer, my third grade and immortally favorite teacher, had just experienced the loss of his own grandfather. I wrote, illustrated, and bound the story in cardboard and shelving paper for him, when the substitute teacher finally submitted to each student's indignant demands for information about Mr. Brewer's absence. Upon returning to work, he read the story and enthusiastically submitted the time-thwarting tale into the upcoming K-12 county creative writing competition. Mr. Brewer was thrilled, but not surprised when I won. He proudly accompanied me to the award ceremony and project showcase at the county fair. I beamed, at first, accepting the blue ribbon for short stories in my grade. I had been chosen as the best author of all the other girls and boys my age, across five school districts! Alas, even then, my curiosity and self-deprecating inner-voice were acutely tuned sixth and seventh senses. Presently, the caveat of winning in my age group, and not overall, began to tug at my concern. 

Following the award ceremony, in a strikingly uncharacteristic display of parental clemency, I was granted liberty to the fairgrounds until it was time to gather for the fireworks, just before night fell. Before minds could be changed and caveats added, I left a trail of dust and set out to load my fists with greasy, sugary treats. Seizing the rare moments of privacy, I ducked around the adults at the entrance of the project showcase tent, to get a peek at the finalist submissions for the middle and high school level awards. After all, cooed the IV (inner-voice), one must be prepared for future challenges. From there, the trap was set. I was a sleepy princess reaching for a spindle, acting as if spellbound by the logic of the anti-conscience- casting dye on the background across the rest of my story. 

There were no sloppy eraser marks fouling the intricate artwork, advanced vocabulary, beautifully flawless cursive penmanship... each element of each submission was hopelessly superior to mine, which by comparison, was a blatant display of shortcomings. I cried then, hurt and embarrassed when I realized I couldn't compete with the higher grades. I sat there, never more grateful for solitude as I slouched forward, red-faced, blue-mouthed, and gooey-fingered on a patch of grass shielded from the rest of the word by garish canvas. 

See? You are just not very good at this. IV sneered, and I agreed. Writing was decidedly not my calling. 

Over the years I dabbled in jobs and hobbies- picking up photography, then cooking, and so on, exhausting professional and avocational options in hopes of finally finding the elusive key to unlocking my aptitude for perfection. If I received external praise, it fell on deaf ears. It is a nice thing for someone to say, I thought, but nice words depart from the satisfaction a job perfectly done. 

Besides, I have never been very good at anything. 

Smug and satiated, IV cadged deeper roots. 

The nagging, persistent, bitter little voice sustained its pattern across a lifetime of achievements and opportunities. Businesses I founded flourished, programs I facilitated reaped the expected benefits, students I taught earned accolades in their own fields, close friends lovingly raved and were sworn to secrecy over the privileged readings of my unfinished manuscripts. Thousands of unread pages, years of collecting skills like model cars, futilely and imperceptibly attempting to engineer perfection, obsessing over details I imagined would be the crux for achieving objective excellence. Then, as per usual, came the rehearsed and rehashed script. The onset of IV became familiar, like a migraine the day before a menstrual cycle. When I was nearly finished, there was no sense in going further. There was always someone else who had already achieved better by my age, tenure, level, etcetera. 

I'm just not very good at anything. 

At times when the human condition becomes a burden, I cling to the one attribute I am alway fond of; the human ability to learn, grow and change- mentally, physically, and the impact we leave on the world around us. Disallowing myself the possibility of exploration, which was a mechanism meant to protect myself from my perceived shortcomings, has done nothing to heal, but rather to enhance the personal shame and negative impact of the fear of failure. Striving merely to leave a neutral impact was not only foolish, but destructive. I do not have a copy of the story I wrote for Mr. Brewer those decades ago, and my tree and house that raised four generations of my family now rest beneath the parking lot with private access to the adjoining law-office, which occupies the two stories atop a craftsman piano repair shop. 

Although my own standards remain stringent, and the drive toward formidable success stays ingrained at my core, the critical inner-voice resonates less against more pressing desires. Rather than ultimate achievement, my motivations now swayed by pursuits to preserve cherished history, understand and articulate the perplexities of life, absorb the wisdom already imparted to the world, and impart what I can to leave the world better than I found it. Through practice, I am learning to see accomplishments through the fog of imperfection. 

To give credit to hindsight, I have aged in ways inconceivable and incomprehensible to the young girl who wasted the energy of my stolen youth worshipping and sacrificing at the altar of perfection. Now, trapped in a degenerating cage, I moil through the twisted reality in which I currently find myself, and contend to reconcile the spectrum, foul to favorable, of realities entwined in my journey up to this point, however brief or lingering. As I strain my eyes and shoulders against the harsh conditions of my overstuffed sofa and ergonomic laptop, choking down prescriptions from a pyramid of orange bottles, I have utterly lost the will to waste effort worrying about being the best. Just as the vitality drains from my physical body, so do the excuses against passionate pursuit for the pure sake of enjoyment. Particularly when the recommendation is authored by none other than my own harshest, and most enduring critic. 

