Another Direction

I’ve been stymied on my work in progress, Avatar of the Maker. I’m in the section where things are ramping up to a battle, and uncertain as to how to make the action actually ramp up (or should it be the calm before the storm as I am currently writing it?)

I feel like I have lost my bearings, that I have lost my flow. This is why I’ve gone back to the beginnings (even though I’m not done with the book) to edit and get a feeling for what comes before. I’m hoping this will give me a jumpstart for the flow of the second half of the book.

After going through the first 4 chapters, I have a good feel for the beginning. Now to go through and see where the flow bogs down.

Here’s Chapter 4: The Great Loss

In a place where humans had never set foot, a group of beings sat in a room. Its black crystal walls twinkled with light from the molten white floor, from the white table, and from the participants themselves. The shortage of light did not lessen the sterility of the surroundings.
“The Apocalypse proved that we, the Archetypes, no longer take our protection of the human patterns seriously,” Luke said, his hands tented in thought. His ruggedness, in contrast to the unlined faces of the others, announced that he had, unlike most Archetypes, committed evil — in his case, for the sake of good. Also, unlike most Archetypes, he had repented, which gave him a perspective that could be called almost human.
“But they still embrace evil.” The Baraka Archetype, short and spare like his people, leaned forward. “They fight wars. They envy each other and they commit crimes out of greed.”
“Or out of want, or madness, or a dozen other things.” Luke grimaced, reflecting a view of reality that had wavered from the neutrality of an Archetype. Su, his consort and the Oldest of the Oldest, watched impassively. She knew how to play the game, Luke noted, something he had lost in his long association with humankind.
“If we give them the full impact of their cultural histories — not just the facts, but the fear, the hatred, the xenophobia.” The Bering Strait Archetype looked at his hands.
“How do you know it will make them worse? They already hold the oral tradition of their peoples’ pasts, and those seem to inspire xenophobia, it’s true. But what if they remember the full impact of the losses of war and weigh it against their hatred — would they decide to fight more? Or would they lay their weapons down?” Luke took a breath, to calm himself down, to wear the gravitas of the Archetype instead of the passion of humans. “What if gaining their cultural histories changes nothing at all, given that they are vast hybrids of cultures? The point is, if the humans kill each other, millions of them will not die with each death. If we keep holding the patterns of the humans — “
“One of our deaths will kill millions of humans through the loss of their patterns,” Su said. “Which is why the Maker created us nearly immortal. Yet the Triumvirate, Archetypes themselves, almost killed Lilith, who held the patterns of all women. Can we guarantee this won’t happen again?”
Suddenly, the residents of the room stopped speaking. Luke felt as if a wind had cut through his immortal bones and chilled them. Then he felt the weight, a weight of the history of countless descendants of the people of the seax, the knife that gave its name to the Saxons. And then his burdens vanished, and he felt a hollowness inside. The gasps from the others at the table echoed him.
“What — what was that?” The Ibero-Maurusian broke the silence.
“I think — Su, did you notice anything?” Luke asked, noting the puzzled look on his consort’s face.
“Nothing.” Su looked at the others at the table. “Except that all of you around me froze for a moment and slumped forward. As if something took something weighty from you.”
“As it has.” The Bering Strait Archetype pressed his lips together. “I think — I think we lost our patterns, and if so, the Maker has taken them from us.” He sounded bewildered, as if he lost something more than the weight of patterns.
“I must…” the Ibero-Maurusian said, then paused. “No.” She spoke slowly, as if weighing each word. “We may be the only ones whose have lost our patterns.”
“But what does this mean?” The Baraka pounded a fist on the table.
The Yolnju Archetype spoke. “I think this means that the Maker decided for us — He will take our patterns from us whether we are ready to relinquish them. And we’re the harbingers of this big change.”
The discussion broke down into discordant declarations of confusion.

