Notes by Kathy

[gehenna]

To answer your question, untimely_gyre, I am so fucking sick right now. For safety reasons, not talking about where I'm staying, but I do have soup and a blanket.

I had to clean my gun. Genna left me a bunch of handy diagrams and the bare minimum of equipment.

My hands were shaking from the whole-body chills, but I went slow and careful. I'm a motorbike gal. Grease doesn't scare me. I had all the pieces on the table in front of me after a while.

Three rounds left. I had them out on the white tablecloth and looked them over, hollow point .45 ACP. You know, while I know it's not a great look to single out a white man's recording of a classic tune as "the best," you should still give Dave Van Ronk a chance. His recording of "Poor Lazarus" is just that good.

The light was hurting my head. I had to take several breaks.

After I cleaned the parts, it turned out the hard part was putting the gun back together with fevered hands. I looked where the serial number was supposed to be, by the way. It's unstamped.

Against my better judgement, I did try to find news coverage of yesterday's protest, but it's pretty sparse, and there's no mention of me in it. Comes of jamming all the cameras, I guess.

I'd love to write a bit about yesterday and the implications it has for my search for answers about the history of magic, but my head is just swimming. I can barely get to the end of sentences.

Love to all my readers, I know you want answers as much as I do. We'll get them soon.

 

[gehenna]

I took another day of rest. Traveling more right now would be unnecessary misery. I don't remember Genna spending this many days sick with fever when she was in high school, which (according to her notes) is when she did most of her heavy spell-slinging before realizing how important energy efficiency was.

Maybe I'm just weaker than her. Maybe teens recover faster from this silver stuff.

Speaking of which, I've been reviewing the pictures I took of the unpublished folklore stash. I don't think I should post the images; for reasons that would be very clear if you could see them, publishing them might end a professor's career, and I don't want to do that. At least, not without evidence of him being an asshole.

People have tried to get the metal out of our blood (never for the health of the woman, of course). When they finally collect it, it turns out there's barely any, and it's far too heavy to be real silver, and moreover it turns to ash in mere moments. I've been flipping through my textbooks (remember, I still have those) trying to find a metal that has the described properties.

Got nothing, though. The folklore contradicts itself on some key points.

It might be something so heavy it's off the end of the table, but those hypothetical elements are supposed to decay instantly. Maybe being kept in a witch's body keeps the nucleus from collapsing, and then it turns to "ash" (carbon and other lighter elements) after losing its magic?

Where the hell would you make that? Actually, speaking of elements so heavy they die instantly, how heavy can things really get inside a really big star? Would we know if element, like, four hundred, was constantly being made and repeatedly destroyed? Maybe if we could get a witch inside a really big star we could use her body to stop the fission process?

More importantly, could I test this hypothesis by breaking into a nuclear power plant and getting near the fuel rods? This is why people think scientists are all insane, isn't it?

Oh, right, a song. I dunno, go listen to "Alice's Restaurant," Arlo Guthrie. I know it's not Thanksgiving yet, but who cares? Just do it.

 

[beth2]

The idea of designing a healing spell popped into my head for a second before I realized what was wrong with that. I suppose I could still develop one for use on others, but using it on myself would be a bit like eating my own tail.

Click to shrink...

Even with the cost, there are plenty of situations where a healing spell would be beneficial. Better to burn a year off the end of your life than to bleed out today. If it were efficient enough, it could even be beneficial for dealing with magic sickness, trading a longer life for a healthier one.

Let's review.

Click to shrink...

A couple more questions for the pile: why girls and young women? (Why humans?) And what exactly is going on with magic sickness, medically? The fact that it suddenly worsens and then reduces suggests that it's not just a steady degradation.

Hypothesis 2B: Monsters "en-trope" themselves by taking on human-recognizable forms and Genna was making a semiotics joke. This would imply that magic originates in semiotics somehow. I'd need to talk to an expert.

Click to shrink...

Click to shrink...

I didn't think of that one.

Genna thought it was possible for monsters to predate humanity (whatever "humanity" means—species boundaries are always fuzzy). Whatever she thought about the origins of magic, it has to be consistent with that.

It makes sense that the silver would change my eye color. Blood color has to be a pretty big factor in that.

Click to shrink...

If blood were a significant factor in iris color, we wouldn't have blue, green, and grey eyes. It's relevant to the sclera, of course; you can see the blood vessels there. And the red-eye effect is caused by camera flashes illuminating blood in the back of the eye. But blood only noticeably colors the iris with certain kinds of albinism, and then only enough for a very pale pink.

Supposedly as long as I kept the spell going, all radio bands were down.

Click to shrink...

What does that even mean? Interference? Increased attenuation? The air in range becomes opaque to radio?

It might be something so heavy it's off the end of the table, but those hypothetical elements are supposed to decay instantly.

Click to shrink...

Island of stability - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Maybe being kept in a witch's body keeps the nucleus from collapsing, and then it turns to "ash" (carbon and other lighter elements) after losing its magic?

Click to shrink...

I don't think that's how superheavy elements generally decay. They'd leave behind heavier elements. And given that it apparently survives long enough to be extracted from blood, it's probably not strictly a matter of being internal to the body that stabilizes it (how long does your blood stay silver, after it leaves your body? It would be easier to run tests if you could keep a stable sample, e.g. in liquid blood. For that matter, does the silver decrease if you spend time without doing magic, or does it just accumulate? Blood filtration is a fairly well-established medical technique, and if the silver disappears when it's outside your body…).

