wittythefirsttimeyoureadit's Xanga

Friday, May 23, 2008

Fri, 23 May 2008 15:10:55 GMT

"You know that that thing has only a fifty percent chance of hitting me even if your aim is dead accurate."
"SHUT UP!" he was sweating. The droplets turning to mist as they dripped off of him. The gun was shaking in his hand.
"You really should have stuck with something that actually had a chance of touching me. That sword you were using was rather effective." I permitted myself a slight grin. Internally though, I was terrified of the sword. He had come quite close to destroying me completely thrice.
"Don't give me that crap! That sword barely touched you. I'd be dead right now if I hadn't gotten the gun so I'm not Putting it Down!"
"Easy, easy," he had no idea how close he'd come. I sure as hell wasn't going to tell him. "I'll tell you what. You leave right now. I'll keep the weapons, except for that gun. I'll keep the Navaran and the two Chie, but you can have your wife. I'll even give you a full day before I inform the authorities."
"Bull. I'll give you three seconds before I fire a bullet into your head."
"Think about that for a second! You have a thirty percent chance of even hitting me in a fatal location. Add that to the fifty percent chace of the bullet passing right through me and I have an eighty-five percent chance of survival, and enough time to come over there and kill you before you can rearm. I don't like those odds, but neither should you. Take the compromise."
He stood there. Staring at me for a very long moment. His eyes glancing between me and the hostages. He looke me deep in the eyes, as his calmed from deep red to pink, and said "No."
And he fired.

"And then what happened?"
"I'm in medical bay with a bullet wound in me! What the hell do you think happened?"
"So he got everything?"
"Yup."
"Damn."
"I know."

Monday, May 12, 2008

Mon, 12 May 2008 11:55:33 GMT

"What do you mean?"
"I'm really old."
"You're older than the gods?"
The dark skinned man chuckled. "I'm probably older than their momma."
The younger man took a long pull at his drink, staring through the table. "Did you ever meet her?"
Another chuckle. "Nah. By the time anyone knew who she was, she had already married the creator."
This was met by a long pause. The young man with the bizzarre features slowly let a scowl dominate his face. "Have you ever seen her?"
"Not personally no. There once was a painting made of her though. I saw that in the elven court at Listhouriai. It was very lifelike."
The younger man's head snapped up and he immediately asked. "Is it still there?"
"Sorry son. The whole place burned to the ground three centuries ago."
"You know, they all say that you're really old, but you seem pretty human. How is that possible."
"Kid, I'm more human than you, but that's not saying much. I'm a little less than half human. The rest is all entish and elvish."
"Oh, that's interesting. You don't see many crossbreeds around."
"Not anymore, but they used to be everywhere. When I was born I was one of many in my village.

