#I did so much research into mid-atlantic accents for this

[neptunerunaway]

Alastor's Accents & Linguistic Analysis

I love linguistics and I ended up getting really fixated on Alastor's accent so here's an analysis I cooked up

In the series, Alastor speaks with a Mid-Atlantic accent, also known as a transatlantic accent. It is a blend of English that seeks to blend American and British (specifically Received Pronunciation) accents. This accent was mainly used by two groups of people. 1) the wealthy, upper-class, who often learned to use it in private preparatory schools. And 2) entertainers.

(It was also commonly used to teach non-native English speakers)

This accent was very commonly used in the entertainment industry in films, theater productions, and radio broadcasts, which explains why Alastor would use it.

(It's not that important, but while listening to the character, I noticed that the pilot va and the series va have slight variations of the accent. Particularly, pilot Alastor avoids the rhotic r sound almost completely, while series Alastor only occasionally cuts the rhotic r, so you hear them a lot more.

If you want to hear it, listen to the words than end in -r. Can you actually hear the r sound or is it a vowel that implies an r?)

The thing about a Mid-Atlantic accent though, is that it is a learned accent that speakers need to be trained in. No one used it natively except maybe those raised in the wealthy elite.

(I have a slight fascination with accent training bc I'm from an area that has an accent that people train to use. Newscasters used to be sent here in order to learn the accent)

So Alastor would not have grown up using that accent, but rather had to learn it for his job as a radio host. He may have taken to using it in everyday life as an adult, but we can't be sure.

So what is his natural accent? We can't be 100% certain, but we can take a guess, so lets' look at the facts we have about his life.

We know he was born and raised in New Orleans and he's 'mixed race Creole' which narrows it down quite a bit. Now, New Orleans is actually quite linguistically diverse, but to untrained ears (myself) they sound very similar. Here's a video about a few of the accents:

So there it is, that is possibly the accent Alastor would naturally have. Of course, there are a few other factors to consider, such as the time period, but I'm not sifting through research papers to figure out if there were any distinct differences.

As I leave us here, let me say that I am in no means an expert in anything I talk about here, I am merely someone who really enjoys languages and linguistics and all notes here are from an amateurs observations.

[tricornonthecob]

Dialect notes! Dialect notes! Dialect notes!

Because I missed my calling in academic research, I've spent a non-zero amount of time going down rabbit holes on early North American dialect for Along The Northern Heights. Is it worth doing all this research for a fanfiction of a PBS kids show from 20 years ago? Well it gives me considerable amounts of joy to write, so yes.

Anyway! I want to share a massive infodump, because writing gives me goodfeels and so does sharing! Please let me know if I am inaccurate or wrong about anything. I am not an academic and furthermore I do not want to spread misinformation.

MASSIVE WORD BLOCK UNDER THE CUT

A Pregame With Disclaimers About "Good" English

The history of Modern English is rife with Big Oof moments, and I'm not just talking about The Great Vowel Shift or Noah Webster deciding that the "u" in "colour" was silly. Especially in the late 18th century, there was a push to make accents more uniform and to establish a single "Good" English - and there is so much aggression towards what those scholars considered "Bad" English. And, in my extremely uneducated opinion, it seems like it's a conveniently moving target, just like "whiteness." In the context I'm in when writing, it positively reeks of shitting on any of the world's population groups that aren't Southeastern England. And, being from the United States, I know all too well the absolute shit that's been lobbed at AAVE for not being "Good" English.

This "Good" vs "Bad" way of looking at dialect is reductive, destructive, and boring, and I think it goes without saying I don't condone it in the slightest.

A Further Pregame With Received Pronunciation, or RP

the "generic" British dialect many of us outside the UK think of when we think of a British accent (a shame, I think, because the UK is so dialect-diverse and there are some absolute bangers on that damp island!) There are certainly a myriad of reasons for this, but probably the most common reasons/claims I've heard through my life are

A) 19th-century upper-class British folk wanting to have a more separate dialect from the other classes.

B) associations with the way the Royal Family has spoken English since at least Queen Victoria (a generic reasoning that we see happen along populations: imitating those in power)

C) 20th-century RP became "generic" in a similar way that the broad North American dialect* now associated with the United States and, to some degree, Canada, did - that is, it was further developed and use encouraged as the easiest to understand when recorded and played-back on period audio recording equipment (specifically radio and television.)

*a timeout is to be made here for the so-called Mid-Atlantic dialect at the dawn of "talkies" and early Hollywood. Its the delightful way of talking you'll hear in old black-and-white movies: slightly musical cadence, and combining the broad north american dialect with a bit of the non-rhoticity of RP. This dialect was mostly affectation and as anyone with living American relatives born before 1960 can tell you, mid-20th-century Americans largely did not speak it in normal settings.

Now, all of this is to say, RP as a dialect doesn't really appear until mid-19th century (although it would seem the loss of rhoticity we so associate with RP was a gradual shift starting in the very end of the 18th century.) Furthermore, the ways that we, 21st-century denizens, know RP don't come into their own until the 20th century and proliferation of audio-based mass media.

On to My Actual Point : 18th Century American Dialect (non-AAVE)*

*I make this distinction because the history of AAVE is a massive topic all on its own and I feel even less qualified to speak on it

It can't be ignored that the base strata making up Anglo-American speech patterns would have been as varied as where the original settlers/invaders came from, nor can it be ignored that the American Colonies were made up of more than just Anglo-Saxon descendants. Even back then, they were a mosaic of cultural interaction, which is why Thomas Paine declared America (at least the white part) a European, and not British, culture.

That being said, multiple primary sources indicate that the dialect of Anglo-Americans at the late 18th/very early 19th century was similar to "well-bred" Londoner dialect of the time (assuming there's enough of a distinction here from broad Southeastern UK,) and that this particular dialect was broadly spoken with less regional variance than the family of dialects in the UK.

This is made clear in vol 3 of Timothy Dwight's Travels in New-England and New-York, a collection of letters sent to colleagues in England:

"I shall not, I believe, offend against either truth or propriety if I say, that the English language is in this country pronounced more correctly than in England. I am not, indeed, sanguine enough to expect, that you will credit the assertion, nor that you will believe me to be a competent judge of the subject. Still I am satisfied that the assertion is true. That you may not mistake my meaning, I observe, that by a correct pronunciation I intend that of London; and, if you please, that of well-bred people in London."