Also, stuff like that is extremely radioactive. I don't really have a sense for the relevant quantities and haven't bothered to look it up, so I might be off by orders of magnitude, but I would not be surprised if standing next to a milligram of moscovium for half a second were enough to kill a human.

Actually, speaking of elements so heavy they die instantly, how heavy can things really get inside a really big star? Would we know if element, like, four hundred, was constantly being made and repeatedly destroyed?

Click to shrink...

It generally stops around iron or a little higher, where fusion becomes energy-negative and fission becomes energy-positive. Heavier elements are mostly formed in supernovae. And yes, our theoretical understanding is good enough to be pretty confident on this.

More importantly, could I test this hypothesis by breaking into a nuclear power plant and getting near the fuel rods? This is why people think scientists are all insane, isn't it?

Click to shrink...

Most people don't think scientists are insane. Most scientists are sensible enough that their first thoughts on how to do fission experiments are more along the lines of "what labs could I contact" or "what are the legal requirements for purchasing fissile material" than "could I break into a nuclear reactor". Incidentally, legally purchasing small quantities of radioactive material isn't difficult, though it's generally subject to alpha or beta decay rather than spontaneous fission. If you want to do serious fission experiments, your best bet is to walk into a physics department and catch someone's interest.

But before any of that you should just bleed near a radiation detector. Basic experiments first, you know? Geiger counters are pretty cheap, and if you don't want to spend the money there are other ways. Find someone who owns one and will let you use it (plenty of hobbyists and weirdos out there); visit a physics department somewhere and chat up a grad student (cheap equipment has minimal restrictions on use); just steal one from a store; etc.

 

[Flux]

snip

Click to shrink...

re: healing spells, i mean, very good chance it's not literal lifespan shortening and more 'there is a physical maximum limit of magic that the body can take', and even if it is lifespan shortening, there's no way to know how much, right? it could be one year, it could be thirty, not really worth the risk imo.

re: interference. Spark-gap transmitter - Wikipedia (Spark gap transmitters are a great way to piss off the FAA/FCC)

also like, (breaking kayfabe a bit here) i know it's a classic thing to sit around dissecting all the 'inconsistencies' in some piece of sff, but doing it directly to the author comes off as rude. a piece of fiction does not need to contain an accurate mode of the universe.

 

[gehenna]

Hi beth2, welcome back. Always good to have your attentive eye on my work, though my sense of humor doesn't seem to agree with you. Just remember that I'm Kathy the Physics Major, not Kathy the Physics PhD Candidate. I was always happy to see a C after every term, if you take my meaning.

I'm absolutely going to try your suggestion and check myself for radiation. I'll keep my eyes open for a place I might be able to lift a Geiger counter. Maybe the next university campus I hit, since there's no such thing as Radio Shack anymore. Definitely not heading back to Beckley for one.

So anyway, it's my third day at this place I've been resting up and I'm just about ready to move again. I'm low on cash again, very low. The good news is that I've been paying close attention to my magic-sense, trying mostly fruitlessly to develop it further, and I've got something I think is a monster's trail.

Percival Schuttenbach, the band, are a folk group, right? Then the song of the day can be "The Song of the Sword Dancer." It's only a little bit cheating. I'm allowed to fangirl over my own career.

"Career."

I rehearsed the movements for drawing, aiming, and firing over and over for what must have been hours, but good form is only a fraction of the picture, and there's no knowing how well I'm aiming since it would use up my last three rounds to find out.

My grappling and striking forms, I have much more confidence in, but I reviewed all of them too for good measure. It's not like I was ever master of anything, just a cut above decent on my best day.

And I did my laundry. Hallelujah. (Not the Cohen tune, though that is technically under the "folk" umbrella. Maybe I'll choose that one on some future day. Or maybe I'll recommend Daniel Kahn's Yiddish translation.)

Look, the point is, clean fucking clothes, all right? I don't smell like CN/CS gas anymore. I always get them confused. I think CS gas is the one they used on me and CN gas is the one from WWI. But I might have that backwards. Someone check me on that.

P.S.—Flux, good to see you as always. I had no idea spark-gaps were illegal, but it's really obvious in hindsight. Do you think the feds are going to get involved?

 

[gehenna]

I already like the days when I'm not sick better than the days when I am, but it's starting to be accentuated by the fact that I can't drink in clear conscience while my symptoms are too active. I bought a tiny jar of honey from a local producer and I lifted a few lemons, so my whiskey and I have been having a nice little time of it. The man who sold me the honey—by the name of Mark—told me the proportions to use, and also said to use hot water and no teabag as a matter of (his) Scottish pride. Supposedly putting a teabag in it makes it English (and therefore bad).

But what do I know?

I covered a good few miles of highway today, following what I was initially hopeful was a trail of lingering magical distortions. The farther I follow it, the more certain I become, there's definitely old magic in the air. What I'm getting less certain of is my conviction that this is a monster's trail. Unless monsters can cast spells.

Which some of them probably can, now that I think about it, because why would anything ever be easy?

