Here's something that isn't Whitman.

Empty yourself: pour out every drop of your nectar
and let the world drink it. Save it for no one.
A full cup cannot be refilled.
A full cup has no purpose.

Blank pages are spittoons for the blood-filled saliva of the misunderstood,
Bedpans for the invalid discontent.
Or clear glass for the warmed-breath to loan their warmth
and use their pure fingers as pens,
scribbling vagrant art.
But today we will empty our bedpans and exhale a new permanence.

We can fly a kite in a lightning storm, but we can't stop this thing from what it's gonna be. Silly girl, that's just the way it is. How atoms turn into planets eventually.


A melody with nothing attached, like a thought without words to share it,
That's how sunrises happen in this mortal desert.
Two claps and the brink of dawn.

There is a world beneath our lessons or perhaps above them
in which we are still animals, but it is now forgotten,
drowned underneath the voices telling us to re-think.

For a brief second, I did not have to ask
because I knew that our hands are working
some deep magic from the forgotten lessons we never had to learn.

[Please save me.]

Sometimes I have dreams about the too-young woman, pressing her baby to her breast under a thick jacket, praying the baby doesn't make a sound. Letting her hands fall into practiced poses, aligning her spine to the lines she saw thousands of times as a child, removing the fire from her eyes. Telling the guard she's "just running an errand." Her feeling the breath and blood come back to her after he, in an act inexplicable to one who does not understand it, lets her go on, even though he was instructed to apprehend anyone he saw... why did he trust her?

"anything is possible while we exist."

"we'll get through this together."

I'm so glad we can work together when we're at our limits. It's the most wonderful feeling ever.

I'm sure you just fell asleep, but you know I can't help but worry.

I hope you see me in a dream tonight :) You're wonderful.

I wonder if something's on your mind...

I love you, and I always will.

Tomorrow, I'll do my homework, and then we're going to have some legit best friend time.

I've been thinking about what I said about my fears and, after a brief but very real existential crisis (not really! I'm fine! just like... life examination time, you know?), I wanna talk a bit more about what I was telling you about. I think it was a bit unclear and silly sounding, and now that you really forced that outta me... I feel better. It's like in spirited away when-- you know what, I'm a nerd

But I'm a nerd who loves you. :D

Forever and ever.

confession: I'm looking forward to applying to college because it'll be the light at the end of the tunnel.

Sometimes, it makes me really happy to do all the things we do together. Like, sitting on my bed watching reality shows and eating mangos. I even sit in the same place we always sit in.

Nick: you said you were gonna go to sleep in 10
Nick: but you meant 10 human minutes
Midori: RIGHT
Nick: and 10 vampire minutes actually go to 3.45.
Midori: yeah
Nick: human time
Nick: i mean.
Nick: so yeah.
Nick: that's just a rough mental conversion though.
Midori: we make the perfect couple you know.

you can cut through everything with a single line, you know. that's one for the vaults.

I wonder where you are?

hm, this wasn't here before...

The shrill cry sliced through the night's dark stillness, piercing through the brisk air as if it too wanted to escape, but instead echoing back to plague her again, strangely hallowed as if the landscape had somehow altered the noise, finally allowing it to waft up from the damp grass into the desolate moonlight above.

and so it begins.

Technology

Technology is purely mechanical: gears meshing with gears. Lightbulbs exist, though they're expensive and one must provide one's own energy; usually only machinists like Idarus have toys like that. Metalwork is important to Armour, and so machinecraft goes hand in hand with metalcraft, especially for poorer areas where gold and brass aren't options. Phosphoric displays and wax-based memory are the height of modern technology.

The most practical use of technology is production: factories work on coal or boiling water. Factories center around metalcraft, and although factory-production has not yet uprooted artisans' craftsmanship, that revolution has already begun.

The actual tenets of technological design base more around the superstitious flavor of Greek science than around what a Western person would consider "modern scientific thought." However, this science is often accurate and proves mostly practical. Sacred geometry is the solitary overlap between Aumorian science and the now-outlawed Aurmorian magic.

Gunpowder and artillery are in their early stages of development, and are used sparsely by the military, and mostly to replace catapults. Most soldiers do, however, carry stumpshots.

I've been working on Armour again.

I think you're having a nightmare or something. If something feels unsettled in my stomach and I focus on it, I can tell when it's something I can't explain. I hope you're okay

You're in my room in your vowel and consonant shirt in the bathroom washing your watch off before you put it on. I just wanted you to know that right now, I'm the happiest I can remember being since we fell in love.

Thank you for everything.

And I love the best girl in the entire world.

And I can see her in just a week.

There was a sky today I wished you had seen. There are so many things here that I can't take with me in a picture.

I love you.