Friday, February 29, 2008

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:21:52 GMT

"How the hell do you pull this shit off?" exclaimed the smaller of the two men, momentarily forgetting the cup in his hand and spilling part of his Canoe Love Pilsner onto the porch.
"Um." said the taller of the two. "I think that's a party foul." pointing at the spill.
"Whatever. This is more important. You're telling me you made out with two different women, and a third confessed having a major crush on you, all within the same damn weekend? And that doesn't include the ones who just flirted with you?" he quickly brought his hand to his mouth after realizing that he was beginning to spray spittle in his excitement.
"Look, it's not like it was anything I did." The taller man's voice had taken on a note of defensiveness. "I guess I was just around the right women at the right time."
"Pshht! That's a ball of crap. You got that italian chick to focus on you more than anyone else. Besides, how do you explain the crush? That was not the right woman at the right time."
"So what? I'm not interested in her."
"What!? That has nothing to do with it! It's the fact that it happened! Fuck, man. Do you know how many times that that has happened to me?" He waited until the other man began to speak just to cut him off, yelling, "Once! Once dude. And that was in the seventh grade!" He grimaced into his hand for a second before saying, "You get the women. You get the women like I never will and you don't even capitalize on it. A girl crushes on you and you blow her off. A girl makes out with you and you tell her to stop. I will never be in a position where I could tell a girl to stop, and you're treating it like it's no big deal. I can't believe you man."
"Hey!" the taller man snapped back angrily. "First off, the girl I made out with was on the rebound and knew I didn't like her like that. She was the one who gaveme the opportunity to tell her to stop. It was her idea, not mine. And second!" he had to shout the word to cut off the protest of the other man. "Secondly, the one who crushed on me is retarded!"
"Dude, I've met her, and she's not that retarded."
"You haven't had a conversation with her. Talk with her for more than two minutes and you'll see it clearly. She's on disability for a reason. The girl is just, slow."
"Is that any reason to kick her to the side? Does it make her any less human?"
"Look, she's still a person, and there's nothing wrong with her. Well, I mean, there's nothing... She's fine, but I know that I can do better. I can find a woman that is on my intellectual level."
The other man just shook his head angrily and went back to his beer. Which caused the taller of the two to decide to fill the silence.
"If you care so much, why don't you ask her out?"
He quickly swallowed his sip and shouted back "Because she doesn't want me! She wants You, Dumbass!"
"Hey, like I said, I can do better!"
"Well I can't!" He screamed the last word with such vehemence that people drinking four porches away looked over. "You motherfucker! I can't even get a retarded chick to look at me, and here you are going on about how stressfull your life is! You had, as I recall a three week grand total of two women making out with you, two flashing you, and four confessing crushes on you! You have it fucking made, and I don't want to hear it anymore. The next time you feel like whining, do me a favor and shut the hell up, spend three seconds counting the stuff that has gone right with you, and afterwards, if you still feel like crying yourself a river, do me another favor and jump in." with that he downed the last of his beer, knocked the rest of the tall man's beer off the railing into the bushes and stormed inside.
The taller man stood on the porch motionless, thinking about how he'd been in the same place as his friend not so long ago, and wishing he could just take the attention of even one woman away from himself and direct it to his friend.

What can I say? I have a thing for mechanical women.

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:58:58 GMT

I almost imagined that I could hear the faint whirrs and clicks of her arms over the sound of the music, but then again, I would only have been imagining them anyway. I could only ever hear them when I was in full gear and she was close by. Still, I’d rarely been closer to her than at that moment, suit or no.

The music was the standard club fare, techno with a bit of pop and hip-hop thrown in. The whole crowd was moving and I had already lost everyone in our group but her. I was a little surprised that she was all up on me even though nobody we knew was around to be her audience. She also seemed to be laughing less and dancing more. I gave up and decided that it was all in my head. We just kept dancing till the end of the song and into the next. The Jäger had already going to my brain and I was feeling invincible. I was relaxed, happy, and feeling like no matter what I did life was going to be okay.

She was dancing really close now. I could feel her body heat. I went with it. The sinuous movements, the arms mostly around each other, it was dancing, just more fun than usual. I thought about how shocked people were about this kind of thing in junior high. They described it as sex with clothes on. The memory made me laugh out loud. Chopper looked at my face, quizzically. I leaned in to put my mouth by her ear and yelled over the music.

“I was remembering junior high.” I pulled back to see if she understood. She still looked confused, but she leaned in and replied.

“You went to clubbing in junior high?”

“No. No, I was thinking about school dances. They were so shocked by this kind of thing back then.” This time she pulled back with a look of admiring surprise.

“You mean,” she yelled, “You used to bump and grind in junior high?”

“What? No.” I leaned in again. “I never went to the dances but that kind of dancing shocked them. I was the dork of my class and dances would’ve sucked.”

“I was a dork too. I was actually shy, quiet, never did anything like this-” and then she held tight with her arms and I felt her lips on my neck.

I nearly fell over entirely. I lost focus for a second. Several muscle groups went all tingly for a moment. I was lost in that intense, warm, exhilarated feeling until she pulled back.