I played for cash for a few hours today in the best little town square I could find. I'm always partial to "Long Journey Home"—try the Ben Babbitt recording. I knew buskers had it hard, but the hard things in life are always even harder than you think they're going to be. I'm young and pretty(?) and white, so I had all the advantages. It didn't amount to much, but it's not no cash, and that's something.

At least the cops left me alone. I figured it was fifty-fifty that I'd have to up and run as soon as some bastard looked at me funny, but they never did.

I'm pretty sure that the place I've put myself up for tonight is near the end of the trail. I'm in Williamson, WV, near the border with KY. I'll go find the source of the trace magic tomorrow, first thing. Right now I need to hydrate and roll into bed.

 

[gehenna]

It's been a big day. I'm just going to attach the relevant memory files and go to sleep.

An office stairwell.

Kathy screws the cap back onto her flask and slips it into her jacket as she takes the steps one at a time. She starts singing "Shake Sugaree" just loud enough to get a quiet echo off the bare concrete walls.

She reaches the top floor as she finishes the second refrain, and, eyes wide and wild, she feels around her for traces of magic. Something catches her attention, and, grinning, she rams a door open with her shoulder and steps through into a carpeted hallway.

The hall is dusty and these offices, to all appearances, long disused. The carpet does not return echoes of Kathy's singing as the unpainted stairwell did, and she sounds all the more alone for it. The door slams shut behind her.

Click to shrink...

These are my memories, so it would follow that the narration should use a limited perspective. Yet it's still unsettling to read, like any moment it'll break into omniscient perspective. Like watching the back of my own head, somehow. Like a bad dream.

A dusty hallway.

"Pawned my tobacco. Pawned my pipe. Pawned everything that was in my sight."

Kathy walks confidently past most of the doors, closed and locked without signage, their windows papered over. The trail leads forward, a twist in the air in front of her like an optical illusion she's seeing with something other than her eyes. She stops in front of the last door and looks it up and down thoroughly.

The door is held by a standard-looking deadbolt lock. She grimaces, but keeps singing quietly. Just in case it's not as shut as it looks, she slaps the hollow metal door with her palm-heel, but it replies with a dull boom and does not give.

"What do you want?" comes a girl's voice from the far side.

Click to shrink...

How does the narration know it's a girl? I mean, I know I assumed it was a girl for a split second, but then I remembered it could be literally anything. Why does the narration reflect my first assumption instead of my reconsidered opinion? I'll have to look into it.

A dusty hallway.

Kathy's eyebrows dart up and she stops singing, though she mouths her way to the end of the line. "I'm Kathy the Kelter," she says, loud enough to be heard through the door. "May I come in?"

"...fine."

The door opens, and Kathy looks cautiously at the girl on the other side, who looks like she's in the seventh grade and has very little patience for this.

"Invisibility to cameras," Kathy whispers, twisting her fingers, and the air around them changes in a way that only registers to magic sense.

The girl steps back and glares. "What?" she asks.

"My sister taught me that a witch greets another witch by offering a spell that will serve them both."

"I'm not a witch," the girl says indignantly, "I'm a magical girl."

"How do magical girl greetings work, then?"

Click to shrink...

According to Genna's journal, she collaborated with a witch named Sasha exactly once, years ago. Sasha died shortly after teaching this custom to Genna. Its origins and the breadth of its adoption are unclear.

We die so fast and so alone, can we be said to have customs?

An unfurnished office.

"You shake hands," says a quiet, deeply sarcastic voice from near the floor. Kathy looks down at the big-eyed fuzzy creature who spoke without opening its mouth. The magical girl frowns tightly for a second, then extends the hand.

"Kathy," Kathy repeats as she takes the handshake.

"Marnie. Do you still want me to do magic?"

Kathy thinks, then nods. "That sounds pretty cool."

"Stand back please," Marnie instructs gleefully. She waves Kathy back one, then two steps. Kathy crosses herself hastily, mumbling "nomine Patris," then winks. Marnie rolls her eyes.

A pillar of light fills the

Click to shrink...

It looks like the memory files are corrupted after that. I'm in no mood to deal with that right now. I'll just type up the rest tomorrow.

 

[untimely_gyre]

Magical girl! Magical girl! Magical girl!

I wasn't actually thinking about animals, but in case you were, now you know. No familiar for me.

Click to shrink...

"You shake hands," says a quiet, deeply sarcastic voice from near the floor. Kathy looks down at the big-eyed fuzzy creature who spoke without opening its mouth.

Click to shrink...

Well, familiars for someone, clearly. If not conjured by magic, then, modified by magic? Or something more eldritch entirely?

We die so fast and so alone, can we be said to have customs?

Click to shrink...

I think the evidence suggests yes! Probably extremely local and variable customs, but customs nonetheless.

 

[gehenna]

It turned out I had already met Marnie's brother, Matt, in the occupied street intersection in Beckley. She'd left a trail of magic running from there to here because her family visits Matt on the last weekend of every month, and she'd been so mad to hear about the police attacking him that she'd fidgeted quietly with her soul weapon (I'm told that's what it's called) in the back of her parents' car all the way home.

According to Marnie, she's killed five monsters (more on this in a minute), and she gets mild dizzy spells after her fights, but they go away around when she detransforms. This is hard for me to believe, after seeing what she can do. Why can she fly, make hardlight projections, and instantly recover from combat injuries without collapsing from sickness?

