perfectworry-blog

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girls fighting evil: the girl back from an adventure

for this anon

(she made it through the other world. she saw magic she’d never imagined. she saved this other world, like dorothy or the pevensies. then, one day, she was sent back. so now she hunts, for magic mirrors or secret portals, twisting labyrinths that would send her back to her magic world, the place she saved- the home she wants.)

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I saw the prompt and saved this for today, because I didn’t go anywhere yesterday, but I had plans to spend today on Harajuku’s Takeshita Street. That’s a much more interesting setting than my apartment with the A/C running.

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The city is a maze. Buildings jostle one another, vying for the attention of tourists and locals alike. Neon signs blaze during daylight hours. Giant complexes of shiny glass and chrome consume brick and mortar stores on the main street, but duck back down the alleyway and twist sideways to fit down the stairs to the good stuff. It’s still there, if you know where to look; up rickety staircases and in basements if you dare to stray away from the tourist information signs.

*

Miri runs her hand over a gauzy skirt, admiring the way the glittery mesh shifts beneath her touch. She turns, reaching out to show her mother. But Okaasan is gone, and Anechan is nowhere to be seen. Miri lets go of the skirt and steps away. But she can’t see over the racks of clothing.

What beguiled her a moment ago becomes frightening. The princess dresses are too bright. The music pumping through the speakers is too loud. Miri runs past skirts weighed down with bows and ribbons. She darts down each isle, careful to dodge strangers clustered together. They’re laughing and saying something Miri doesn’t understand.

“Miri-chan!” Her mother’s voice cuts through the heavy music like sunlight through a cloud. Miri turns and sees Okaasan haloed in the light of the fitting rooms. Anechan stands doubled in the mirror. Miri runs to them, and there are two families, where for a moment, Miri had none.

*

“Kitty!” a girl in a school uniform crouches down to offer her hand.

The cat stretches, and gives her a disinterested sniff, but she allows the girl to pet her head. The day is sunny and the sidewalk is warm. Not too many people down this street, and the cat has hidden herself in an alleyway too narrow for any but the smallest of human children.

“Cute, cute!” gushes the girl. Her arms are weighed down with bags, and the cat wonders what she can buy that would make her happier than the sun and a safe place to nap.

*

“Do you want that, Izzy?”

The on the hanger is positively frothy with ribbons and lace. It’s cute the way a cupcake is cute, but Izzy shakes her head. Where would she wear it? A beribboned thing like that might fit in in a place like this, but she would stand out like a sore thumb at home: an awkward, unfashionable sore thumb.

Besides, she knows that this is guilt money. Izzy dreamed of going to Japan since she first settled down to watch Sailor Moon on TV in the morning before school with a bowl of cereal balanced on her knee. Her father invited her on this business trip a week after her mother dropped the bomb.

She shoves the skirt back on the rack and storms out of the little shop. She stands in the middle of the busy street, blinking in the dizzying sunlight.

“Izzy?” Her father comes up behind her with a handful of shopping bags already clutched in his fist. “Are you OK?”

No, I’m not fine. You ruin everything. “I’m just hungry.”

“What do you want?”

For you to stay with Mom. “A crepe.”

This is not how Izzy imagined eating a crepe on Takeshita Street. In her daydreams, she was one of the girls decked out in ribbons and in bows and looking like a princess. Instead, her mascara is running down her face and choking on the whipped cream.

She doesn’t want to be here like this. Izzy finally had a chance to visit Japan, and she would give it all up in a heartbeat to go home, back to the way things were before.

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i.

Princess Esphyr steps through the door. She hesitates with her foot just above the carpet, but it’s quick: blink and you’ll miss it. Her shoes aren’t glass, but spun from gold silk; glass is too impractical in this day and age.

Her heavy skirts rustle, like the wind in the leaves.

But it is not her shoes or her dress or the golden comb in her hair that reveal her as the lost princess: it is her confident posture and kind smile.

ii.