(Dwight, Timothy. Travels in New-England and New-York vol 3 p 265)

Now in context he is only speaking of the New England region, and he does make a disclaimer here that he's not "a competent judge" of the subject, and we are certainly ignoring his hope that he won't be cited on the matter. But, his observation holds true from other primary accounts, especially William Eddis' Letters From America, which are composed of his observations (mostly of Maryland gentry) from 1769 to 1777. (His letters also happen to be an invaluable primary source for observations on culture and political commentary on the rising crisis between the colonies and Britain, from the perspective of a loyal well-to-do British subject.)

On the uniformity of language, Eddis has this to say:

"In England, almost every county is distinguished by a peculiar dialect; even different habits, and different modes of thinking, evidently discriminate inhabitants, whose local situation is not far remote; but in Maryland, and throughout the adjacent provinces, it is worthy of observation, that a striking similarity of speech universally prevails; and it is strictly true, that the pronounciation of the generality of the people has an accuracy and elegance, that cannot fail of gratifying the most judicious ear."

(Eddis, William. Letters from America, Historical and Descriptive. p 59)

if the odd comma placements are making it hard to read, you're not alone. 18th century writing is choc-full of what we might today consider run-on sentences, comma splices, or just generally cumbersome. Here's me paraphrasing as best I can:

"In England, almost every county has its own dialect, habits, and modes of thinking, noticeably different inhabitants that don't live very far from each other; but in Maryland and adjacent provinces, there is a notable similarity of speech, and its absolutely true that the generalized accent/pronunciation has an accuracy and elegance that won't fail to gratify a discerning ear."

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All this background I'm giving comes to this point: late 18th-century "well-bred" Londoner is the dialect I have chosen to loosely base what I write in Along The Northern Heights. I listen to alot of Simon Roper's work on youtube regarding the topic. I would say these two are probably the most valuable videos on the accent.

He makes disclaimers about not being formally qualified to speak on linguistics, and I would be remiss to not pass along those disclaimers.

That being said, what's in my mind is pastiche of that, the local "country" (read: appalachian) dialect in rural Virginia, the dialect work used in Turn:Washington's Spies and HBO John Adams, as well as some of the dialect you hear in PBS Masterpeice's Poldark, and various media I've watched/read from Living History re-enactors about reconstructing dialect.

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Since I've made it a headcanon feature that James Hiller has a bit of a brogue that he feels pressured to correct, but slips into when he is excited or upset, I'd like to dig more into less-"proper" dialects of the time, and, if possible, the less-proper Philly accent. For shits and giggles, here's what I suspect is a dramatization of a modern-day Philly accent:

And then a very similar, a very real Baltimore Baldmer accent:

Honestly? Hearing both of these warms the cockles of my heart, because my late grandparents (especially grandma. *Especially* grandma) spoke with a Baltimore accent, which has similarities with the Philly accent. My aunts and uncles all speak it; its been normalized and blended with a virginia rural accent in mine (I say wadder, my grandma said wooder. I say toosdaye, my grandma said toosdee. I say ahn, grandma said ooowan. I say y'all, grandma said all youse/all you. I say "d'jeet," she said d'jeet, and you can pull d'jeet from my cold dead hands.)

In addition, you have the modern-day "High Tide" dialect of Okracoke, the Carolina Brogue.

trouble with Carolina Brouge, which is disappearing, is that its got too much modern-day southeastern drawl to really use as a basis for an 18th century Philly boy. Though it does seem like drawing out the "A" in water into wooder/woader is a commonality.

Anyway. That's been my infodump. I spent too long on this!

[ckret2]

do you think alister if he even has any kind of preference (he could be sex repulsed and all) would have that old 'its not gay if you're the one fucking the other man' mentality (round about way of asking for the same post you made for pen but. for the radio demon)

No, no, see, this isn’t the same as the question I answered earlier at all. The question I answered earlier was “do you think Sir Pent tops or bottoms?” (technically, the “question” i answered was “pen is a bottom” and my answer was “INTERESTING! NO.”) But the question you’re asking is “do you think Alastor defines a person’s sexuality by their sex acts rather than by the people that person is attracted to?” with a side helping of “do you think Alastor has any sexual preferences at all or is he 100% sex repulsed?”

“Which acts does the character think ‘count’ as gay” has no inherent correlation to “which acts does the character enjoy engaging in.” You see the difference. For them to be the same question, we’d have to start off the question by assuming that what acts the character is okay with engaging in is determined by whether or not the character thinks those acts are gay. Conflating what they think is gay with what they’re okay with doing implies that you’re assuming a whole lot about that character’s personality, how much internalized homophobia that character is dealing with, and how fragile that character’s sense of masculinity is, and I’m pretty sure you don’t actually want to imply any of that!

So if you want me to answer the same question I answered earlier, then come back and ask that question, not a roundabout version of the question that’s in fact a very, VERY different question. In the meantime, I’m going to answer the question that you actually asked: “do you think Alastor has 'it’s not gay if you’re penetrating’ beliefs about sexuality?”

The tl;dr is: big shrug, I dunno. Seems possible based on what little I DO know about the time period but I don’t know enough yet. Also if anyone happens to have resources on queer life/history in 1920s New Orleans, like, please chuck them at me.

Essay below!! Hey tumblr you’d better let the read more cut work, don’t let me down.

As it happens, I’ve actually been trying to figure out how sexuality was viewed roundabouts the 1920s in New Orleans—because I figure Alastor’s views have probably evolved very little since then. I get the impression that he’s very set in his own era; and because he’s sort of in a social bubble—who’s going to try to get close to the Radio Demon?—and doesn’t engage much with current mass media, he’s more or less shielded from evolutions in modern culture.

(Compare that to, say, Angel, who sounds very modern—or Charlie, who’s at least a couple of centuries old (probably much more) but also dresses and acts very modern.)

So whatever he thinks about sexuality is going to be rooted in whatever was current when he was alive.

The 20s were actually surprisingly good to queer folks, from what I’ve found so far—there was some VERY gay vaudeville & jazz tracks coming out—but like, I don’t know exactly how good, relatively speaking. Or where. Was it, like, only New York? And/or only San Francisco? I’ve got next to no sources on what was going on in New Orleans. The ONLY fact I’ve been able to find from the era so far is that 1933—the year of Alastor’s death—is the year the first gay bar opened in New Orleans (or, at least, the first one that’s still open today—it relocated but it’s still going). But that doesn’t tell me a lot about the overall environment. All it tells me is “New Orleans wasn’t so homophobic that the bar was burned down immediately, and/or they kept it too secret for that to happen.” That’s not a lot to go on.