Hypothesis A: Children handle the blood-silvering better than adults (conforms with my memories of Genna).

Hypothesis B: The magical girl body is medically distinct from Marnie's civilian(?) body, and it's getting sick and injured instead of her.

Hypothesis C: That familiar has something to do with it.

I ran some new internet searches. I tried to find anything that looked like Marnie's familiar, or anything called a "soul weapon," but it was nearly as unhelpful as looking for witches had been in the first place.

I'd be asking it questions, but the familiar won't talk to me except to give me the most unhelpful advice it can think of. It hides behind her ankles most of the time, and neither of us knows its name. She calls it "Sergeant." It's pretty clearly a telepath. Genna's journal contains an anti-telepathy charm I committed to memory late last night, so I've been keeping that in reserve for the possibility that Sergeant starts being a creep.

Marnie and I killed a banshee together on the rooftop of the office building, late last night. She says she doesn't have a curfew. I had meant to save the memory, but Marnie's transformation shut off my background spells and I didn't notice and restart it in time.

She credited the kill to me, leaving her at five and putting me at three. Certainly not graciously, she was quite competitive, but it was unambiguously mine. I swept one of the monster's legs and it died of a five-story fall.

Only too conveniently, the body turned to smoke after hitting the pavement. I keep telling myself there's no conspiracy to hide the existence of magic from the wider world, but things like this keep happening.

You haven't seen the frown of a twelve-year-old frustrated with you for taking her kill unless you've seen her glaring at you over the edge of a bright hardlight sword. (She says it's an "1845 pattern infantry officer's saber." Does she outrank Sergeant? How does this work?) For a second, I thought she was going to throw me off the building right after the monster. Her transformation changes her clothes, too—more evidence that it's actually a separate body.

Anyway, I needed a day to rest up after the fight as usual, and Marnie, who apparently has all kinds of money, loaned me a charge card (may I remind you that she is twelve) and I decided to make the best of a good thing. So, laundry again, a nice bath and dinner, and all that.

The money is turning my head a little, frankly. I caught myself humming "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" a few times this morning—I'm partial to the Scrapper Blackwell recording.

Marnie and I are supposed to meet after she gets out of class tomorrow and go walk the edge of town looking for disturbances. I'm going to use the opportunity to talk magic theory with her and get some damn answers out of her scruffy telepath cat.

 

[untimely_gyre]

Genna's journal contains an anti-telepathy charm I committed to memory late last night, so I've been keeping that in reserve for the possibility that Sergeant starts being a creep.

Click to shrink...

Was Genna fighting telepathic monsters at some point?

 

[gehenna]

Charge card or not, I still had to lift my next bottle of whiskey, courtesy of being nineteen in these United States. I'd rather be paying, but they won't let me! Some things just don't work out the way the people writing the rules really intended, I think. Magic is probably like that on some level.

I had meant to have a good, full day and get in an evening walk with my new friend (and learn more about how her magic works meantime), but I woke up feeling the full weight of Genna being missing, and the room around me not being mine, and my family being broken in pieces by my rash decision to run halfway across the country.

Sometimes a day just disappears, you know? I played a few tunes on a park bench, good and slow. "Undone in Sorrow" comes to mind, an Ola Belle Reed original, but I've always enjoyed the Ginny Hawker recording as well. Maybe I should start taping my performances.

On second thought, definitely not. I was crying most of the time anyway. Angry, angry, angry tears. I didn't want any little bit of this. Genna didn't either, whatever she may have said about it being better than the alternative. I knew her, I knew what she wanted out of life. I hope I knew her. I wish I'd known her.

Sergeant, if you're reading this with your wide creepy cat eyes on some little cat computer, don't think I didn't see you sitting a safe distance away watching me pick things out on the guitar. You didn't put up telepathy wards, so I got a lot just by skimming your surface thoughts.

By a lot I primarily mean a mighty headache. Between you and the scotch (I decided to try something different this time!) I feel like I've been hit by a fucking train.

And something's been bothering me since I first heard you speak. Your voice sounded way too fucking familiar. Do the words "take this light and rise" ring a bell? Hm?

You gave me this sickness. You did this to me and my sister both. I'm going to fucking skin you, you dickless godless squirrel bastard.

Run.

 

[gehenna]

So I may have lost my temper a bit yesterday and threatened to murder a small unhelpful cat. By the light of day, I did belatedly realize that I should probably talk to Sergeant, politely if firmly, before pulling a gun on it. So we talked.

An urban park.

"Take this light and rise," Kathy murmurs, eyes dark with anger. She's seated on a park bench, fidgeting with the edges of her foldspace, her gun just past where her fingertips are playing with the air. "Was that you?"

"No."

"Your voice is unmistakable," she insists. Her head throbs in the mid-morning sunlight.

Sergeant bats at an insect scuttling by and makes no reply.

"Who else sounds like you?"

"All of us."

Kathy snorts. "Well, what are you?"

"Marnie's Sergeant," comes the answer. Kathy hears something in the telepathy that sounds like a yawn.

"What are the rest of you, damn it?"

Click to shrink...

I could have been more polite.