Later, Luke felt a hollowness in his entire being as he shimmered into the chilly dawn at Barn Swallows’ Dance. His feet materialized on the beaten green surrounding their Commons building. In the early morning, none of the residents — the human residents, that is — wandered the grounds. Luke sought his daughter Lilith and her consort Adam, both Archetypes, to share the latest news from the Council of the Oldest. He set toward their little blue cottage, his boots treading on the fallen gold and red leaves of a maple tree.
Adam and Lilith lived as humans in the community of humans, to the consternation of the Council. They, and Luke and his consort as well, served as patrons of the collective. Giving — what? The residents showed more courage than the enemy and noncombatants in their fight to protect humanity. Humans proved more clever in the strategies they employed, subterfuge and illusion rather than brute force. Humans saved themselves, with the final sacrificial act of the Archetype Boss Aingeal merely a reflection of the compassion he saw by the humans. Or so Luke believed.
Humans, Luke thought, do not need us anymore. They do not need us to protect their cultural memories anymore. They can fully face their ancestors’ raw emotions of fear and hatred and pride and belongingness.
Humans are the future. Archetypes will fade into the past as the Maker decrees. Other than as repositories for human ancestral memory — the souls of cultures — Archetypes served no purpose.
Luke thought about the differences between Archetypes and humans. Humans lived Earthside in buildings they created with sweat and toil, which they adorned with mementos that reminded them of important things. The building — the house — protected humans from the elements, and the humans’ ingenuity and intelligence protected them from many more hazards. Humans grew efficient enough in protecting themselves to possess leisure time to dream, create, and cherish each other.
Archetypes dwelt in InterSpace, a nothingness of black crystalline walls and floors like milk glass. The Maker created Archetypes to need very little, not even each other’s company, but immortality and idle time weighed heavily on the soul. To fill their time, Archetypes fabricated what they furtively glimpsed Earthside from the stuff of InterSpace, and those artifacts would dissolve into their component molecules before too long, which kept the Archetypes from tiring of their material acquisitions.
Luke knocked on the door of the little blue cottage.
Luke, Adam said into Luke’s mind. You could have mindspoke us first.
I didn’t want to interrupt you from doing human things.
Adam opened the door, one eyebrow quirked. He wore the unrelieved black he preferred, which set off his pale gold skin and cinnamon brown eyes. Archetypes resembled superlative examples of the cultures they represented, and Adam’s Han and Proto-Celt heritage created a rare masculine beauty.
Adam looked Luke up and down. “What’s up?”
Luke hesitated. “Has anything — happened — to you? Strange feelings, or…?”
Adam shrugged. “No. Should it have?” He opened the door of their cottage to Luke.
“The Council just met, and I need to talk to someone. In person — this is not a matter of mindspeech.” Adam’s eyebrows raised, and he opened the door to Luke and stepped aside. Luke looked around at the house, at the decor in soothing blue, the comfortable couch and chair. On the wall hung a frame with two braids of hair — one black, one the golden blonde of his daughter’s hair — in the shape of a heart. A very human artifact, shaped by hands and not by thought in InterSpace.
“Luke?” Lilith asked her father, as he followed Adam into the living room. “What’s wrong?” A smile formed and faded on Luke’s face as he studied his daughter, noting as he so often did how his features reflected in his daughter’s face shone so radiantly.
“Nothing — I don’t think. At least I hope my vague worries are for naught.” Luke settled himself in a chair, feeling the whole of his six thousand years. “Well, the Council has been meeting for these three years since the Apocalypse. As you know, immortals take their sweet time deliberating on anything, especially immortals with as little imagination as Archetypes.” Luke steepled his hands.
“Deliberating on what?” Lilith asked, leaning forward.
“Whether humans should possess their own patterns, their cultural DNA. With us Archetypes carrying the collective cultural memory, the bone-deep emotions of culture, we subject large swaths of humanity to extinction if one of us gets killed.”
“Such as what almost happened in the Apocalypse because I held all the women’s cultural DNA.” Lilith stood. “It seems a simple decision that we should divest the DNA patterns to the humans. Each one gets a piece of that memory and there’s no mass die-offs.”
“I agree,” Luke mused, “but…”
“But?” Adam interjected.
“But just now, I sat in Council debating why humans earned the right to experience their full cultural memory — the Baraka and I debated whether cultural memory would exacerbate human nationalism — when I felt a great weight fall from me. From the collective gasp I heard from the others, I guessed they had experienced the same thing. The event stunned us into silence, rare for the Council.
“Su spoke out of the silence that fell upon us, asking what happened to the rest of us. She didn’t experience any of the disorientation, the lightening of our being, because her charges, the Denisovans, died millennia ago. That was how we reasoned we lost our charges’ cultural memory. Those patterns we held.”
“How?” Lilith inquired. “You said the Council hadn’t decided.”
Luke waited a beat, then two. He didn’t know how to say the suspicion in his mind —
“Yes?” Adam asked.
“I would guess the Maker reclaimed them.” Luke felt that vague, floaty feeling that had plagued him since the incident.
Adam and Lilith broke out in consternation. “The Maker? Does our Maker even exist?”
“Su remembers the Maker, who created the first of us. Su never saw Her after that, and the legend is that the Maker created us to do His work, and She left to create the clockwork of another world. Until, apparently, now.”
“Why now?” Adam inquired, brow furrowed.
“I would guess it’s because we’ve fallen down on our job.” Luke looked down at his hands. “Which we have, given that at best we’ve been indifferent to our human charges, and at worst —”
“Some of us plot to kill them.” Lilith grimaced. “It doesn’t matter that we — the people in this room — fought against those who planned to annihilate the humans. We, as a race, failed humans.” Lilith dropped her hands in her lap.
The three sat in silence. A luxurious black cat, another sign of his daughter’s growing humanity, stropped Luke’s ankles. He reached down and idly petted the cat.
“How do you know you’ve lost your patterns, Luke?” Adam pressed, leaning forward.
“You just know — it’s as if I’ve lost some weight, some substance suddenly. I feel strangely bereft without the weight of the humans’ patterns on me. Like I’ve lost my purpose.”
“But you have a purpose,” Lilith argued. “You’re on the Council. You help support Barn Swallows’ Dance.”
“I can’t explain it.” Luke rubbed his forehead. “It’s a feeling, a very human feeling. At least, being close enough to humans to understand feelings, I can name what’s happening. But I don’t know what to do with myself.”
The Bering Strait Archetype spoke in Luke’s head. We need you back up here.
“Excuse me,” Luke nodded to his daughter and her consort. “It’s time to face the music.” And Luke shimmered away.

