You're a cold heart, girl.

I was just commenting on someone’s LJ post about how hard world building is and sort of kidding until I really thought about it. Because damn do I really love world building. I would be content to sit and think about race relations and gender and food and religions and languages for a fictional place until the cows come home. Like, can I do that? Can I convince people to give me money in exchange for blueprints for places they were thinking about but can’t really map out? And then they can take these blueprints and go off and write about them in great detail with their stories and I will serenely sip chai in my worn out cardigans and work on the next world.

Elodie’d planned to take the circus as far as San Francisco and then disappear into the hills and the markets. People dropped out of circuses and sideshows all of the time, and there was nothing like the scent of animals and the trample of wagon wheels to erase a trail. It was a course correction that had led her to the edge of a ravine somewhere near Denver, holding hands with the twins and staring down at a thin stream. Two things had happened to bring her there. 

The first thing happened almost immediately. She had just finished brokering her passage with the dandy that ran the circus and decided to take a look around. It was mid-morning and the assorted workers and performers were attending to their trades and banalities, so she slipped into the main tent expecting to be left alone with it. Instead she found the resident aerialists practicing their routine. They swung and flipped and dropped and did it all with such assured grace that she couldn’t look away.

She could turn into birds, but these two seemingly ordinary people had somehow learned to fly without wings. Her heart sped up and she stepped into the center of the ring without realizing it. When they spotted her they laughed. The boy’s laugh sounded like breaking glass and the girl’s like leaves skittering across the ground in the wind. She fell in love with the both of them immediately, but it was the sister, Sofia, who managed to capture and keep her attention.

The second thing that happened was that the true magic that she was passing off as a parlor trick started to draw crowds and bring in money. The dandy had ripped up their agreement and for the first time she truly realized that everyone who had feet on the ground dreamed of living amongst the clouds. Which is why she and the twins had left camp that day to go climbing and hadn’t yet decided if they wanted to go back.

1. Pete is in the club again.

2. The time Erik spent in the hands of Klaus Schmidt had been almost inconsequential.

3. Cain leaned against the ornate stone mantle of the fireplace like a coat hung on a rack and gazed out at the room over the lip of his wine glass.

4. Five years, and Wolfwood still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was in someone else’s skin.

5. “And the Host Club?” Mori asked.

6. Arthur’s in a maze, literally this time, with fountains and creepy statues and everything.

7. Arthur hadn’t spoken to Dom in almost a year, so he wasn’t sure what he expected to hear when he answered the phone, but it certainly wasn’t “What the fuck was Eames doing in Pretoria?”

8. Eames can hear the music in the hallway.

9. “Havoc, put that goddamned thing out.”

10. The room is silent when he opens his eyes, though the walls and the part of the bed in his field of vision waver with his body’s tremor of withdrawal.

11. When the phone rang Brendon heard it through several layers of sleep and heavy duvet.

12. The first time Carasel touched Saraquael, Saraquael merely looked up at him, blank eyes behind perfect eyelashes that questioned the reasoning behind being touched.

13. When Jefferson opens his door late in the evening August looks utterly defeated.

14. He kisses Joseph on the front steps because he can.

15. When Jefferson makes it back to the mansion it’s pitch dark, in spite of only being mid-evening. 

16. August’s favorite seat in the cafe is a tall stool set at a high counter that borders the floor to ceiling front windows.

17. Evelyn throws open the front door, surprising Barbara, who hadn’t expected them for another hour at least.

18. From his perch on the roof of the pogey plant Dick could see almost all of the activity as it happened below him on the Blüdhaven wharf.

19. It’s Logan who drags him back.

20. Bucky has grieved so many people he’s got it down to a science.

The scene is wet, dew and blood defying the arid night and the air in your lungs. You knew you’d like to die with your head upon grass that was just too long to be considered kempt. Like your hair. Like the cardigan you’ve been wearing since the last time you saw her—eyes on fire with flushed cheeks and porcelain cups hurtling towards you. (Domestic bombs shatter and you will never sweet up all the pieces.) Like your stubble and your language and your last news story.

But not like this. 

You wanted the battle. You wanted your sharp tongue to slit your throat cleanly, not for someone else’s fingernails to scratch clumsily for blood at your wrists before they left you alone to wait. Awake, you will be dying forever while the dew creeps into the red splashed across your onion paper skin.

Now your eyes burn too. As Death does her laps she hurdles over you every time for fear of dragging the tattered ends of her skirts through the fire. 

Wow. It’s been a long time since I stayed up til one pounding out fic. God damn you Winter Soldier Feelings! Now I just need to get someone to beta it for me before Wednesday. Help, I don’t know how to life anymore.

Awake at 12:30 AM reading the 1890 census instead of sleeping. Become a writer, kids! You too can make the most boring of poor life choices!

• Record the podcast. 
• Eat dinner. 
• Clean the tub, because it’s still a swamp from yesterday. 
• Edit Legoline’s Dick story.
• Edit my own poem up for publication. 
• Get a solid outline on the Bucky Throwdown piece.
• Research the prominent minority in North Florida in the late 1800s for steampunk superhero reasons. 

And….hajime!