After I riddled with it for a while, I got the following out of it: magic is energy directed by thought. Humans do not generate the energy, but by virtue of being a thinking feeling being "on the ground," so to speak, they can make more efficient targeted use of energy against monsters than the actual originators of magic can. The makers send small amounts of magic to us on demand like tap water, and in exchange for the early deaths of witches, the makers don't have to flatten the entire planet to get the monsters off of it.

Or something. I'm not sure I buy it.

When I asked it why all the witches were women, it played dumb about the concept of gender. That made me feel much better about how rude I was being to it. I got nowhere with it on that subject.

Still, glad I didn't shoot the cat. I need to keep the gun and the alcohol and the journal a healthy distance apart from each other, I think, before I publicly embarrass myself in a way I can't fix.

Also, someone else was busking in the park today! Always nice to see I'm not the only musician around. I wondered briefly where he'd been on the last few days before remembering that for people who aren't vagrants like me, there are days of the week, and it's the weekend. Honestly, the large number of children and families at the park should have tipped me off.

Anyway, I heard "Pagbabalik" today and so should you! I heard it's by a group called Asin. I tipped all the rest of the cash I had, which was next to none—I should give Marnie back this card of hers when I skip town, which I'm sure I will soon enough.

Marnie was actually kind enough to block out a few hours of her Saturday afternoon for me to teach me saber forms on a rooftop (a different one from last time, she just likes rooftops). Apparently she can make multiples of her soul weapon. I'm a quick study for new martial arts, because as it happens, the fundamentals are transferable.

She also took me through some bayonet drill, though we just used some broom handles for that. I think Marnie's just the littlest bit of a black powder era enthusiast.

I remembered to ask her the question from a while back about whether the formation I saw at the protest counted as an infantry square! She said yes it did. I asked about the fact that there were no enemy cavalry, and she looked at me like I was stupid and said that the infantry square had many applications outside of an anticavalry context.

I'm choosing to believe her.

And, during what felt like an appropriate moment during practice, I broke the news to Marnie about how the blood-silvering works. To which she said, and I quote, "back in the day you got the shilling up front," in a very grim kind of voice. She leaned on her sword (I thought you weren't supposed to do that) and then said "it figures. Thanks for telling me. I'll have my parents take me to a specialist."

So, unless something happens, the medical community is about to find out about witches from a very wealthy one. This could be a big day for science. I just hope it's a day that goes well for Marnie.

And I'm still wondering how—how—there's no scientific literature on this. Marnie can't be the first magical girl to think of going to a doctor, right? She can't. There's no way. It doesn't add up.

 

[greatgodofallpot]

Hmmm, I wonder if its possible to like take life-span with a spell.
Like even if its on demand like the cat thing said, it would still be helpful to be able to handle some more magic. (And also, infinite magic glitch maybe)

 

[gehenna]

Hello, greatgodofallpot, welcome to the weblog. I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by taking life. I love the concept, but I'm not sure where I'd be taking it from, and with my luck it'd probably be some kind of utilitarian/Omelas situation, and I'm not opting into that.

Also, untimely_gyre, welcome as always. Yes, there are telepathic entropes recorded in my sister's notes. She says that she didn't know any of them to use words exactly, but that the images in her head were deeply upsetting, so she found a way to stop them.

So I packed up and got back on my bike; the town was starting to feel like I'd been there just a bit too long. I'm well into Kentucky now, so I've got "Sleeping on the Blacktop," Colter Wall, on the mind. Prestonburg isn't Nickajack per se but it's the closest I've ever been. Maybe I'll be closer tomorrow.

I didn't get all the answers I could have out of Marnie or Sergeant, it's true, but Marnie's got her own life to live (and her charge card back) and I've got a feeling that if Sergeant wants to see me again it'll find a way. I hope her doctor's visit goes well. They'll probably just tell her that her dizzy spells are part of menstruation, or something so stupid I couldn't possibly guess.

Maybe that's what the deal is with magic being missing from history: doctors and historians refusing to take women seriously. Not a real hypothesis, but damn wouldn't it be funny.

I slipped a few hundred in cash back into a food purchase before I gave the card back, for the road. I'm sure her parents' account won't mind. By technicality, the extra couple hundred made it far and away the most expensive meal I've ever bought.

All it took was a few days of being off my bike to make the road and the wheels start feeling like friends again. I wonder if that's how real friends work too: best with little breaks in the middle. That would track with my past experiences.

It's been starting to bother me that Genna and I didn't get familiars, not that I want one. I just think the discrepancy is odd. Why do some witches get creepy cats and not others? And, if it's as Sergeant said and the role humans play in the flow of magic is having eyes and ears on the ground—well doesn't Sergeant have those too?

Maybe they don't want their little ambassador mascots getting silver-sick. But that would imply that their "real" bodies are much bigger or more robust in some way than the little cat body. They specifically chose the cat body because it would be cutest to Marnie, didn't they?

Maybe that's why Genna didn't get a familiar, because they couldn't figure out a form that one could take that she would trust. Good for her. If Genna's right and the givers can psychically profile you for willingness to die for their cause, then they can probably also profile you for preferred familiar, right?

In that case, let it be known that I would have been cool with a pseudodragon. Put that in my profile.

This town smells like bad magic. I'm really starting to work that magic sense—that or this place just has more monsters than any of the places I've been through before. We'll find out tomorrow, after I drink myself to sleep.