I looked her in the eyes for a moment. She was smiling, but I knew her. There was a fake confidence in that smile that said “I’m just playing with you”, but it was just a screen. Below the surface was an uncertainty. She was afraid that I was going to back off, reject it, run, or at the very least laugh it off as a joke. I didn’t have any plan of letting that happen to her. She had just laid her cards on the table, and as shocked as I was, I wasn’t going to punish her for taking a risk. Not after what I’d said earlier that day. I pulled her in close, and began the rest of what turned out to be an amazing night.

Pride and petulance

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 02:14:52 GMT

“Back off!”

I froze with one foot in the door. I looked around the room to see who Pride was yelling at, but everyone else looked as surprised as me. After a long pause where we all looked at each other quizzically, Chopper spoke up from the couch. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah!” she snapped “I’m peachy, I’m cool, It’s all good. I… I just need some space.” She didn’t move though. She just stayed sitting at the table, staring down at the paper without reading it. The others slowly got back to what they had been doing. Chopper and Riot kept glancing back to her to make sure she was fine. I just stood in the doorway, trying to decide whether to stay or leave. When I looked at Pride I thought about the fact that she was under so much stress. She wasn’t handling the strain as well as everyone else. That is, she hadn’t been since Sidney. Seeing her look so vulnerable made me wish I was in a position to do something about it. I just wanted to take care of her and hel- “Just Shutup!” she screamed it. Everyone else jumped at the sound and I stiffened again.

Chopper spoke up, “Nobody said anything. What did you hear?” Pride had put her head in her hands and was gritting her teeth.

“I didn’t hear anything. Nobody said anything. It wasn’t sound.”

“Was it mental? Telepathy or something?” asked chopper. Something surfaced in the back of my mind. Something Pride had said months ago.

“Was it a smell?”

She glared at me. I was suddenly glad she didn’t have any projectile abilities because she looked furious with me.

“Shut up!” she was now definitely talking to me. “You know what’s going on so either suit up or back off.”

“What?” I was so confused. “What did I do?”

“Don’t give me that! You know what I smelled.”

“I have no idea.”

“Either suit up or leave! I’m not kidding around!” The others started to stand up. They knew that if she struck first, someone would have to take her down.

“I’m not going to fight you, and I’m not leaving until we have everything straightened out.”

“I’m not gonna fight you. Just put on the damn armor if you’re staying.”

Riot looked over at me. “Blitz. Everything is fine. It’s all under control. Just put on the armor and it’ll all be okay.”

I knew that he could hold her back as soon as she tried anything, so I activated the base layer of my suit. I felt the familiar sensation of the bodyglove covering me while the simple weapons and helmet whirred and clicked into place. I took basic readings of her temperature, breathing, and heart rate, to see if she was really okay. Everything was elevated. It was like she was working very hard on something, like she’d been exercising or something.

“There now.” said riot. “He’s in the suit like you asked. Are we cool now?”

“No!” She turned her head back and put it into her hands again. Her vitals were still running hot, but she was starting to cool down. She just sat there for a minute and when her body settled back toward a more natural state Chopper signaled the others to relax. Dragon and Founder sat back down to watch the TV, but Riot didn’t move. Chopper shot him a look and gestured again, but he kept his eyes on pride. He didn’t need to watch her to know her exact movements, but he was playing the noble hero and refused to watch her without his eyes.

“Riot” Pride said, her eyes still covered. “Listen to Chopper. I’m fine. And Chopper, it’s me, and we're in the same room, a gesture is as loud as a spoken word when you’re this close to me.”

“Alright then. Riot, her vitals are fine, she’s calmed down entirely. You can stand down.”

“Well there’s no polite way to put this, but no. I’m not backing down until she can tell me what happened in the first place and how to keep it from happening again.”