And all of this is, like, the level of mainstream tolerance/acceptance toward queerness. It doesn’t tell me what people actually believed then.

Here’s a paragraph on late-1800s/early-1900s psychological beliefs about queerness that are hella outdated today: one contemporary belief about sexuality called “sexual inversion” basically said that a queer person’s brain was “inverted” gender-wise from the norm—that is, for instance, if you’re AMAB and attracted to men, you’ve got a feminine brain, you’ll like to do feminine things, you’ll want to perform feminine sex acts (ie, be the recipient in anal sex), and you’ll probably want to have a feminine body. Basically it conflated being gay and being trans. On the other hand, if you’re AMAB and you’re attracted to a feminine AMAB “invert,” you’re more or less still straight, because you’re attracted to someone with a feminine brain so like that’s more or less a woman psychologically speaking. By modern standards this whole framework is very “oh yikes” but like… ours probably will be seen as cringy in 50 years; and psychologists who believed in sexual inversion generally advocated in favor of letting inverts live in alignment with how their brains told them to, which was a big step forward.

So that was a theory going around. But like, how widespread was it? I know a book about lesbian inverts was written in the late '20s to try to make the term more widespread but idk whether it succeeded or to what extent. Was it a term ONLY being used in psychiatric circles and a handful of people who picked up the book? Was it restricted to certain metropolitan centers? If you went to a drag ball, did people introduce themselves as inverts? (Did they have drag balls? I know they did in mid-Victorian England but that doesn’t tell me much about what was being done in 1920s USA, much less New Orleans.)

And as far as I can tell, the idea of “sexual inversion” was the first time that a framework was presented in Western society where queerness was presented as something inborn rather than a choice people make to go screw someone they “shouldn’t” screw. There was a shift around the 20th century from “gayness is an action that you perform, people can perform the act or not perform the act but they’re basically all the same on the inside” to “gay is something that you ARE, on the inside,” but WHEN exactly did gayness shift from an action to an identity? And when did that shift happen in New Orleans? Knowing when it happened in NYC or some shit isn’t gonna do me any good if, say, it didn’t happen in NOLA for another two decades.

So like obviously I need to find a lot more research on queer history in that region and decade before I can give a super firm answer about what Alastor’s opinions/beliefs are.

I’m toying with the idea that Alastor did spend some of his life in NYC, though; like, he didn’t just casually pick up a Mid-Atlantic accent on the streets of Nawlins. He might’ve picked it up from talkies—although he would’ve had to spend a LOT of time at the movies studying specifically to copy the accent. I know the Mid-Atlantic accent was big in theater, but was that also the case in NOLA, or only in New England? Were there, like, traveling Broadway shows then like there are today? I’m inclined to believe that Alastor actually studied theater at some point in order to pick up the accent, which probably means going to some theater school in the northeast. We know he was into theater, being trained as an actor before going into radio makes sense to me. (He also could’ve learned it at a fancy expensive private school, but I prefer headcanoning him as from a lower background than that.) So maybe he spent some time living in NYC before going back home to NOLA, so if I really really can’t find anything on 20s NOLA I can focus research on NYC instead and say “he picked up his opinions there.” That’s my plan B.

I know that, WHATEVER the 20s NOLA queer community was like, I want to headcanon Alastor was sort of in it but also sort of on the fringes of it—like, due to his very conspicuous (conspicuous to himself) lack of normal/expected attraction to the people he knew he was “supposed” to be attracted to, he sort of felt a draw to the company of other folks who were conspicuously not attracted to who they were “supposed” to be—but he never really felt super deep ties to that community because, one, he just naturally forms very shallow relationships in the first place, and, two, he wasn’t hanging out in queer spaces looking for a relationship or a date or an opportunity to express some hidden side of himself so much as he was looking for a place where he wasn’t being weighed down by The Mainstream Expectations. But you can still be weighed down, albeit to a lesser extent, by The Counterculture Expectations, too. So, he was comfortable enough in queer spaces, but remained just sort of on the edges—was probably recognized by sight by other folks in NOLA who frequented queer events but wasn’t anyone’s best friend. Kinda shows up and makes small talk and goes home.

So, what sort of opinions and beliefs would he have absorbed from those edges? And how would they have been influenced by his own ace/aro perspective, from which ALL talk of sex and romance, whether queer or straight, is a foreign perspective that he could intellectually learn about but not ever really FEEL on an instinctive/gut level the way allo folks do?

I don’t know yet. Gotta find the right research materials first!

So tl;dr anon I don’t know yet whether he thinks taking it up the ass makes someone gayer than putting it in the ass.

[jumphq]

Post-Mortem, Sparrow Tour 2018

This was a month that felt like four months. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean that in the amazing way that doing all sorts of brand-new things and being very much in the moment seems to slow down time. There are articles written about this phenomena, actually: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-empowerment-diary/201705/how-slow-down-time. According to this article, the reason September went by so freaking meaningfully is that we were bombarding ourselves with Firsts. First big tour in support of Sparrow. First time in a long time heading back to the Northeast and Midwest. First time I had to add an actual keyboard to the list of instruments I bring on stage, and within that one instrument there were dozens of sounds I had to reproduce. Etcetera, etcetera.

We worked hard. I don’t know if it’s readily ascertainable that being in a rock and roll band is tons of work by looking at one. It’s fun work, usually, but has its moments of being very intense. Especially when a new album comes out. There is radio to do in the mornings, interviews scattered during the day, loading in and out of venues, and we added soundcheck meet & greets that meant that once we arrived in a city, we were going to be working from then until show, basically.

It’s so fulfilling, though. I am the kind of person that works hard, all the time. I push and push myself (sometimes for no seeming reason), and am frustrated and disappointed with myself when I don’t get enough done. I would be classified as a “type-A” person, and I don’t mind. But sometimes I’m just working on “things” that I’m not as passionate about. An eight hour day of working on something I’m not emotionally connected to is much more tiring than working sixteen hours a day on something I believe in and care about. Being in JLC is that kind of job.

We needed every second that we had to put this tour together. These new songs are hardto play. There is so much going on in each and every song on Sparrow. Not necessarily more than on earlier recordings, but keep in mind that we never had to re-learn songs after other albums; we had been playing them live forever before we got to the studio and didn’t change them much after. There has always been a “live version” and a “studio version” of early Jump songs.

Not this time. Jay spent a crazy amount of time accessing the original recording files and turning his voice and Ward’s cello parts into samples that I could play on the keytar. While Evan didn’t really want to play to tracks, he add some electronic drums to his repertoire to approximate some of the parts live. Ward brought two guitars on tour for the first time, and Johnny played not only electric bass but a beloved new Moog Phatty. It was complicated, felt a little bit fragile, at first, but once we got the hang of things it was fun.