This room is unfamiliar to her. Her hand alights on the back of a chair to brush the silk. The four-poster bed is soft with a feather mattress, and cloaked in heavy blue drapes. All around her are the trappings of royal luxury. The brush and comb on the nightstand gleam in the light of the roaring fire.

There isn’t a speck of dust, nor a single smudge of dirt. This room has never seen untidiness. The air inside is still, like a museum – or a crypt.

iii.

“Esphyr, our daughter. Welcome home.”

The king spreads his arms, and the queen stands behind him with glistening eyes. Eshpyr takes another uncertain step towards them. She knows she should only have eyes for her parents after all these years, but she can’t help but notice a servant disappearing through a panel in the wall. The hidden door creaks shut, and Esphyr averts her gaze.

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” says the queen.

Esphyr smiles. Aunt Peg taught her to always smile when she doesn’t know what to say.

She feels the absence of her godmother and siblings just as strongly as the presence of the parents she’s never known.  

“We’ll leave you to gather yourself,” says the queen. She must recognize a smile like that when she sees one, because she learned the same lessons. “Ring the bell if you need something, and a servant will come.”

“Thank you,” says Esphyr.

The room is crowded with the people who aren’t there: Henry and Harriette, Aunt Peg, her mother and father, the maid crouching as she ducked into the servant’s staircase.   Esphyr rings the bell just for the company. A maid appears at once, not through the hidden panel in the wall as Esphyr hoped, but through the same doors as the king and queen took their leave of her.

“Your Highness?”

Esphyr returned to the palace as the lost princess from a fairy tale. But she is not at home.

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Esphyr always looks like a princess. But what does a princess look like, when she’s not wearing gowns and a tiara? It’s her posture. Even when she’s baking cakes or weeding the garden or cuddled up reading to Henry and Harriette, Esphyr’s posture is flawless. Her posture is regal.

She moves with the practiced grace of a dancer, and it is practiced; Aunt Peg spent hours balancing books on the young princess’s head. Posture could be taught, but the regal bearing and quiet confidence of a princess could only be learned.

*

Esphyr flitted from window to window. She threw the curtains open wide to let the sunlight stream in from outside. She danced through the little cottage like springtime itself, singing out.

“Good morning, Harriette,” she called. “Good morning, Henry! Rabbit!”

Henry blearily rubbed his eyes, while Harriette burrowed deeper under the blankets. Esphyr alighted on the side of their bed and leaned in to give them each a good morning kiss.

“It’s the first day of spring, and spring means the markets!”

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Because I’m in JST (EST+13), I don’t see the day’s prompts until the evening. I had already come home from my day out today when I got a chance to read today’s blog post and prompt, so I wrote about a fellow I noticed at the ufotableCafe while I was there today. I jotted down everything I could remember about him and expanded it into a quick character scene. The story never quite got him back into the cafe, though.

• pimply • hawkish nose • black hair, long, fried – maybe he bleached/dyed it,  but then dyed it back? • headphones? – if he had some, they were heavy duty • the only male customer in the Fate/Stay night café at 1:20pm on a Tuesday • black sweatshirt, big purple (blue?) zipper • ordered the Saber drink, Shiro/Archer fight pasta, and Saber dessert • baggy pants • sitting at the table with the Lancer and Rider pillows, not that we got a choice • Rider: attractive purple haired lady, very minor character • Lancer: major character, tragic good looking nice guy

Today is the last first day for new merchandise. His favorite anime just finished it’s run, and the cafe released the last menu to honor the final episode. He wants to pick up posters of his favorite characters and coasters to finish his collection. He arrived at the restaurant at opening, but let a gaggle of girls pass ahead of him, because he is a gentleman, and work doesn’t start until this evening.

He took a second shift job so his days would be open for his hobbies. With no chance of anything but dead-end work, he figures he might as well arrange his life around his interests. He’s not a NEET. He’s not a hikikomori. He works nights stocking merchandise in a warehouse.