“I’m right here jackass. You can talk to me directly.” She turned to look at him. She was glaring, but without the same fire that she’d turned on me. “You can’t prevent it from happening again, and exactly what happened is none of your damn business.”

“Bull. If you turn on a team member it is everyone’s business.”

She snorted in reply before saying, “I didn’t turn on shit. He’s fine, and so’s everyone else so again I say it’s none of your business.”

“And what would’ve happened to Blitz if he hadn’t kitted up?”

“That’s between me and Blitz.”

“No. It’s not.” He said it with the same leaden tone that in most contexts would mean that he was already reaching for a weapon. The difference with him was the fact that he was a weapon.

“Actually, I believe that until he and I have had a chance to talk, I am the only one who can judge that.”

“Fine. I recommend that you start talking.”

“Not here. This is between me and him.”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight until I have some assurance that you won’t attack him when you get the chance.”

“You get nothing. This isn’t your fucking business and until we get a moment alone I can’t even guarantee that I’ll ever not want to attack him.”

“Dreadnaught!” I blurted, before the tense conversation could escalate into something worse.

They just stared at me, momentarily distracted from their argument out of total confusion. I explained my entire thought. “I trust Dread, and I’m sure that you trust her since she’s your superior, right?” Pride gave a slight nod. “So we talk about this in front of her and Riot can back off. Does that sound okay with you guys?” Inside my own head I prayed to God to help them be okay with it.

They both agreed that it was okay, and Chopper told us that Dreadnaught was already on her way. No doubt she’d gotten Dread on the line as soon as the situation with pride had gotten out of control.

In a couple of minutes we were sitting alone at the table with dreadnaught standing by the door.

Eventually Dreadnaught spoke up. “Either one of you guys should start talking or I’m locking you both up in a box and shaking it.”

“Okay,” I started. “What happened to you just then? It seemed like you freaked at soon as I go to the room, before I even did anything.”

“Yeah right. You know what you did.”

“If I knew, we wouldn’t be talking right now would we?”

She paused, looked me in the eye for the first time since the glare and said, “You want me.” I sat back in my chair in surprise. She continued, “I told you once before that I can smell it clearly. As soon as you walk into a room and see me I can smell you getting aroused.”

“Wait,” I stopped her “I don’t get aroused! I may be attracted to you but there’s a difference.”

“Not as far as your pheromones are concerned. And that’s all I have to go off of.”

“You could try going off of my actions! Have I ever acted like I wanted to jump you? No. Have I ever even tried to flirt? No. I know you’re not interested and I’ve respected that, so as far as I’m concerned this is a matter between you and your nose.”

“The problem is not that I’m disinterested. The problem is that I’m in estrus. Right now I have no mate and you are the only male sending any signals my way. My body is hormonally out of whack and has decided to find you attractive for the sake of procreation. I still don’t want you, but at the same time, when I can smell you the only thing I can think about is jumping your bones.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“If you ever take advantage of me in this state, I will send you to heaven in the bedroom and as soon as my mind clears I will send your soul to hell.”

“Hey. I’m not that guy. I don’t rape. Keep your accusations to yourself.” I thought about the situation at hand for a moment and said “Look, we are intelligent adults here. We’ve both been through adolescence before, we both know what it’s like to have hormonal surges and strong inexplicable attractions. You just happen to be doing it again in a different way. I think that over time you can learn to control this adolescence too. Until you do though, I’d be willing to wear my gear around the compound when you ovulate.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier for you to just get over me and focus on somebody else? Chopper’s pretty hot. There’s that one lab tech that founder was kind of into.”

“Dude. I’m not into you the way you think. I think you are attractive. Period. That isn’t gonna change unless you become uglier to me both physically and as a person. I can’t just switch my attraction off like a light bulb so I’ll stick with the body suit.”