Hurricane Florence, while not visiting Charleston, still brought chaos to the city. There was anxiety felt wondering whether we’d be hit and how that would affect our practice. Shops and roads started closing down and we made a move so the entire band could be close by in case of flooding. In the end we were very very lucky, but there were still repercussions for us. We were trying to fulfill our PledgeMusic items, to get them sent out before tour, but this didn’t happen because mail basically shut down in NC, SC, and GA. This put us a full week behind, and we spent the rest of the month trying to catch up on many things.

Even in the last few days of rehearsal we were all feeling a bit overwhelmed. We camped out at the Footlight Player’s Theatre and the goal was to have a “listening party”, a final rehearsal before we hit the road, and that night, to be honest, I was not ready. Lyrics weren’t memorized and I had to think way too much about parts and how to play them. We were being hard on ourselves, though, and the response was so encouraging afterwards I didn’t mind spending the rest of that week’s dinner breaks to get in some extra practice so that the songs could feel comfortable.

Once the shows began, a quick weekend to some of our favorites: Charlotte, Atlanta, Columbia, where we were starting to find our groove. Raleigh, though, and the Lincoln Theatre, was a special surprise. It was Sunday, we hadn’t had a day off in three weeks, we were exhausted. It wasn’t the largest crowd we’ve played to, but that show was so much fun. People there were there to have a good time, and it put us into overdrive. Thank you so much, Raleigh.

The next leg was in the Northeast (and DC, where I insulted many a mid-Atlantic inhabitant). We hadn’t been there in fifteen years, but every show was sold out or nearly so, and that made us feel so great. These shows were our first of the City Winery gigs, and they were good to us. Great sound, great food. There were many highlights, for me, up North. We had a duo of ASL interpreters in DC that had mad sign-singing skills, and were more fun to watch than we were. Our show at Le Poisson Rouge made us feel so sexy to sell out such a great place in the Big Apple. Performance-wise, the NYC show was my favorite performance-wise; I felt really “on” that night. The super-intimate punk-rock feel of Union Pool in Brooklyn was refreshing after the lovely but slightly clinical City Wineries. We had to put Wardie in a corner to fit on stage, and many Dirty Dancing jokes were necessary. Our old pal the Mommyheads came to play with us, and they were as good as they were 20 years ago. Lots of our fans came just to see them that night and I didn’t mind at all. We had a lovely evening off with three people that pledged for the album and got to go to a Dr. Who-themed bar with us. The trio couldn’t have been more interesting and fun to hang out with: the professional bassoonist, the research monitor, and the Facebook developer. Loved that evening, and Ward got to show off his hipster Brooklyn knowledge by taking us to great places for dinner and dessert.

And Chicago! My kind of town. Chicago was a big deal for me personally, because I knew that the audience was going to be made up of a lot of friends and family that had never seen the band before, never seen me in that light, literally. I was a little nervous about that show, and I rarely get nervous. I also wanted very much for Chicago to be the show that was 100% accessible to the d/Deaf and hard of hearing. City Winery worked so hard with me to provide CART real-time captioning for all the goofy stuff we said in-between songs. And the captioning of the lyrics was provided by my other passion job, CaptionPoint, built by my wife Lindsay and run by my dear friend Lora. It was even more successful than I had hoped, the captions looked great on both sides of the stage. It was the first time Lindsay had ever been able to fully experience a JLC show; I am sure that our stage patter was absolutely worth the wait.

Wow. As I’m writing this I realize again how relatively short the tour was: after Chicago there were only three more dates. But it felt like we did so much. We saw so many of you, talked to everyone as long as we could and took pictures. The “soundcheck parties” were so fun for us. Seeing everyone again was energizing, to me. I wished at times that I could have spent more time. You said such wonderful, heartfelt things, things that I heard very clearly and appreciated completely. I am honored that this band and music and community has meant so much to you over the years; you mean everything to us. When people told me that they liked Sparrow I knew they were telling the truth and not just making conversation. Nothing could have made us happier. Like I said: fulfilling.

Athens was a highlight: we hadn’t seen the GA Theatre since it burned in 2009. The renovation was beautiful. They managed to keep the vibe of the place while making it all so much…better. But the fans in Athens have always been a special breed and we could have played on the streets if that was the only way to get to them. In the new GA Theatre we didn’t have to.

And finally, the Charleston Music Hall. Our new home. Our new “Dock Street”, a place that just makes us feel like the chamber-pop stars we are. We will see you soon, CMH.

This post is a marathon. If you’ve gotten this far, you must be a fan of the band, so I appreciate it. I want to thank many people for making this tour and this year possible, because…contrary to pop belief, we are not a famous rock band with loads of cash and there were many many donated hours that made this tour work.

Our manager Vance’s sidekicks on the Crew were Nick Stewart, the Ultimate Intern, hazed by his boss into oblivion and seemed to love every minute. He sold you tee shirts this time, but he’s going to be running something big someday. Herbie Jeffcoat, monitors and front-of-house, the sweetest “country boy” (his words, but also true) you could want on your team. Especially funny this time was hearing Herbie converse in his potent Southern accent with the FOH in Boston with a potent accent of his own. Translators were required.

Mike Rogers: what a treat it is to have gotten to know you both as a professional sound engineer and family member. I think that if Dad and your Mom had a reason to work with each other growing up like Evan and I have with you, our families would be closer than they are. Let’s keep working at it.

Alison Kendrick! The person that would be sooo bad at being a ninja because she simply wouldn’t be able to be quiet because life is just SO MUCH FUN and worth every giggle: thank you. Teasing aside, Alison is a complete and utter professional, a doer but more importantly a Problem Solver, and I truly would not have been able to do all the things internet-related without you. Thank you for being a mentor and a real friend. If you’d like to work with Alison yourself, please go to akshouts.com

Our uncomfortably attractive lawyer Gabe Fleet is genuinely fun to hang out with, giving attorneys a good name. Old pal Josh Terry and his amazing team in Maddison and Jen at Workshop Management opened doors that are closed to most people so thank you for helping us walk through them. New friends Sue, Lindsay and Tyler at Stunt Company put us in front of the movers and shakers and some (NPR, Paste, American Songwriter) actually liked what they heard.

Chris Slack, you hold all the archival keys to our kingdom and are dear to us for much more than that. Nate Baerreis and Ed and Val Schooling Brantley made us look so cool, so often. How, we will never know. Thank you.