Reservations made, he wanders back to the shopping complex down the street to browse. This is nerd heaven, but he’s not overwhelmed. He can hear tourists exclaiming their surprise at the assortment of goods and knick-nacks, but he’s already picked through to find what he wants. Today, he’ll just browse for something to do until he gets bored.

He finds an abandoned stairwell in the back of the building and sits down with his game console on his knees. There’s only one more boss battle between him and beating the game. He could charge right in, but he wants to savor it. Everything is ending. So he guides his character into the woods to fight easy monsters, level grinding and hunting for gear. He thinks wandering dungeons is a lot like exploring in here. There’s a lot of junk, but some unexpected treasure, too.

He used to buy just anything he could find, but now he is a connoisseur of merchandise. He only wants the best. He comes to the café for the food, and because the items are limited. They’re only available for two weeks with the menu, and then they’re gone for good.

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Introduction|自己紹介

Good morning!

Nice to meet you, other teachers writing!

Online, I’m Rose, so my students can’t Google me. I’m an international elementary school librarian. Currently in Tokyo, I’m originally from New England.

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Today’s assignment was to wonder.

I honestly wonder if I wondered properly, but… I narrowed down the list to my best wonderings.

I wonder what it’s like to be happy living in a small town.

I wonder about Shintoism.

I wonder what it’s like to sleep for twenty years.

I wonder what it’s like to be fluent in a second language.

I wonder if people will go to Mars in my lifetime.

I wonder how I’ll feel if people go to Mars in my lifetime.

I wonder what it’s like to not be tired all of the time.

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Men write universal stories. Women write stories for girls. Men write Literature. Women write chick lit. Even in a world where women do publish in heavier numbers than men do, they are underscored, underseen, and undervalued. Twilight is and will remain a crucial part of YA’s history — YA’s female-driven history — despite or in spite of the fact it doesn’t garner the same praises that those held up as idols within the community do. Men like John Green become symbols of YA’s forward progress and Seriousness as a category, whereas Stephenie Meyer gets to be a punchline.

A Censored History of Ladies in YA Fiction (via catagator)

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I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.

Sylvia Plath (via lady-arryn)

Preach sister.

(via yeahwriters)

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[W]hen I was 9, I cried because Emma Watson was Hermione. My world was shattered because I thought that Hermione, brave, smart, cunning, geeky, outspoken, loyal Hermione with her big bushy hair, was Puerto Rican, just like me. And I was 9, and I realized that even though I loved Harry Potter, it didn’t love me back. Because even though Jo Rowling could create this magical world full of mystery and wonder and the impossible I didn’t belong. And I cried because white girls had Martha from Half Magic and Lucy from The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and Eilonwy from The Black Cauldron and Ella from Ella Enchanted and Odge from The Secret of Platform 13 and of course Alanna from Alanna: The First Adventure and I had no one and I had nothing in the fantasy genre.

But let me reiterate the most important part: I was NINE years old. Nine years old and I had already given up on the fantasy genre.

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Right now, children’s literature is seeing an intense flare-up in the ongoing conversation about the diversity crisis in children’s books. While this conversation has been going on for decades, now social media has given the people having it megaphones, and they are using them to...

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books I read in April

Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy, by Karen Foxlee Cookie, by Jacqueline Wilson Spilling Ink, by Ellen Potter and Anne Mazer Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh Lily Alone, by Jacqueline Wilson

progress: 32/100 books in 2014

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if anyone ever needed a gift idea for me, I would take anything from this site (just sayin')

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The Cartographer, by Ranger

Unfold for me, a map on my table lay out for me borders of lace oceans of skin, trembling waves under my hands… 

(read the rest)

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THIS STARTS TOMORROW FOR NATIONAL POETRY MONTH! Get the deets HERE. Get the guidelines HERE. Read the FAQ HERE. Meet the guest judges HERE. We will be sharing more about our vision for the book too! It’s going to be fab!