“Luke.” The Bering Strait Archetype shot a pointed look at Luke as Luke re-materialized in the dark chamber. “Glad to see you again so soon. We’re not impetuous beings. Does this come from your exposure to humans?”
Su spoke. “What do we need to do to warn the other Archetypes of what will happen?”
The Baraka hesitated. “I don’t know that we should warn them,” he mused, his hands clasped in front of him, fingers interlaced. “If we warn them, they may speak to each other and magnify the issue far beyond reason. I think it’s in our best interest to keep this quiet, and let each Archetype believe he is the only one.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Su asked. “You assume our Archetypes make no contact with each other? Although we are an introverted people, it doesn’t follow that there’s no communication between us. All it would take is a daisy chain of acquaintances trading observations before several Archetypes would know it wasn’t just them, and our lack of warning would be suspect.”
“You mistake us Archetypes for humans,” the Baraka Archetype argued. “We are less volatile, more rational. I believe we will take this much more calmly than humans might.”
“You felt what happened,” Luke pressed. “You felt the hollowing out of your being. How did it make you feel? Rational? I think not.”
The Ibero-Maurusian jumped in. “I think the Baraka is correct. Besides, we hold no power over the divestment of human patterns, as it’s being driven by the Maker. Therefore, we possess no responsibility.”
In the end, the Council voted to keep secret the divestment of human patterns from the rest of the Archetypes. Luke took a deep breath against the very real turmoil churning in his stomach.