Thanks to our families who let us be gone as much as we have been, this year. Some of you haven’t experienced not having us around, and I know it was hard, but thank you for being so supportive. We love you.

And Chief “Not-Getting-Paid-What-He’s-Worth” is Vance McNabb, who is still working on this tour two weeks later and won’t be done for a while. There are no ways to thank you, V, except perhaps to find a way to make Sparrow huge so you can get a massive raise and hire tons of people to help you. So, we’ll work on that.

Actually…will y’all please help us work on that? If not for us, for Vance? Thank you. And thank you most of all, for letting us make this album. Sparrow is a beautiful thing to us and we’re so lucky that you wanted to hear it. We are lucky that we got to make it. But it isn’t over, is it? There are ways we can try to keep this machine going, if you are willing. More in another post.

[maximilliandelirium]

Nothing Ventured (excerpt)

When he was born, there was nothing in his heart but anger. It was a storm condensed. From that point on, he watched the world as though he were constantly approaching his breaking point. There was never enough quiet, never any peace, not in the house and not outside. It was too warm.

           After a while, he got used to them. The Corps wasn't exactly what they were built to be, but they were something else. Something... familiar? It wasn't as though he blindly hated them anymore. He knew now that they were all rather strange people, a mishmash of different walks of life, shoved together in the hopes that they could make something.

           They were all disparate pieces, and while Yukiki had thought of himself as the most alien of all them, it turned out that they were all about equidistant from the point of “normal.” The only thing he lacked was a past. Even Nuii, the abandoned doll, had something before now.

           Eventually, he decided it didn't matter. What past they all had was obliterated in favor of the future, of the now. They could make it work. These little broken pieces could turn nothing into something. It was fascinating. Living things. Bonding.

           Recently, he'd started getting a little more in touch with... emotions. Before, all he'd known was murderous rage and humiliation, which fueled the former. Now he was growing accustomed to things like humor and sadness. It wasn't entirely foreign. In fact, the whole process felt like reacquainting himself with someone he already knew, just hadn't seen in a long time.

           His first clue that he had what might be called a soul was when Nuii, on a walk through the woods that surrounded the house, stretched her arms up to him in a silent request. And he'd felt something, like a tremor in his being. He had seen her do to the same to Mekeke countless times before and had watched as he'd scooped her up and laughed, tucking her beneath his arm or setting her against his hip.

           So he had reached down and picked her up. She was lighter and heavier than he thought – the actual weight of a child – and set her against him, next to his shoulder. Nuii was soft and warm and though she didn't really breathe, she felt alive.

           Of course, they'd all been shocked when he came back to the house with her half asleep in his arms. Their gaze had prickled. Mekeke had stood up, his one eye trained on the pair of them in a way Yukiki had never seen before. He wasn't angry. He was more... startled.

           Yukiki had cleared his throat and handed her off quickly. Then he had shut himself in his room and wondered what had made the child trust him. No one in the corps was immune to Nuii, not even Giruru. But that was the first time Yukiki had ever touched her, treated her like the little girl she was, instead of another tool, another strange item amongst the lot of them.

           Robobo found all of this fascinating. “Emotions,” he said, “are organic. You, my friend, are not organic.” And to prove it, he stuck a piece of wire straight through Yukiki's neck. It hurt, to be clear. Yukiki was not immune to pain. There was some comfort in that it still satisfied him to see Robobo struggling with some of his vital components frozen over, creaking over to the work table to fix himself before he completely shut down.

           Putata had said to him before, “You're a cruel, cruel man.”

           Maybe that was what it meant to have a heart of ice.

             The children loved Mekeke. That was what they were calling them now. The children. Mekeke insisted on treating them as such, as did Giruru. They were not assassins; they were not soldiers. It wasn't fair to force them into such dangerous situations.

           They were hanging onto his legs today and he was dragging them everywhere, with only the occasional snap at Gyororo for complaining when he bumped into something.

           “If it's inconvenient for you, let go!”

           “Never!”

           “Kids today,” Mekeke joked in Yukiki's direction.

           And he didn't get it.

           Mekeke's brow furrowed at Yukiki's blank expression. So Yukiki had hidden behind a newspaper until the moment had passed. Why didn't he get it? He chalked it up – after a bit of research – to not having parents, or any early years at all. “Kids today” meant nothing to him, because he didn't know the kids of yesterday. Mekeke was being facetious, seeing as he and Putata were both children in adult bodies, but he at least knew the phrase, the concept.

           He read to compensate. Reading gave him not only pleasure, but vital information that he used to build himself something of a false past, or at least knowledge of the way things were before. The more he read, the more he felt his tastes solidifying.

           Though they could have gotten their hands on Keronian literature, Yukiki discovered he much preferred Earth classics. It was something about the letters, about the simplistic charm of them. It was nothing like the curly, spotted writing of the Intergalatic Standard. And human languages...

           So he finally settled on himself: proper, neat, somewhat distant, a lover of the Victorian aesthetic. He'd never realized just how awful his clothes were before he learned of greener pastures: black coats, top hats, waistcoats. His accent hovered somewhere between Mid-Atlantic and British, which Putata mocked him for relentlessly.

           It was as though he was finally discovering himself, all the pieces that had been missing. He might not be able to grow, but he could absorb. He could fill himself with new knowledge. He could shape what was already there into himself.

           And then she appeared and ruined him.

                            Chapitre 2

             They really couldn't have cared less about each other at the time. She was naturally polite, had said hello. Yukiki had looked her over, surprised that there was an actual woman in the house. The place was practically a monastery, save for Nuii, and he thought he might be hallucinating. But she was really there and was suddenly everywhere.

           She had come for Giruru. Giruru, however, seemed mainly indifferent. Yukiki expected her to leave. He didn't understand. He'd read about love and that was the one thing he hadn't been able to absorb. Why leave yourself so vulnerable to another person? How could you not stop? His mind couldn't wrap around it.

           Hanana herself was a strange one and not in the same way the others were strange. Yukiki had taken to keeping a mental list of his colleagues' idiosyncrasies, and so added her to the list.

 ñ  She somehow got Mekeke to help set up a greenhouse near the corner of the manor. They were out there together, driving pipes into the ground and stretching plastic over the framework. She had it filled with plants in less than two hours, in the ground and on tables and even hanging from the ceiling. Yukiki vowed to never go in, because it was too hot.

