As usual, the entries are unordered, from different periods of her time at the Academy. Questions, comments, guesses appreciated. Have at it.

[Joss is boss, River is not mine, etc. ad nauseum, ad infinitum...] Thanks to Bytemite for the beta. _______________________________________________________________________ ___ __ _

ENTRY # ???? White Wisteria Into the quiet bower Hung with thick white sunlight And swaying perfume A curtain so immediate Separated from the blistering sun by the long buzzing of wings Deep in sculptural clusters, fragile softness, Green tendrils catching air and blue sky Binding it to the heat, stirring it with leaves: Still under shade So heady the trance Like fading dusk That you struggle out of it Only after a few steps to remember you've left it behind. -- Now you visit only for arrangements Taking for a purpose, Feet skiffing through curled leaves Crisped on dry brick. Watch from the outside As it tries to draw you closer. You bow your head, Slip under again- A girl and The parted tablecloth. Straightening up You let your notice fall Into the dried flowers So quickly burnt And realize this place Is no longer meant for sheltering your ghost.

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ENTRY #????

There is something bitter in my mouth, and it weighs down my tongue like copper. Around it I cannot speak, without it I cannot remember what was there before—only the instruction to keep it remains. I want to spit it out, for my feet are carrying me towards what I can only see is a black and rushing void, a vast river of night. But I have already forgotten how.

I can only remember negative space, the spots on the wall filled only by a bit of twisted wire or a tiny hole pricked in the pristine blank where pictures used to stand. Fortune’s wheel has flipped with a disapproving tut, tut. I hold the winnings in my mouth—my compensation, small change. I must not spit it out lest I reach this sweeping darkness without fare, to fail, my task incomplete, and I must not swallow it, to choke on the amulet that protects me. That would be willful and capricious. I was always willful and capricious, but I am not my own. I obey because only they know what is good for me—it is better that I obey. If I don’t I may be hurt. I can’t put together why this is funny, but there’ll be a joke beside me in the morning. Leering in my face.

The sweat soaks my sheets in the coffin chamber and I twist in them, wrapped up in a comforting, strangling embrace. The thoughts and echoes are like bats. Swallowing up insects in a diving swoop, crunching them down between white fangs until the light spills out like a broken lantern.

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ENTRY # ????

And I’m here again, the blank table in my mind, cleared away, though I knew what was there before. Cleared away for work that they will give me, set on the table, my only plane of understanding. I only care about what’s shown in the clear photonegative in my mind, the space beyond is fuzzy and nonexistent. It exists beyond the fourth wall, beyond my crystal box. I am a treasured collection of seashells cleaned of sand and context, echoing with their insignificant, fragmented, fading seas. Pulsing with blood. Glowing ears, the rooms are like seashells, filled with clean sealight, silent except for wisps, shreds hanging from the walls that do not reveal themselves to me. Not enough to grasp. Not enough to see what they were. Like erased butterfly wings.

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ENTRY #????

The driving metal plane, like sleet, like aluminum through my tongue, my sinuses, my cornea, all the way back into my skull. Shrapnel that is impossible to grab before I wake again, the taste of mothballs in my mouth and salt on my tongue. Burning.

Suddenly the air is cold and swirling like water. A lone light left on is my only sign that someone was here, however long ago. Fingerprints on the slick metal disrupting dust. I caught them but they still win, I have gained nothing they did not want me to know. Time passes here, but like silt through the floorboards; in a way I cannot understand. A few grains float down lazily like dust motes, then sometimes it is a deep calciferous avalanche, the soft whump of impact. There is no dark clatter like the black lacquer tray that held her powder. White like snow, spilled across the polished expanse—the sweetest light sugar. Melting into footprints.

I met him today. He watched during the operation, but my hands, a hundred miles down, sunk like stones, wouldn’t let go of the shrapnel. Trying to see where those footprints went, stalking across boards burnished with sandalwood oil. The shrapnel was warm, as if it came from a temple with the scent of incense drifting through the shattered concrete. Gunpowder offerings. Fireworks and groans.

The Buddha smiling under a moustache of sprayed blood.

I was in too much pain, let go and swam up to see him. All my limbs went cold, the last warning I would ever receive. I couldn’t feel them and I felt nothing upon our introduction. His name is Mathias. I am to call him Dr. Mathias, all in white. And now the disciples are complete, a full complement of twelve. He looks too arrogant for a holy man.

I have made it very far.

But I can see her nose flare, the dark eyes dart into the corner before it fades out. Something is there, and the knife will meet it. Sharp flash, rending the bats shreds of nothing below in the powdered grit of lives.

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ENTRY # ????

I don’t have the dreams any more. I don’t dream. It’s more disorienting than ever. I’ve always dreamed, and now there is nothing, blackness waiting for me, I don’t know for how long. The fear is real, the pain is real. The dreams are not. I cannot put images to these things, I cannot see them. And I no longer know when I’m dreaming, when I’m remembering, and when I am on the table. There are things I’d like to think I didn’t do because I think I don’t remember them. She did something too, the dream-friend that I follow but she never turns around. Her hand like a fluttering against my cheek.

Baba enraged a high lady once.

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