 

[greatgodofallpot]

Hello to you too, but a question can you feel what is being taken when you cast a spell? Because if so, its probably not outside the realm of possibility to make a spell or use some kind of witch senses feel the amount of that resourse in other beings or maybe even the ambient around.
(Opening up the option of trying to manipulate those external sources. Since this magic system seems based of description)

Oh and to answer your question, I meant like taking the "lifespan" or whatever thought thing makes magic possible out of others or the enviroment to add to your own :]

 

[gehenna]

Sometimes I see a man with his eyes on me, clearly making up his mind whether he likes my face enough to be completely indecent. Then sometimes he decides he does not, and how am I supposed to feel about that?

Click to shrink...

Genna passed fairly well. I feel like it's no disrespect of her to say that, since she thought so too and said as much in her writing now and again. Whatever looking cis is, exactly, plenty of men thought she did, though not all of them. Not all of the ones who thought she looked cis were attracted to her. Not all of the ones who didn't think she looked cis were repulsed by her. In a way, the world of creeps is definitionally as diverse as the world all the rest of us live in. It's some kind of a thing from graph theory, but I can't remember the jargon, a map from the kinds of creep to the kinds of people they find attractive. Not all the creeps are men.

All of which is just a way of me circling around the fact that someone tried to corner me at a gas station today. Sorry, it's hard to get the words down. I wrote and deleted them several times. I take a little solace in knowing my sister would have understood. Hell, I think plenty of folks understand. Happens to more folks than talk about it.

I mean, he never had a chance. I had pepper spray in my pocket and my understanding of how to fuse telekinesis with hand-to-hand forms is only growing with regular practice. But that doesn't make it not terrifying! The fear isn't in the danger, it's in the knowledge that someone looked at me, thought about it, and made the decision that what he wanted was worth ruining my life for. How could anyone do that?

What the hell is people's problem, anyway?

You know, by dint of being cis, I probably look pretty cis, but I've never really thought about it. I think the fact that I don't think about it is part of what I have that my sister never could have had, even if she looked exactly like me. Girls like Genna have to work twice as hard for almost as much and feel half as safe. Well, I haven't actually done the math, but wording it that way was satisfying.

I've been all jitters since then, and it's been hours. A pack of smokes fell out of his jacket pocket when I hit him, and he didn't pick it up as he ran off. I helped myself. It was my first cigarette, and it didn't calm me down as much as I'd heard it was supposed to. It did make me feel very, very sexy though, which was not how I wanted to feel in that moment. Right now I don't want to feel sexy ever again.

I wish I could say I threw the rest of them out in disgust, but they're sitting in my foldspace now, waiting for me to want them badly enough.

Anyway, before any of that happened, I bought a sandwich from that gas station. While I was eating, I poked Genna's notes in idle curiosity for references to sandwiches, since she wrote on a variety of topics.

To be clear, this is not a very good sandwich, but I am enjoying it very much, in that sleepless kind of way.

Click to shrink...

So she wrote a journal entry mid-sandwich, and I read it mid-sandwich. I found that comforting. It was like sharing the sandwich with her. Of course, any warm feelings about the bad sandwich were subsequently trampled by some guy having the genius idea of assaulting me.

This whole day feels like a loop that begins and ends with me realizing how close he's standing behind me. The memories from after it are all of me trying to deal with it, and the memories from before it are plagued by unhappy thoughts of how I could have done things differently to prevent the situation in the first place. I could have stopped somewhere else for gas and a sandwich. I could have left quicker. I could have dressed different.

He didn't even get close and he's still ruined some fraction of my life and neither he nor I know how much.

I killed my fourth monster today and it barely registers as one of the important memories, but I should write it down and notch my guitar before I forget. It was some kind of oversized talking snake living in a shuttered auto body shop. I got paid cash by the guy (by the name of Frank) who ran the place, who said he couldn't do business because that damn snake knew his name and wouldn't leave.

Neat, I guess. I wish I were more excited about what I'd learned from it. I'm not quite angry and not quite numb and not quite scared; instead I feel two feet outside myself and to the left. Maybe it'll be gone in the morning. I know I skipped over some comments on my blog. I'll get to them tomorrow.

 

[untimely_gyre]

@gehenna remembered a song and thought you might like it. "Going down the road feeling bad", traditional. 'Course then I couldn't find a recording that has all my favorite verses in it :(

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVJVOmMBNug

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLPSMYaB1M8

 

[gehenna]

Harlan fucking County, here I am. I crossed the county line about a few hours back and I felt myself go cold for a long second. I hadn't realized I was headed this way, I must not have been paying attention, but now that I'm here, it feels like I couldn't have been heading anywhere else.

There's only one recording of "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive" anybody needs: Ruby Friedman.

You know, it's widely believed that no one has an accurate casualty count of the coal wars. Or even just the one in Harlan. Or even just Harlan in '35. Or—you get the idea. I'm in a town called Evarts now. There's six cemeteries within a mile of me, and those are just the cemeteries with names and posted visiting hours. Plenty of the crosses are just crosses, no names. I think I'd like to lie under a cross with no name someday. I think the reminder of the anonymity of death would mean more to the average person than another engraved name they don't know.

