Wind in the rushes, none in the willows

The weather decided to stop being such a sourpuss, putting on a quiet, mild face instead, so Line and I went for a late afternoon walk today.

We crossed the river, which sounds like a monumental task, but really only meant walking over a tiny footbridge next to the willows and ducks. We climbed Telthusbakken (something like Tent Warehouse Hill) which really is a disappointing name for such a pretty little neighbourhood, with candy coloured wooden houses nestled snugly together. Then we walked around in the cemetery around Aker Church, where we discovered a stolen cash register and read the headstones.

I like reading epitaphs. They're like tiny glimpses of someone I could have known, if things were different. This is what they chose to say about one woman:

"Like a breath of wind in the rushes".

See, I don't remember her name, but I remember how she must have felt.

Greycicle

Windy, rainy, muddy, naked spring. Umbrellas meet an ugly end on the street outside, and the bicycles in the backyard endure it miserably, like horses in a storm.

I know it's for the good - rain melts away the snow much faster than the sun - but it's still grey and cold. Greycicle.

It is good for writing, though. Last night I wrote a scene where Line and Balthasar talk about which of the Inners they would settle down in, if they could. It's not fair. Why must Balthasar have that horrible chest ripping cough? I wonder if I would do what he did. It was sad, which is good.

Not so good that the scene belongs to the next story and not the one I'm supposed to be writing now. What if that's what happens when I try to sell Book 1? "We'd much rather go ahead with Book 2"?

Like I commented on Laini's blog after her brilliant post on reminding herself what she knows: I just have to get over myself and write the real story.

Here there be seagulls

My hometown. No, my un-hometown.

I did live here for a few years, and since Mum&Dad still do, I visit often. But it still doesn't count as a hometown for me. I don't think I have one, just roots poked into the ground in various places.

One here in Kristiansund, I think, since I adore the sound of seagulls screeching and don't despair of summer rain.

One holding hands with the huge elm tree on my Grandmother's farm.

One stuck between two smooth cobblestones on Bakklandet in Trondheim.

And one creeping along the pavements of Grünerløkka in Oslo, scratching at the doors of coffee shops, sidling out of the way whenever gunmen or robbers cross the street, just looking for some soft, dark soil in one of the parks near Marselisgate.

I've been writing furiously these last few days, or rather last few nights, since I can only concentrate after everone else is in bed. Shame it isn't chapter bits, but the paper on Magical Theory, penned by Theodor of Yulevale, is teeming with story seeds.

Lilika Meer and the siege of Legenwald! The Fayre City Trapeze, and the allrune made to create it! The renegade fireruners of Huoyao! Priceless notebooks have been stolen and a certain genious murdered. Much more, too. I've even scribbled down a rough map.

I'm pleased. Impatient, but pleased.

Mrs. Zarka of Wichtiburg

Actually, this isn't Mrs. Zarka, because she is very much alive and wears a top hat. But she is an owl, and she designs and builds technomagical machines, which are often covered in gold or silver plate, and so I think this mechanical owl suits her.

Sometimes, when I haven't written in a while, new scenes and characters come knocking late at night, or rather, they come pounding on the door just before I go to sleep. And if I open the door, just a little, the most astonishing stuff comes pouring in from the nocturnal chill.

I'm not sure where this owl came from, although Line helped me name her after the pretty owl in Three Nuts for Cinderella. But it turns out she has been a student of a certain doctor Heidelsneck at the University of Wichtiburg, and that they have revolutionized magic in the Inners, all of which is completely new to me.

The University especially caught me by surprise. And the disciplines they teach there! There is history, and natural sciences and anthropology, but they are rather to be excpected. Mirror astrology, technomagic and reality weave however, now, those would be fun..

White Heat

I promise, this will not be a blog with endless entries about my cat. Next time, owls, I think. But today, there's no escaping her. The rascal ballerina is in heat.

She howls. She rolls on the floor. She pushes shoes around with her face (apparently, this is satisfying). She yearns desperately for the panther, who is not only neutered, but also freaked out by it all and hides out in Mum&Dad's bedroom. And she refuses to let her tail down for even a minute, because a tomcat just might materialize, you know, and she wouldn't want him to miss the point.

And after a visit to the local nightclub yesterday, with its usual scene of self-conscious gyrating and lipglossed, beer drenched shuffling, I wonder. What would happen if evolution took a feline detour there?

I suspect: much.

Pimsika

My little cat.

She seems happy to be on vacation at Mum&Dad's, even if their huge, black panther probably wants to kill her. She murmurs happily everytime she sees him, he growls and hisses and looks like something out of a 1980s horror movie.

Mum insisted we give her a more feminine name than Pims, because she carries herself like a little ballerina. So Pimsika it is.

(I'll just stick with Pims, though. A cat who loves to play hide and seek, and likes to tear through the house carrying murdered, stuffed unicorns by the neck, needs a rascal name.)

The photo was taken by Line, my darling, lens wielding sister.

Badji moo

Well. I thought I could just sail on other people's boats to the end of the journey, but it turns out I need a ship of my own. Or perhaps it will be a tiny boat.

So far it is only a shell. I've named it Lille fnugg, after snow flakes, dandelion fluff and runaway dust balls. Small and floaty, with only the wind for breath.

It is a cold day today, and I thought I'd share some child linguistics, worked out by a Norwegian kid. Not me, though I wish it were. In his dream language:

Water = badji
Flying = moo
Snow = badji moo.

Beautiful.