My Road Warrior Setup — Update

I’ve had my iPad Air/Logitech keyboard/Logitech mouse for over a month and have taken it on road trips. I have blogged with it, written on my work in progress, and surfed the Internet. I’ve given it enough of a workout that I can review my experience with it.

Weight and heft. Compared to a Surface Book 2, the components of my travel setup are lighter and easier to carry. They fit in the leather smaller-than-a-briefcase bag, and they’re still lighter than my Surface in a canvas messenger bag. Or least I perceive them as lighter — that leather bag isn’t light.
Screen size. The iPad screen is a little smaller than the Surface. Decently smaller, with the Surface 13.5” vs iPad’s 10.2”. Because this is a secondary setup, this doesn’t bother me. At home I have two old display screens at approximately 22”. If I need big screens, I dock to those. On the road, I’m more about function than form.
Looks. That being said about form and function, my setup is ridiculously cute. The logi keyboard and mouse in lavender lemonade match my case. Of course, this doesn’t really figure in my satisfaction with the setup. Really it doesn’t.
Function of the peripherals. How comfortable are my peripherals to use? The keyboard (Logitech K380) is responsive but sometimes needs to be re-added to Bluetooth. This is likely a Bluetooth thing. The mouse (Logitech Pebble) works superbly and is made for the hand.
Function of the iPad. I keep the iPad plugged in if at all possible, because playing with it too much will wear the battery down. I do not notice any lags, glitches, or quirks. There are glitches and quirks, but they seem more about the interaction between iPad, keyboard, and apps.
Pulling it all together. Overall, the iPad setup acts exactly like a computer, or at least exactly like an iPad acting like a computer. Where the computer would require to get rid of a screen by clicking the little x, the iPad has you click a bar at the bottom (or you could use your finger.) There is an occasional quirk where the keyboard will not scroll your screen up or down all the way (only with specific programs such as Jetpack. You can move the screen with your finger.

In conclusion, there’s a lot of good and very little trauma in using the road warrior setup of iPad and entry peripherals. I take it with me everywhere just in case I want to write, which is something I never did with my Surface. I won’t give up my Surface, because there are some things the Surface does better (like hooking up to the big screens). There are some things I haven’t tried on the iPad (Photoshop and other graphics) mostly because I can’t afford Photoshop on the iPad. Big productions will be better on the Surface, I suspect, but for everyday use I’m very happy with my iPad setup.

Incense

I’ve been feeling uninspired by writing today, even in my blog. I’ve spent the morning and much of the afternoon doing laundry, writing emails to students, and drinking a Starbucks venti brown sugar oatmilk shaken iced espresso (which reminds me of this.)

I enacted one of my writing rituals, incense. Not those cute little incense sticks or cones you see (so I’m told) at the local head shop, but the real thing: frankincense tears. The kind you have to burn on self-igniting charcoal. Church incense (if that church is hard-core; most of the church incense I’ve been seeing is myrrh and rose).

It’s a fine ritual: get the goblet-shaped censer (or the thurible if you’re high church), put a puck of charcoal in it and light it, let the sparks burn through, and add the incense.

But something happened differently this time.

I put the usual amount of incense in, the amount that gives a small trickle of smoke, but that’s not what I got. I must have accidentally found the formula for optimizing the amount of smoke, because that’s what I got — billows of smoke. So much smoke I thought the smoke alarm was going to go off. So much smoke that the Brothers at the Abbey would tell me to knock it off. So much smoke that I was getting a contact frankincense high.

It was lovely.