The anonymity would also keep family from finding me, which is a plus. I don't want anybody fighting over a corpse.

I burned Genna's body. It's hard to say whether it was intentional. There was fire everywhere, flaring up every time I screamed, dimming every time I stopped to breathe. The dryad that killed my sister died two paces from her. For a brief moment, their bodies were side by side in the road, and in that moment all I felt was a hideous jealousy, that it could now be closer to her than I could ever again. The feeling made sense at the time.

It's interesting to me that when I took the gift, it came out of me in fire I didn't quite ask for and couldn't quite control. It's not like I continue to work exclusively in pyromancy. In fact, I primarily don't. And it's also interesting to me that that outburst, hot enough to turn bones to fine white ash (and also wreck the asphalt beyond recognition), didn't leave me sick. If I tried to do it again now? I'd probably kill myself trying.

Odd, that. Maybe the first one's free.

I've seen far-away branches of the family tear each other apart for an ounce of ash, because one person has two little sandwich bags of a loved one and the other has none. So I didn't even try to gather Genna's. She's nobody's and she's nowhere.

Maybe I'll sleep out in one of those cemeteries tonight. It's warm enough this time of year.

 

[gehenna]

Did you know that in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the Sheriff's offices don't operate the county jails? Apparently the Jailers are a different crop of elected officials (and unaccountable appointees).

All of which works in my favor, because the deputy who arrested me for sleeping in the cemetery was definitely not human. Actually, I couldn't determine what his rank or name was, either. He had me mostly blinded with the big flashlight and somehow he was blinding my magic-sense too, which was a new sensation and entirely overwhelming. It felt like a wrist lock for the inside of my head—that's the best description I can offer.

Anyway, it was bad, I couldn't cast any spells; he took everything that wasn't in my foldspace, which I also incidentally couldn't reach, and after a disorienting while in the back of a car, I got handed over to the jailers, who are apparently a different part of the government, thank God.

Once he was gone, I thought about whether I wanted to stay in, get my court date, and all that. It didn't sound appealing, particularly if that one deputy(?) was going to be involved. So I let myself out. Invisibility to cameras, open keypad lock, and walk out.

Got no bike now, so I walked to a warehouse at one end of town, let myself in the back, and sat down on a shelf with some dimensional lumber. You may know that two by fours aren't actually two inches by four inches. It's actually a common misconception that two by fours used to be full-sized back in the good old days. The name actually comes from the size of the beam when it's cut green. It shrinks as it dries.

Back in the old days, the original size was regulated to two inches by four inches, yes, but since the amount of the shrinkage was unpredictable, eventually regulators switched to ruling on the minimum size of the dried product. At least, I think so. I'm not a reliable source, okay?

I was still quite a bit fried and the sun wasn't up yet, and I don't know why the situation put me in mind of it exactly (maybe it was the red-colored signage over the doors of the lumber yard), but I found myself humming along to the musical parts of the "Coal Creek Rebellion" monologue, Pete Seeger, and then drifted off.

Some gruff-looking guy in overalls woke me up because I was in the way of his forklift. I should clarify that I haven't bathed in a bit and whatever prettygirl currency I may have had with strangers is most definitely gone. Turned out his name was Sammy, and he was very sympathetic to the parts of my situation I told him about, especially after we stepped outside and shared a smoke (my foldspace was working normally again).

He said the sheriff's lieutenant who "gives people the creeps" is named Caleb, last name Iron. Apparently he doesn't seem to have an address on record, gives everyone around him headaches (not just me), and doesn't talk to his coworkers more than he has to. Also, he beats people while bringing them in—like, way more than the others. My shoulders and ribs can attest.

I dislike lawmen on principle, but if this one's an entrope or some kind of kelter I haven't met yet, all the more reason to take him personally. But I wasn't in great shape to go assassinate a man right then and there. In fact, I was quite sore and probably only going to get more sore over the next day or so. Sammy said he didn't mind hosting someone blowing through town for a night; he'd done it plenty of times. I just had to not catfight with his wife and not smoke indoors. That was easy enough.

Her name's Jen. Lovely woman. We talked religion for a while; apparently she's Quaker. I thought I'd headed too far south and west for that, but here she is, clearly. It lends her naturally to a flavor of anarchism (who cares which), which meant she was very much on my side when I told her about my experiences with the law.

Dinner was nice too, blooming bruises notwithstanding.

I'm more or less drifting off now, thinking about how I'm going to handle tomorrow. I ought to throw together a few magic-related thoughts before my brain turns off entirely.

In re: greatgodofallpot, I don't feel anything leaving me when I work magic, per se—I wouldn't say I feel anything leaving me when I run too fast for too long with not enough water, but I definitely feel sick afterwards. And the stupider the thing I'm doing, the faster and harder it catches up with me.

As for leeching life, I admire the guts of anyone who dreams up "just figure out who the givers are and steal their life about it." I might even admire it enough to try to find out a way to do it. But I'm definitely not taking life from anything else, and that's final, not even my enemies, it just—eesh. No.

I should reverse engineer Lt. Iron's antimagic field if I get close enough to it again to take notes. Maybe come up with a countercharm or something. Actually, there's a section on countermagic in Genna's notes. I'll read it more carefully tomorrow.

Sleep now.