Sidney

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:39:04 GMT

Blood. Pooling out across the floor, mixing with rivulets from the children, leaking away from me.
The explosions becoming less deafening, but I still hear the giggling sounds. My mind detaching from everything around me notices that the sound is a psychological tactic. The giggling is meant to unnerve us and make us slip up. Just like the heads of the people. He wants fear. He loves it.
The blood traveling further now. Spilling off the edge of the ceiling, into the sky. I wonder how far it goes, or if it is real, if up and down are real at all, if I am real. I am real, but is the psycho?
As the thought occurs, I slowly turn my head upward to see the ground below me.  Olympus fighting at incredible speed. He sweats, bleeds, and screams words I've never known in the face of the man. That man in the suit. The spotless suit, the perpetual grin on the leathery face. Bastard. Killed me.
Movement. In the rubble of the brick building. Dreadnaught standing up. Armor is dented, cracked, sparking, and moving in stop motion. Three cannons aim. The giggles stop. The man explodes.
Olympus on the ground. Dreadnaught on her back. Blood turning brown on the ceiling. Still flowing, flowing around the nicely polished shoes of the well dressed man standing over me, or below me.
"Don't try to get the directions right." the voice is high pitched, and his lips don't move, they never move. "The difference between up and down is so subtle. It doesn't need too much explanation." the giggling returns. The children stand up. They are corpses. They assemble each other, sticking arms and legs back on, moving like marionettes, giggling. They dance. I hear music. It is celtic, irish, Tim Finnegan's Wake. The giggling gets louder "Tim Finnegan's Wake. He wasn't dead. They thought he died and he didn't. He got back up afterward. Just like the kiddies. They aren't dead. Look at them dancing around. It's so cute."
I look back to the ground. Dreadnaught, Olympus, Circus, Flashpoint all in sight. Not moving. Twitching from Chopper, but not from the half attached to her head. Oracle still spinning slowly in midair, still screaming. No voice, no breath, just sound.
"Believe me, they're dead. All of them. That's why I'm playing with you. You're the only one left. You're not much fun yet, but soon you'll be dancing too." I can't die "You will. Soon." My soul will live on. "So what? Fuck your soul, I want your body. Souls can't scream, or bleed, or cry." "Speechless? In your own mind? You must be dying." Children picking me up, putting my armor back together. "Help him start to dance." holding my body up, standing on the ceiling. Where did the blood go. firing gauntlet beams. Falling through the sky. No ceiling keeping me down. Parts of children falling with me.
The buildings shrink, the ground falls away. Falling. The world spins. Bodies flying away from me. Falling again. To the ground. My head clearing. There isn't that much blood in the human body. I took too long to die. I wasn't seeing what was real. I'm out of the cauldron now. He has no affect on me. Checking equipment.
Flight=yes
Armor=40% integrity
Sensors=50% functional
Weapons-Gauntlets=yes
       -Torso=left yes
       -Back=yes
       -Head=yes
       -Legs=no
Life support=10% functional
That's good enough for me. Flight systems engaged. No more falling. Targeting scanners online. Heat signatures. Bingo. A recently damaged floating ceiling. Magnify. He's got nobody around him. One good straight clean shot from a half mile away. Steady. Beam weapons ready. Fire.
Right through his fucking chest. Now to get down there and see who's really dead, and pray that he was lying about that too.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 22:01:11 GMT