Growing up Catholic, I remember the thurible brought out on special occasions by the priest. A thurible has long chains and the priest can swing it back and forth. I remember smelling the incense and wishing more would waft into the back of the church where I invariably sat. My friend Les, not a priest, had a thurible and would swing it 360 degrees, but only in my peripheral vision so I didn’t see it. (The little imp.) I got my love of incense from him, and still have a couple ounces of myrrh incense from him I only use on very special occasions.

The quality of my day has changed because of the incense. I haven’t written any more yet, but there is a softness to the day I didn’t notice before.

Dead Bats and a Review

I’m going to find time to write today. I will not be a writer if I neglect the writing. First, I have to take the dead bat that my cats were all playing with to the Health Department to make sure it doesn’t have rabies. Good jolly morning we’re having here, especially if you’re the poor dead bat.

I’ve been thinking of Gaia’s Hands, and that one of my friends considered it “a fun read”. I never thought of it as a fun read, but I guess in some ways it is. A sentient monster vine, a rampant green thumb, an unlikely romance, a bad folksinger^*, a little snark.

It also has escalating acts of aggression within academia, scientific method^**, a breakup, a menacing presence, and computer espionage.

Ok, honestly, I can see how it would be a fun read. My favorite line in the book is when Josh, the male main character, says “Everyone has to start somewhere” at what might be an inconvenient time. Read it if you want to know how inconvenient a time.

* This is how we kill our exes as authors.

** We write what we know. I know academia.

A Short Hiatus

Wow, when was the last time I wrote here? I think it’s been a few days. I’ve been busy scheduling internship visits and going on internship visits and recovering from internship visits — in other words, summer as usual.

I’m struggling to write. This might be because I skipped to the last chapter of my book, hoping it would be an easy write, and it has been anything but. Maybe I need to go back to a hard chapter and start setting up for the final battle. There’s a few chapters of setup there to happen. Maybe it’s those doubts about writing creeping up again.

I’m not going to get out of those doubts any way but to start writing again. Even this short entry is writing, and I can do this again and again until I get out of the rut.

Broadway Cafe, Kansas City MO

I’m here in KC for a change of scenery and some writing time at my favorite cafe in town. I’m hoping I feel motivated to write on the story, because I’ve been struggling with that lately. I’ve skipped ahead to the last chapter to write on that, and maybe that’s the problem. Not much happens in the last chapter of a book except the tie up the loose ends. And in this case, a baby is definitely front and center.

I don’t really understand babies. I’m childless by choice; I have never been graced with a maternal instinct. But enough of that; I am sitting in the best cafe in Kansas City.

Broadway Cafe is the real thing, with worn chairs and scuffed walls and young baristas. I don’t know if they do latte art because I’m drinking their coffee of the day, Guatemala. The coffee is roasted and brewed so well that it has notes. It doesn’t just taste like dark roast. If we hadn’t just had breakfast at AC Hotel, we would have some pastries

So from here, I write on the book. Damn babies. What do babies do at 3 months old? They eat, poop, cry, burp and squeeze your finger. How hard can that be? They smile, which is how they get away with eating, pooping, crying, and burping all the time.

And people make burbling noises at them.

Ok, back to grounding myself in my surroundings. I have coffee, and I’m about to write. I’m about to write the sappiest chapter in my life. All it needs is a cute dog. (It’s not going to get a cute dog).

Ok, time to write …

Publications List (Personal)

Poetry/Short Stories:

Leach-Steffens, L. (2020). Thirty Years. Sad Girls Pub Lit. Available: https://www.sadgirlsclublit.com/post/thirty-years-lauren-leach-steffens

Leach-Steffens, L. (2020). Come to Realize. The Daily Drunk. Available: https://thedailydrunk.com/f/come-to-realize?blogcategory=Short+Story

Leach-Steffens, L. (2020. )Wasn’t/Was/Is. Riza Press. Available: https://rizapress.com/2020/01/09/wasnt-was-is/