ñ  She went everywhere without shoes. It was a warm autumn, which Hanana responded to by sliding out of her sandals and leaving them on the front porch. It was the same in the house. Bare feet on bare floorboards.

ñ  She always had a flower tucked in her hair. A daisy. There was a fresh one every morning.

             Hanana had introduced herself as nothing more than a gardener, kept on only because she was nice to people. She never had a mean word to say about anyone. Her smiles were ever present, gentle things that sometimes came with a giggle. Putata and Mekeke seemed to have fallen in love with her at first sight. They were always surrounding her, leaving their arms draped across her shoulders or held loosely around her waist. Yukiki couldn't imagine letting someone lay their hands on him like that, but Hanana took it with good grace. Giruru often turned the other way when she crossed his path, which struck Yukiki as childish. He pretended not to notice the way her smiles faltered when this happened.

           But for all the things he'd cataloged about her, they hadn't spoken to each other since that first greeting. He heard her voice often, just never directed at him. They were hardly in the same room. Her presence made him uncomfortable. He didn't want to stoop to Giruru's level of avoidance, but he tended to ignore her whenever they happened to pass each other.

           When he did speak more than two words to her, it was in her greenhouse. Yukiki, for all his resistance, found himself outside its door with a bowl of miso in one hand and a drink in the other. Kagege had sent him there with it. Hanana hadn't come out of the greenhouse all day and was missing dinner, so Yukiki was elected to take it to her.

           He'd explained, in a dead calm, that the heat of the greenhouse was over the level he could tolerate, especially since it was getting colder outside. Kagege hadn't wanted to listen to it.

           “You'll be in there two minutes at the most. Just do it.”

           Yukiki had opened his mouth to argue again, but the bowl and the can were in his hands before he could say a word. So there he was. He couldn't see through the fogged plastic, save for greenish shadows. Finally, he sighed and used his elbow to push down the handle.

           Hanana was at the far end of the greenhouse, her hair pulled back and kneeling on the soft, dark earth. The quality of the soil in here confused Yukiki. Outside, the dirt was thin and rocky. Hanana's presence must have some effect on it.

           He was already starting to feel uncomfortable. The heat made him sluggish and ill tempered. He pushed himself deeper into his scarf, into the coolness reflected back at him by his clothes. The sooner it was winter, the better.

           Hanana hadn't noticed him yet. She was digging and replacing soil, patting it with her small hands. Yukiki considered just leaving the can and bowl for her. He looked around for a place to put it. Every available space was taken by a plant.

           Yukiki frowned. There was some organization here, but it wasn't a system he was familiar with. Would she mind if he moved a pot over? She probably wouldn't even look up. She was absorbed in her gardening. He gently elbowed a Venus flytrap back and set the bowl down.

           “Oh! I didn't hear you come in!”

           He nearly dropped the can. How embarrassing, to be caught fumbling it like that.

           Hanana stood up, brushing her hands off on her skirt. “I didn't realize we were having dinner. Thank you. I've been really busy in here.”

           Yukiki was at a loss. She was looking straight at him. He was itching. Nice people. And did it really have to be this warm? He cleared his throat. “You're welcome,” he said, placing the can next to the bowl. “Evening.”

           He turned quickly, prepared to make his escape, when her voice stopped him. “Yukiki? We don't talk much, do we?”

           He would not face her again. He would not be subject to her penetrating, kindly eyes any more than was necessary. “I don't see any reason why you would want to talk to me. We don't have much to say to each other.”

           “I just want to get familiar with everyone. I'm going to be staying here for a while.”

           He stiffened. “I do not 'get familiar' with people,” Yukiki said. “Evening.”

           He left before she could stop him again, letting the door bang shut behind him.

             Hanana didn't give up. If she was the type to quit things easily, she would never have made it this far. Her life was built on a positive attitude. So, after remarking that she and Yukiki didn't talk much, she set to correct it.

           “Good morning,” she said, when they passed each other in the kitchen.

           Yukiki, out of decorum only, repeated it back to her, but never pushed it further than that.

           Hanana still didn't let it lie. Between her time in the greenhouse and her friendship with the twin idiots (as was Yukiki's nickname for Mekeke and Putata), she would find Yukiki. It was usually something small. She would ask him for directions around the house, or where certain things were – light bulbs, an electric mixer, fertilizer – and Yukiki continued keeping their interaction limited with succinct answers.

           “Why are you scared of Hanana?” Putata finally asked one day. He was paper folding with Mekeke, a new Earth thing they were trying. Mekeke was better at it.

           “I'm not scared of her.”

           “Liar, liar,” Mekeke sang. “She's a really nice person. You should be nice back.”

           Putata shook his head and grinned up at Yukiki. “He's not capable of that. Try being less mean.”

           “I'm not mean,” Yukiki said, then stopped. He'd never thought about “nice” and “mean” in relation to himself before. It was another “organic” thing, as Robobo would classify it.

           “You're, like, the meanest person we know,” Mekeke said. “Even Giruru can be nice sometimes and he doesn't even have a heart as far as we can see.”

           “You do know that emotion doesn't really come from your heart, yes?”

           Mekeke rolled his eye. “You're so literal.”

           “Seriously, though,” Putata added. “You should be nicer to Hanana. I know it scares you that some people aren't always glaring at the rest of the world, but you have to face your fears eventually.”

           “I'm not scared of some naïve little girl that only came here to be with her boyfriend,” Yukiki sneered. “I am simply not wasting time and energy on someone who unnecessarily takes up space in an already crowded house that contributes nothing but a pretty face.”

           Mekeke and Putata had gone silent. They were staring at him. It wasn't the first time they'd heard one of Yukiki's withering insults. Why look so shocked? Then he realized that they were, in fact, looking over his shoulder.

           Hanana was standing in the kitchen doorway, carrying a potted plant. Her expression was closed off, but her cheeks were flushed. Yukiki, looking at her, suddenly felt a stab of guilt. Why? He made it a rule to never regret what he said. Why should she make it any different?

           “Is that really what you think?” she asked. Her voice didn't waver at all.

           And Yukiki couldn't answer her. His mouth opened, then shut again. Behind him, he felt the disapproving stares of Putata and Mekeke prickling against his back. They didn't have the right to judge him. Why should he care at all?

           “Well then,” Hanana said, taking his silence as a confirmation. She turned on her heel and walked away, leaving the room a little colder.

           Mekeke stood up, gathering up the pieces of colored paper. “Come on, Putata,” he said. “I think we should leave the Grinch to himself.”

           “Even for you,” Putata said, speaking directly to Yukiki, “that was harsh.”