 

[ptbptb]

He said the sheriff's lieutenant who "gives people the creeps" is named Caleb, last name Iron

Click to shrink...

'Iron' is a bit on the nose, given his apparent anti-magic properties. Don't know what its/his deal was, if it really wanted you dead then cops have ways of making that happen. I think you need to find out more or get the heck away.

Magical-girl with the rich parents might be OK. If the basic problem is "waste substance builds up in blood" then some combination of dialysis and / or exchange transfusion could do the trick. It's definitely a solution that requires either large piles of money or a functional free national health system. Weird magical cat familiars aren't necessarily up on the latest human medical know-how so we can't entirely blame Sarge.

It is, however, possible that magic is also "in the blood" in which case getting rid of your old blood would also be retiring from witch-hood.

 

[Flux]

hope kathy was able to get a hot shower, and has better luck with the lawmen going forwards.

 

[gehenna]

Sorry I forgot to journal last night. I'll explain in a minute.

Have you noticed that for all I claim to appreciate folk music, the songs I tend to have on my mind are recorded by household names? Paul Simon, Pete Seeger, you know who these people are—as well you should, they're masters of the craft. But is it really folk music if it comes from a bunch of famous talking heads? Not to be confused with Talking Heads, the new wave group.

Anyway, the song of the day today is tray spinning. Examples here and here, but I encourage you to find more examples yourself. Is music which is autonomously organized always necessarily folk? No, I think the generic term we'd use for that is indie. I think folk is music which is meant to be transmitted in the form of knowledge instead of in the form of recording. Folk music is music which is shipped to you incomplete, to be replicated at home.

I'll workshop that thesis a bit some time when I'm sober.

So I'm still somewhere in Harlan County. I don't feel like being specific. Apparently my parents got a call when I got booked in at the jail (I was not paying very much attention, being half-blind and in pain), and they, having been right on the verge of deciding I was dead, took that phone call extremely personally and drove eleven straight hours (taking shifts) from Newark, NJ, to come see me.

Side note, welcome to the journey, ptbptb, and you're absolutely right that I could be dead in a ditch right now if Lt. Iron (Irons? I'm just now realizing I may have misheard Sammy) had wanted it that way. Maybe there's more to it/him than I've yet figured, but... I've already made up my mind what to do about him, regardless of the risks involved.

Back on topic, if there were anything that could make me more resentful of my parents right now, it would be anything that made me conflicted about feeling resentful about them. If you've ever been mad enough at someone, you understand. The pain and exhaustion in their faces when they finally saw me made me feel intensely conflicted.

I told my parents I wasn't going home with them. They screamed at me like I owed them blood for what I'd done to their poor hearts. Sammy and Jen were present for this encounter, since it happened on their front steps. They were very careful not to take sides, but they were emphatic about how glad they were to have been able to give me a meal, a hot shower (you're welcome, Flux), and a couch to sleep on the night prior. My parents thanked them a dozen times, as if I'd have died of exposure without their particular intervention.

We compromised on getting separate, adjacent rooms at a motel for a few nights, and talking it out over a few lunches. It's not like they would have wanted to turn right around and drive eleven more hours if I'd said yes on the spot, anyway. The whole thing rattled me so bad I could neither sleep that night nor figure out what to put in a journal entry, so I just took some pulls of whiskey and prayed and prayed.

It feels like we talked all of yesterday afternoon and all of today too. I felt halfway outside myself the whole time, and every time I heard a car my head whipped around like someone was yanking a leash, but thankfully I didn't see a hint of law enforcement at any point.

They were vicious. I knew them before as kind parents I couldn't quite trust because of how differently they treated my sister, but that's clearly done with. I know grief can make someone nasty (I know I'm meaner now than I was before), but losing me and Genna has really undone whatever interest they had in being kind to me. They pleaded and threatened, told me I'd starve without a roof over my head and I'd go to six different kinds of Hell (duh?), and generally treated me like wayward property.

But we did reach a few agreements. I will visit them once a year during Holy Week, and they are not to contact me unless I fail to visit as agreed. I even negotiated a small allowance into the deal. They figured that giving me money would give them the leverage they needed, but I know it won't. Others have tried that.

I scribbled a few key notes out of Genna's journal for my own use in the coming days, then told them they could keep the original on one condition, and made them swear to it (I know Mom takes that stuff seriously). The deal was this: Genna's journal is to be digitized and published on Monday night. That's the 13th of May, this year. The photos I took of the folklore manuscripts are also being given to them to scrub of personally identifying information, and those will also go up on the 13th.

It was a tough deal to strike. They get their daughter's heart and soul: her journal, every word of it addressed to me, her sister. They were drooling for it. Dad almost took a swing at me for it. I don't want to know how that would have gone.

In exchange, I get to blow this thing wide open, no more secrets. Doctors, lawmakers, every witch out there who thinks she's the only one. Everyone's going to find out together. All I have to do is make the news.

See, I know no one's going to read Genna's journal, published or not, if it doesn't make headlines. I've run this blog for a month, trying to tell the truth, but I'm getting nowhere. I love each and every one of you reading along, but you're not exactly the general public.

So I'm gonna make TV news. I'm gonna shoot the sheriff in broad daylight.

Well, the lieutenant. But it doesn't sound as cool that way.