Leach-Steffens, L. (2019). Slush Pile. Submittable Content for Creatives. Available: http://discover.submittable.com/blog/2019-rejection-horror-stories-part-1/

Leach-Steffens, L. (2019). Flourish. Cook Publishing Short Story Contest. Available: https://lleach.me/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/0ad2a-flourish.pdf

Self-Published Novels:

Leach-Steffens, L. (2022). Gaia’s Hands. Available: https://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Hands-Lauren-Leach-Steffens-ebook/dp/B09DBRN7XW/ref=sr_1_5?crid=25TC9AGIGJWQY&keywords=Lauren+Leach-Steffens&qid=1641131151&sprefix=lauren+leach-steffens%2Caps%2C75&sr=8-5

Leach-Steffens, L. (2022). It Takes Two to Kringle. Available: https://www.amazon.com/Takes-Two-Kringle-Lauren-Leach-Steffens-ebook/dp/B0B7GQLG82/ref=sr_1_1?crid=15G6GO2WRH6ND&keywords=It+Takes+Two+to+Kringle&qid=1683897739&s=digital-text&sprefix=it+takes+two+to+kringle%2Cdigital-text%2C100&sr=1-1

Leach-Steffens (2021). Kringle in the Night. Available: https://www.amazon.com/Kringle-Night-Chronicles-Book-ebook/dp/B09DBS4JX4?ref_=ast_author_dp

Leach-Steffens, L. (2020). The Kringle Conspiracy. Available: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08KFBLCPC?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks&qid=1641217948&sr=8-1

Serial Novel:

Leach-Steffens, L. (2021). Kel and Brother Coyote Save the Universe. Kindle Vella. Available: https://www.amazon.com/Kel-Brother-Coyote-Save-Universe/dp/B09B1CKVL2/ref=sr_1_1?crid=24TPNCO0NGU4L&keywords=Kel+and+Brother+Coyote&qid=1641218295&sprefix=kel+and+brother+coyote%2Caps%2C82&sr=8-1

I Need Something to Wake Me Up

I mean that title metaphorically, not in the coffee sense.

I have become sleepy lately (extending the metaphor). No Big Audacious Goals, just work and writing on a novel I’m afraid is sleepwalking across the countryside. No exciting plans this summer. No tempting opportunities. Nothing that gives my soul a psychic jolt of caffeine (this extended metaphor is getting silly).

I know I should be able to wake myself up, but inertia is so difficult to break. Which is why I need an assist from the Universe. I want this to be a good morning wake up, not a wake-up call in the colloquial sense, or a wake up and smell the coffee. A good gentle shake, or a cat plopping on my chest. Or fireworks, I’d take fireworks. Or someone yelling from the doorway.

In the meantime, I will see if I can make myself that metaphorical coffee.

Interrogating Leah

I’m sitting in the campus Starbucks, which is in the library, perhaps the coolest Bux in the US (or the nerdiest). My semester is over, which means flowers and warmer weather and more relaxed schedules are ahead of me.

I’m sitting in one of the coveted low upholstered chairs, which is what the early bird gets to sit in. The short table fits me perfectly, and I’m set up to write. Except I don’t feel motivated to write.

I have a novel to write on, and I’m on the first draft. All I can see is the imperfections — to where I’m reading the first half and putting huge comments on it. I haven’t even written the second half. NaNoWriMo and other guides suggest one gets the first draft written first, then edits.

I look up from my computer where I’ve been staring at the screen, and a tall, slender young woman sits in the chair across from me. Not one of my students, but I know her. She shouldn’t be here; she’s not real —

“Just because you wrote me doesn’t mean I’m not real,” Leah Inhofer points out as she pushes a wayward blond braid back. “I hear you’re having some problems.”

“Not really,” I say. “I just need to motivate myself.”

“Partially true,” Leah comments. “You need to motivate yourself. And you’re having problems.” When your character is a walking lie detector, lying to them is inadvisable.