           Yukiki wanted to argue that they were just upset because he'd had something other than glowing praise to say about Hanana, but the words were still stuck in his throat.

             “I hope you're proud of yourself.”

           “Who are you to lecture me? You act like she doesn't exist.”

           Giruru shook his head. “I don't talk about her like that behind her back, though. I have my reasons for shutting her down. You're just being a dick.”

           Yukiki huffed. “She's been nothing but-”

           “Nice to you? Friendly? Do you like kicking puppies too?”

           If there was anything that bothered Yukiki more than Mekeke and Putata's disapproval, it was Giruru's. He couldn't see how Giruru was any better than him. He was just as mean to Mekeke and Putata on a daily basis.

           What separated him and Giruru were memories. Giruru had them; Yukiki didn't. Simple as that. Otherwise, they were the same. Same matter, different states. Inorganic.

           “You don't know Hanana,” Giruru said. “Mekeke and Putata, we know them. They're pests. You can smack talk them as much as you want. But you've only known Hanana for a few weeks.”

           “She annoys me.”

           “She annoys you because she has a soul and you don't.”

           Yukiki blinked. “We're talking about souls now?”

           Giruru sighed. “No. Bad word choice. I guess what I mean is that she's more alive than you and it makes you feel dead inside.”

           “How dare you -!”

           Giruru cut him off. “I know because that's how she makes me feel.”

           Yukiki let those words settle over him. He sat back in his chair. He and Giruru weren't friends and the liquid Keronian never shared anything remotely personal with anyone but his brother.

           “I know you're new to this whole 'feelings' thing and normally, I wouldn't be saying this, but you should apologize. She's not leaving. Please don't make things awkward for the rest of us.”

           Yukiki scoffed at that. “Why, pot, you're looking awfully black today. As soon as you've told her upfront that you don't return her feelings and never will, I'll apologize. Until then, you have no right to be ordering me around.” He stood up and marched out.

           Giruru had been right about one thing: it was awkward. There was no way to avoid Hanana. Her room was on his side of the house, so they had to pass each other in the mornings. She had stopped saying good morning. Yukiki pretended not to notice.

           It was only an issue if they were in a room with other people, specifically Mekeke and Putata, who glared at him constantly. Yukiki glared right back, daring them to say something.

           “If they didn't like you before, they hate you now,” Kagege said.

           “It's ridiculous. They're only angry that I insulted their new pet.”

           Kagege shrugged and set his freshly polished knives in a row. “Personally, I like Hanana. I can't tell you what to think of her. Not everyone is going to like the same people. But I think you should say sorry to her at least. If you're feeling uncomfortable, that is.”

           Yukiki pretended to absorb himself in a newspaper article. “Do you think it will pass?”

           “Maybe. It'll pass faster if you take the initiative. What you said was rather strongly worded and meant to hurt. And it was a bit like kicking someone when they're down. I doubt she did anything to provoke you.”

           Yukiki thought of what Giruru had said and slipped even further behind the paper. Why was everyone ganging up on him? If he were Putata, he would have said they were brainwashed. Hanana couldn't be that compelling, could she?

           Then again, Giruru was right a second time. He didn't know Hanana. He hadn't even tried to. Perhaps that was what drew a dividing line between him and the rest of the Corps. Would he change his mind if he learned more about her? If he did what she had been trying to do?

           If they got to know each other?

           There was only one way to find out.

             Yukiki would never get used to the greenhouse. He was certain of this. Moments later, he'd spent a while waffling at the door before knocking. She didn't ask who was there, only called for him to enter.

           Hanana was feeding her Venus flytraps, dropping pieces of raw hamburger into their mouths with tweezers. Yukiki found it both gruesome and yet fitting with her image. He watched as she ran a finger along one of them and smiled. Like it was her pet.

           He cleared his throat. Her smile vanished instantly. Again with that closed off expression. “What can I do for you?” she asked, dusting her hands on her skirt.

           “I came to apologize.” He had to do it fast, like plunging into water, otherwise he would lose his nerve. He'd never done this before. The new experience stretched ahead of him, black and unfathomable. “What I said... I wasn't used to you and it caused me discomfort, so I lashed out. And for that, I'm very sorry. After thinking it over, I realized that I didn't actively dislike you and that my frustration was misdirected. And I might have assumed...”

           Hanana held up her hands. “I've never heard you talk this much,” she said.

           Yukiki coughed and folded his arms. He was babbling. Oh no, he was afraid of her. He might as well cower at one of the Venus flytraps on her table. “I thought that, if you were willing, we could start over.” He forced himself to meet her eyes. He had never noticed before, but they were almost the same shade as her hair.

           Hanana considered. “You take back what you said?”

           “Yes.”

           She bit her bottom lip, then allowed the smile to return to her face. Yukiki noted that she looked much better smiling than she did without. “You're lucky I believe in giving people second chances,” she said. “Apology accepted.”

           Then she held out her hand. Yukiki looked down at it, then back up at her. She nodded, urging him with her eyes. Yukiki put out a cautious hand, gripped hers and shook.

             Yukiki had never thought it would this satisfying to have smoothed things over with Hanana. She started greeting him in the mornings again and Yukiki made an effort to face his “fears.” He resolved to be civil, get used to her.

           Once Mekeke and Putata saw that Hanana was no longer giving Yukiki the cold shoulder (ha, ha), they stopped looking so vilified. Instead, they went back to teasing.

           “So,” Putata said. “You said sorry. I never thought you had it in you.”

           “Don't expect me to continue,” he warned. “There's very little I plan to be sorry for.”

           “You actually felt sorry, or did you just say it?” Mekeke asked, twisting bits of string between his fingers.

           Yukiki thought about it. He remembered the strange speechlessness he'd experienced when Hanana walked into the kitchen. He was prepared to argue that Hanana had accepted the apology anyway, so what did it matter, but Mekeke was looking at him like he was waiting for an answer.

           “I felt it,” he decided.

           “That's good,” the puppeteer said with a smile.

           But was it good? There was an advantage to not having emotions. Feeling sorry wasn't something he wanted to repeat. It had been terrible. Not to mention shame. He wished there was a way to pick and choose the emotions he experienced.

           Things would be easier if he had just been born with them.

                                 Chapitre 3

             That night, he had his first dream. It was a nightmare.

           It started out mundane. He had an itch in his throat and no water. All he could do was cough and cough until it felt as though his lungs were coming out. He looked at his hand, thinking he saw spots of blood on his glove. Impossible. But no, it wasn't blood – it was a rose petal. More petals fell from his mouth until a full bush of flowers sprouted from him, dark red and thorny.