It was small, square, and metal. It wasn't quite like any plug-in jack I'd ever seen, but it did look sort of like several usb ports combined. It was in the base of her skull an inch above her hairline.
"What did you do?" I was shocked that she'd turned her back on the thing that we'd always agreed on. The thing that seperated us from everybody else.
"Look, I am one of the most powerful weapons we have. My arsenal dwarfs yours, and my armor is only surpassed by Olympus's sword. I am the cornerstone of my team, and in the last five incursions I got my ass slammed to the dirt because I'm too damn slow. I had to do something."
"No," that couldn't be right. "This was never about speed or equality. This has nothing to do with performance. If it did, I'd have gotten myself hooked up like Riot or Flashpoint. I hold my own and so do you, and that's supposed to be enough." I realized my voice was getting tense, but I couldn't stop that.
"I know what it's really about, but that doesn't matter. If I keep leading while getting my ass kicked, it's going to get somebody killed. You saw how Pride had to save that kid in Moscow. I don't want to keep fumbling if it means people's lives."
"You're still fighting just fine, and we are teams for a reason. So don't give me this shit. The point is that you are changing you. That's the thing and the whole of the thing. You and I both said 'What? Trade in my body? No way, I'm fine with me the way that I am. How can you guys swap out your bodies when you may have to leave The Company someday? Err on the side of caution. Don't turn your God-given body into Company property.' You agreed with me on that. If they decide to screw us we have less to lose by not being modded out. So what's going on with you?"
"It's you."
I froze, stunned.
"huh?"
"It's because you're still you. I know that I can count on you. If everything goes badly, I can trust you to get out safe. I've learned to trust you more than my own guys. Don't get me wrong, I trust them big time. They have my back, but you do to, and I can't order you around. I know that I can trust you to stay clean, so it'll be okay if I do this."
"Is this about the... what happened in Sidney?"
"No. It's just... I..." tears started to build in her eyes at the memory of that hell hole. "I just need to do my job better, and as long as one of us keeps to the deal, we'll be okay."
I stared at her for a long time. There was more that I wanted to ask, but I already had my answers. There was more i wanted to say, but she'd already made up her mind. Still, there was one thing left, and after the trust she was putting in me, it was one of the worst things that I had to say.
"You know what we said that second week. That night in the field." Her face tightened, anticipating my words. "If everything goes to pure shit. If it goes down in the worst way and I'm the only one who's still myself. I won't hesitate to put your face in the crosshairs. I can't." She breathed deep, calming her voice in order to say, "Do not hesitate. You are the only one left, so when it happens, Make every shot count."

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 04:19:53 GMT

You ever have one of those afternoons where you're sitting in your bed, wearing a pair of socks and some jewlery, eating mashed potatoes and popcorn, and watching an epsisode that you don't like, and you are sure that you won't like it because you didn't the last two times you saw it, and you think "Man, I have one long day ahead of me. I'll be lucky to get to bed by one AM." That moment happened to me approximately thirteen hours ago. I am starting to reeally look forward to thursday night. I just hope I'll still have enough money by then to be able to enjoy something cold wet and relaxing.

Illegitimi non Carborundum

This may be self referential, but I'm not panicking.

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 02:09:33 GMT

Every year around this time I seem to have a freak out break down cracked out why me why me why me entry. It is always a very stressful time of year for me. This year I don't know when it will happen, but I can feel it building up. I can tell in a couple of ways. One is the fact that I keep having escape fantasies in my daydreams, and another is the fact that I am having wicked urges to act really wierd and unpredictable in public around campus. This may not seem that odd for me, and it isn't all that odd, but the fact is I want to go above and beyond the normal me. I want to stand by the railing of the thing in front of the science center atrium staring out across the fields, while wearing formal clothes and a kilt and loudly read excerpts from random stand up comedians' shows, in the style of a baptist minister. I want to carve the word CRAZY on a liter bottle of coke and wear it around my neck and when people comment on it I'll open the cap and pull out a rolled up piece of paper with a picture of a chinchilla on one side and show it to them. And if they ask any more questions I'll turn the paper over and show them the side that says "How long have you known me that you still ask that stupid question?" These are the urges that I'm having.
My analysis of the situation is that the escape fantasies are coming from my deep seated belief that I'm going to graduate with an inability to get a job, so the closer I get to graduation, the closer I'm inevitably coming to being destitute. The wierd urges I put down to me feeling lonely. I think it is an instinctual urge that is driving me towards the bizarre actions. In many species the males perform a public display of the qualities that make them undeniably good mates. Usually this is a display of strength, endurance, healthy coloring, or something else that inarguably shows the virility of the male. The instincts welling up in my unconscious mind are surfacing, hitting the rest of my mind, and through some sort of weird neurochemical metamorphosis have become an unconscious belief that I could improve my chances of getting women by making them confused and mildly worried. There is just enough illogic in this hypothesis that I'm willing to believe it.