“I don’t know if I like what I’m writing,” I confess. “I’m not even done writing, but I want to revise it. And I don’t know how.”

“First, you need to develop me and Baird better. Yeah, we’re sneaking around a bit at first, but we end up in love. Make us believable. Make our dilemma hefty enough that my pregnancy puts us in a spin.”

“You can’t be too much in love at first, or else there will not be the tension. You need to doubt the other person, not want to impose. Catch up to yourself before you admit to being in love.”

“I see where you’re coming from.” Leah leans forward to whisper. “It’s not like I know how Baird would be as a father. He seems so — clueless. I suppose that comes from having been born three years ago.”

“Was he really born, though? He’s a Nephilim — it’s more like he showed up fully adult to his birthday. Not like how your baby’s going to show up.”

“Just what I need. Morning sickness.” She takes a deep breath. “Boy or girl?”

“Girl,” I assure her.

Leah pumps her arm. “Sweet. Another generation to break the mold. My mom’s going to be thrilled.” She makes a sour face. “Will my mother ever forgive me for believing in the Maker religion?”

“Let’s just say you’ve given her a lot to think about.”

“Good. I should go find Baird. We’ve got a few minutes before my dad misses us.” And she stands quickly, braid swinging, and disappears.

An Excerpt from the Work in Progress

A week later, Brock and Leah sat in the livestock barn, hiding from the rain, which had broken out as they finished trimming the hooves of the Welsh Mountain sheep. The two sat on old folding chairs swiped from the Commons building.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

“Leah, are you okay?” Baird asked as the rain hammered the metal roof.

“You keep asking me that!” Leah stood up and peered out the door at the rain. “I’m okay.” She didn’t want to talk about it — the feeling of foreboding that settled in her bones like a chill she couldn’t shake.

“No, you’re not,” Baird observed. “If you were okay, then you’d be able to laugh at me being so clueless.”

“I’m okay!” Leah turned away from Baird.

“Leah!”

“What’s the matter with you, Baird?” Leah turned to him, hands on her hips. “Why are you getting into my business?”

“I’m not getting into your business,” Baird shouted, standing up. He sat just as quickly, burying his head in his hands.

“Baird, what’s wrong with you?” Leah asked, standing and striding over to Baird.

Baird raised his head. “I’m not used to snapping at you. I’m not used to snapping at anyone. But it’s part of my nature, this anger. And I’ve learned to ride herd on it, to become a person instead of the soldier they tried to make me. I’m not the calm, meditative person you think I am.” He paused. “Or I am, but it takes work. Like right now. I know there’s something wrong — you look pale and wiped out. But you won’t talk.”

Leah sat back down, pulled her chair closer to Baird. “I’ve been feeling like something bad is going to happen for days. I’ve not talked about it with you because I’ve not talked about it with anyone. I don’t want anyone to think I’m crazy.”

“You think anyone here would think you’re crazy? We have Trees that give talents, and if I heard correctly, Josh foresaw the Apocalypse, didn’t he?”

“But that’s just it.” Leah fidgeted with her hair, taking it out of its hair scrunchie and pulling it back again. “Josh’s vision quickly made sense because the Triumvirate announced they’d attack us and kill Lilith. But we have nothing to tie my vision or my foreboding to. The vision looks nothing to do with Barn Swallows’ Dance if it means anything at all.”

“You need to tell someone. What if it means something?” Baird reached for her shoulder, then pulled his hand back.

“You don’t understand.” Leah raised her hands in resignation. “My parents grow increasingly uncomfortable about this place. They’re not comfortable with their talents, or with the presence of the Nephilim —“

“You’re telling me.” Baird snorted. “Oh, sorry — go on.”

“I’m afraid —“ Leah paused, staring down at her hands.

“Afraid of what?” Baird prompted.

“I’m afraid they’re going to disown me. For being what they’re afraid of.” The words came out in a rush; their weight lingered.