Perhaps I am not very good at anything, so what?  

It is a common experience for me to discover how story unfolds as I begin to fill empty pages, though not usually when the subject is so familiar. These are among the first words I have committed to distinguishing myself as a (reforming) perfectionist and over-achiever. Having never been satisfied with the level of perfection achieved, it has never occurred to me to avow these attributes. Only after attentively untangling this snarl in my reality, through writing, have I uncovered this thread hidden within my own story. I have now written and edited around fifteen-hundred words around fifteen-thousand times, rationalizing at length, the reasons I employ to neglect my writing practice- all to discover fifteen words I did not have before. Arriving at the end of this leg of my journey, I can confidently surmise the essential reason I write, began writing, and diligently work at my craft, in exactly fifteen words:

-To quench the burning demands of my soul, evoked and impelled through prevailing situational reinforcement.  

I'm still not very good at anything, but I am getting better at it.    

The days grew blacker. Seven hours and fifty-five minutes of blustery daylight, at last count. The aging man stared intensely at the thick blizzard that whipped passed the window blocking the view of the kingdom landscape from his gilded tower atop the hill at the edge of town. The weather was poor timing, but what could be done about it? He chuckled to himself about marching through the storm in his plush robe, and up the pearly stairs to heaven to negotiate with the Maker of Weather, personally. Ridiculous. He snorted to himself, dislodging something within his esophagus. He spat the decaying clump into the washbasin, just as the beautiful housekeeper entered his chamber. She stuttered an apology, but he stopped her with a gesture from one hand and wiped his chin with the other. 

"Ah, good morning!" He said, turning to face the housekeeper, "Never get old, my dear, it is tremendously sad. I apologize, I should have been out of here already. These absurd daylight hours... well, I will let you get to your work." 

The girl looked sideways before responding. She curtsied and cast her eyes downward, "Yes, um, your grace."

The old man smiled and nudged her chin with the broad-edge of his finger, "No need for those formalities, sweetheart," he said, "at least not for you." He winked, encouragingly, and exited into the hallway- still wearing his plush robe and slippers. Passing other servants in the hall, he nodded and greeted "Good morning", especially the young, pretty ones. Finding the chambers he was looking for, he burst through the ornate doors with another enthusiastic greeting for his pride and joy. 

"Good morning, My Queen!"

The fur blankets rustled slightly, but there were no other signs of life until he threw open the heavy window coverings. It did not do much to let in the light, as there was scarcely any light to be let in, but the rings rattled violently against the metal curtain rods, and a muffled protest came from beneath the blankets. 

"David! I have not even unbraided my hair, yet. I am still sleeping, what are you doing?" 

"I hope you are ready for today, Lin." He replied, still staring at the blackened window.  "I need you on-point today. Today they will all see..." He trailed off. Adelind murmured again and rolled another pillow under her shoulder. 

David continued, "I hear what they say, they talk about the changes the 'King' (he made quotation marks with his fingers) has made. Today, though, today the entire kingdom will see what I mean when I say, I mean..." he trailed off again as Adalind flung her legs over the side of the bed, wrapping one of the heavy blankets around her shoulders. She was a good deal younger than he, and his third wife. It was one of the benefits of wealth and position to never grow old without a beautiful wife. Yawning, she told him what he wanted to hear, and he jumped into bed next to her, pulling her under the covers, as if he were a much younger man. Feeling virile, and gilded for battle, he gathered his trusted knights at the great stone gates, and set march into the center of town. 

For the second time this morning, David burst through the doors of his intended target. Or rather, his two foremost knights burst through, and David, sword drawn, advanced to the throat of his target, still beautifully knotted in the arms of love. Ripping their intertwined hands apart, he threw his victim to his knees by the side of the bed. 

"My King!" Cried the Queen, giving little thought to her own modesty as she rushed to be by her husband's side. 

"Ah! I wouldn't, my lady," cautioned David, shaking a finger at her. "If you are lucky, you could be my new liaison to the palace, as soon as your husband is dead and I rule in wealth and title, alike." David sneered and one of the knights restrained her by her elbows. Palace guards rushed in to the rescue of the King and Queen, but were quickly cut down by David's knights. 

"It will be alright, Belle. I will never let anything happen to you." the King assured his wife, disregarding David's blade pressing against his throat. "What is this about, Lord David?"

"About?" David snorted again, pressing the sword hard enough to draw blood from the top layers of skin. "You should know what this is about. This is my kingdom now!" Spit flung from his engorged neck as he screamed, red-faced, to the entire room. 

"Belle," the King's voice was fluttered, but gentle, "I need you to remember; one man may be lost today, but one man is not..." but the King's final words were cut short by steel. Queen Belle screamed and fell to her knees, sobbing. The beautiful kingdom she had built with her gallant husband had fallen into the hands of torment.