On a side note, does anyone else have a shitload of footprints? I checked and I have 37 from this week alone. All from ohio.

I wanna see you dance

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 16:34:02 GMT

This soft swaying breeze. This lilting movement. I feel like my mind is drifting away, disconnected, detached, lost in a sea of light and touch. I feel my limbs that aren't around me, they pass through clouds that are more real than the eyes I see them with. I cannot touch the earth or sky, I am both. This soft swaying breeze carries me without touching me, holds me up as it sweeps the sky clear. It rakes away the clouds, pushing them, blowing them away from my form, my specter, my self. I feel their warmth slide off of me like silk, and a soothing chill envelops me. The clouds scatter to the distance and reveal a sky with no light, a black so deep that it plays with sight, the eye looks for colors that aren't there, patterns that cannot be found. Swirls of color slide around the sky behind the eyes, but nothing exists in the beyond. But they come. Slowly a few stars appear, fading their shine from nothing. There are few, so few, but they get brighter and brighter, and soon more appear between them. Spreading out in patterns of spirals, lines, spiderwebs, and a thousand different forms, getting brighter and brighter all the time. The wind is picking up, swirling and spinning, catching at hair I cannot see, and caressing skin that has no substance. It pulls me, increasing with the soft light, chilling my self with a gentle frost that alights one moment and blows away the next. It surrounds me like a cloud of coying butterflies. It teases me, making me gasp at air I cannot need. The starshine is brightening, the stars are filling the void with millions upon millions of celestial bodies. They crowd out the black with their light. Among them appear comets. Sudden perseid showers of light with a dozen stars falling. They make movement in the sky, and the wind sweeps to catch them. Streaming into the sky, it pours, thickening, pushing, forcing it's way up and up, the swirls gone the frosts forgotten, it needs one thing. The sky. And as it blows, I am swept with it. I fly upward, moving to the sky and the stars that are crowding each other throughout the sky, still growing, being born, and falling. More and more, their light shining brighter and brighter, warmer and warmer. I feel the warmth touching me, past the body, through the mind, like laughter. It comes like wall of fog rolling through me, as i watch the stars falling around me. There is no sky left to hold them. They fill the void and all they can do is dive into the wind. It pushes, holding them back, pushing me up. I touch a sky filled with points of light. A solid wall of stars more real than the feet that I reach out to them with. The world spins and I am standing in a field of stars. The wind is gone, and the sky is at my feet. A carpet of stars, shining and soft like marigolds, holds me up. Thier light passes through me, playing on the curves, twinkling through my hair and fingertips. I can feel it passing through me, as though it were spiderwebs sliding over my skin. I spin in the light, feeling it shine, and see another twinkling form. A perfect figure spinning in the light. As I begin to make out the form, a humming begins. A soft sound that is practically on the edge of hearing. It seems to be coming from everywhere at once. As it gets louder, pitches become clear, melodies emerge from a single tone. It begins to swirl like the wind, single notes arise and fade, like the stars, and the frost, the notes are toying, playing. Every movement I make is echoed in the sound, it is teasing me into dancing. The other soul sees me move, and comes closer. We approach each other and the music builds, the pace quickens, the notes deepen. As we come close I see a perfect figure relected in the light. Smooth, soft curves of skin flicker in the starlight. The face is stunning, with eyes like diamonds that are filled with light as if they were stars themselves. I reach my hand out and feel a solid hand slide into it. There is skin, with muscles moving beneath it. There is surprize reflected in both faces, and the music begins to weave itself into harmonies that emerge as a simple pace, slow and alluring and soft. We pull together, folding into one another's arms, and slowly dance upon a field of stars.