“They wouldn’t disown you, would they?” Baird asked to break the long pause.

“If they thought I willfully walked away from God, they might,” Leah fretted. “I don’t even know if I believe in their God anymore.” Leah fell silent, waiting for their God to strike her down. Nothing happened.

“Who is your parents’ God?” Baird asked, clasping his hands.

“Well, God.” Leah snorted. “Ok, the Christian God.”

“Do humans believe in other gods?” Baird leaned back in his chair, ready to learn more about humans, a thing he pursued with enthusiasm.

“Well, Aasha Kaur’s Sikh, and she calls her deity Ek-Ongkar. The Hindu have a pantheon of Gods and Goddesses, and Jeanne and Josh believe in nature spirits. But I can’t —”
“You can’t believe in another God?” Baird guessed.

“Because our God is — “ Leah sighed. “It was comforting to grow up and feel we had the lock on salvation because we’d been born to the right God. It’s not so easy now, living at Barn Swallows’ Dance with so many beliefs.” Leah turned to Baird. “What do you believe?”

“Many of the Nephilim believe as the Archetypes do — in a creator we call the Maker.”

“Well, that’s original. But then again, we call our God ‘God’”.

“Anyhow,” Baird raised his eyebrows at her, “We don’t worship so much as acknowledge the Maker, who we believe constructed your world with its geography, its climate and weather and seasons, its ecosystems, and the Archetypes, held apart from humans by their immortality and their task to hold humans’ cultural underpinnings safe. And then They left to create another world.”

“So no sitting in judgment?” Leah asked. “That must be nice.”

“No. They’re pretty hands-off.” Baird cocked his head and listened — for the rain? Or for Leah’s father?

“They? I thought there was only one Maker,” Leah groused.

“The Maker has no gender. Or both genders. Nobody really knows.” Baird shrugged. “We haven’t heard from Them in thousands of years. Many thousands of years. We observe no rituals, we don’t pray. We are not the people of a deity.”

“That must be a relief.” Leah put her hands on her hips. “Beats being disowned by your parents for something you have no control over.”

“You need to tell someone. Besides me, that is — “

“I can’t tell Luke. Luke is — well, he looks at me like he knows something he’s not telling. I feel judged by him. It would be as bad as telling my parents.”

“Is there anyone else you can tell?”

“No. It would get back to my parents.” Leah grimaced. It would be so easy to let go her burden were it not for that.

“Okay,” Baird said. “Back to trying to make sense of the vision. Have you seen any visions since the one?”

“No, just the one. I feel like everything’s about to go wrong, however.”

“Back to the vision. What exactly did you see again?”

Leah shifted in her chair and closed her eyes, recalling to herself the vision. “I saw two lines of people facing each other, some in light armor, some with weapons. No guns, and as far as I could tell, no bombs. Just swords, and maces, like this was going to be a big man-to-man fight. They stood there, glaring at each other.”

“Did you recognize anyone in these lines?”

“No, but now I remember a man who commanded one line, pacing along the line, galvanizing them. He stood tall, and he taunted the men and women in line. Let me see — he said, ‘Do you want to be worthless? Do you want to be diminished as — he said some four-digit number — was? Do you want to be walking dead, trying to slit your own throats? We can stop this!’”

“That’s further than we’ve gotten before. What were they wearing?”

“To be honest, they looked like they dressed for a street fight. Or a gladiator ring. Both, kinda. Like I said.” Leah felt the dread like a miasma again. “Can we not talk about it?”

“I don’t know if we have that luxury, Leah.”

Leah tried to read Baird’s face, came up with concern and something she thought was puzzlement. “I just need to quit talking about it now.”

“Ok,” Baird said. “I’ll let it drop for now.” He looked out the door; Leah’s eyes followed his, and she noted the rain had stopped. “Let’s see if we’re needed in the food forest to pick fruit.”
They left the barn and walked silently toward the food forest, through browning grass sloppy with rain.