           Yukiki woke up with a gasp and put a few fingers in his mouth, just to make sure it wasn't real. Nightmares were things that happened to other people. Since when had his mind been able to conjure that sort of thing?

           He chalked it up to his recent emotional exposure. After a few deep breaths, he decided to pick it apart. That usually helped. Yukiki did not believe in astrology or portents in dreams, but there had to be some meaning. Otherwise, what was the point? Unless his mind had just meant to terrorize him.

           The flowers made him think of Hanana. Residual guilt? But he had apologized. He was treating her cordially now. There had been no repeats of the earlier incident. It was a mystery, one that he didn't want to waste time on in the middle of the night.

           She's more alive than you.

           He placed a hand over his chest. When he felt his heart beat against it, he knew he'd been foolish. He was just as alive as she was, with a pulse to prove it. Comforted – slightly – by that fact, he went back to sleep. He did not dream again that night.

           Yukiki greeted morning with the half-lidded frustration of those that have missed sleep. What was worse was the attitude of the rest of the corps, who all seemed to be bursting with energy and smiles. Hanana passed him in the morning and treated him to quick look through her bangs, along with a polite smile. He didn’t return it. He wasn’t made to form such expressions.

           “Looks like someone had a rough night,” Putata joked, elbowing him as he passed.

           Yukiki shot him a death glare and the artist flinched. “My temper is very short today and if you knew what was good for you, you would leave me alone. Thank you.”

           Putata laughed nervously. He shared a quick glance with Mekeke, who had shrunk meekly into his collar. “Uh, sure thing, Yukiki. We’ll be extra quiet today. C’mon, let’s go upstairs.” He pushed his partner out of the snowman’s path.

           Yukiki rubbed his temples. He wondered if he could get sick. It didn’t seem possible, considering what he was made of. A snowman with a cold? Ridiculous.

           “Are you alright?” Hanana asked.

           Yukiki was prepared to brush her off, but her concerned expression stopped him. She cared about things. Even the slightest hint of discomfort would have her alert and ready to solve other people’s problems. She had other places to be, judging by the small stack of terracotta pots in her arms. There was no earthly reason why Hanana should stop and ask if he was alright, except that she was Hanana and this was something she did.

           He realized that he was just staring blankly at her. Yukiki cleared his throat. “It’s nothing you need to worry about,” he said.

           “If you say so.” But her lips had dropped into a tiny frown.

           It must frustrate her, Yukiki thought, to have someone shrug off her attempts to help. Well, she could do with some frustration. He would rather not rely on her for comfort, especially considering how sourly their relationship had started – if you could even call it a relationship.

           He should have expected, however, that she would bring it up later and catch him with his guard down. Yukiki was so absorbed in his book that he hardly registered it when Hanana placed a cup in front of him.

           “I made tea. Thought you might want some,” she said softly. “There’s chamomile in it.”

           Yukiki looked at the cup, then at Hanana, who was taking a long sip and looking the other way. He saw her game now. He’d been stupid to believe she would give up after being told once. Well, it would be a waste to let it sit there.

           As he took the cup, he asked, “Chamomile?”

           “It’s a flower,” she explained. “Its effects are very soothing.” Now she was watching him. And she was nervous. Her posture was stiff. “Tea is okay, right? You can drink it?”

           “What? Oh, yes actually.” For some reason, eating or drinking warm things didn’t bother him. Yukiki doubted he would ever figure out why. He’d refused to let Robobo stick a camera down his throat to investigate.

           “Good.” She opened her mouth to add something, then shut it again.

           This was no good. She couldn’t be nervous; Yukiki was struggling not to show just how odd it felt to be speaking to her like this. If they were both tiptoeing around each other, then how were they supposed to move past all that initial unpleasantness?

           Then it hit him: the tea was an olive branch of her own. She was trying to reassure him that there were no hard feelings. Even if he hadn’t been looking ill, Hanana would have given it to him anyway. But why? They had been getting on the past few days. If it was a peace offering, it should have come earlier.

           Yukiki took a cautious sip. He couldn’t tell if it really was soothing or not, but he liked the feeling of swallowing heat. It proved he was strong.

           “How is it?” Hanana asked, peeking at him from behind her cup.

           He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had no sense of taste. “It’s nice. Thank you.”

           She looked relieved. “I wanted to talk to you.”

           Aha. That’s what this was. She had needed an excuse to speak to him face to face. Yukiki admitted to feeling a bit guilty about that. He knew he was particularly unapproachable and had done nothing to fix the matter. Well, he drank her tea. So there was that.

           “What about?” he asked, closing his book.

           Hanana put down her cup and folded her hands on the table. She cast her gaze down at them. “That’s the thing. I’m not sure how to talk to you. With everyone else, it’s easy. But with you… I don’t know. I’d like us to be friends. It just feels like having a conversation with a wall.”

           Yukiki knew it was only adding to the problem, but he said nothing. He had to think. He couldn’t be like Putata and let all of his thoughts and feelings spill out without a filter. Tact didn’t come easy to him.

           Luckily, Hanana had more to say. “You said I made you uncomfortable, right? Maybe if we became better friends, you would stop feeling that way.”

           Yukiki took a deep breath. “That’s fair. If I’m going to be honest, I don’t know how to talk to you either.”

           “Why?”

           He didn’t know how to describe it. There was a reason, one that existed on some base level, one that had nothing to do with Giruru’s stupid ideas about souls. Yukiki groped for an answer, then settled for, “You’re too nice.”

           To his surprise, Hanana laughed. “Is there such a thing as being too nice? I just try and treat people like I’d want to be treated.”

           “But don’t you ever get tired of it?”

           “No.” She put her head to one side. “Why would it be tiring?”

           Of course she wouldn’t see it that way. It came naturally to her. However, for Yukiki, it was a struggle. He sat back in his chair. Hanana was both simple and complicated. It would take a lot more than a mere exchange of words to understand her. He was unprepared for that.

           “You must get frustrated though,” he tried. “Angry even. You can’t be kind to people twenty-four hours a day.”

           “Of course I get angry. I’m a person.” Her smile was understanding, as though she was talking to a child. “I think we get angry in different ways. When I get annoyed, I try to calm down so that I don’t hurt other people’s feelings.”

           Yukiki’s mouth felt like it was full of acid. He glanced down at his cup, wondering if the whole sweet act was a front, and she had just poisoned him. “I suppose that’s the fundamental difference between you and me,” he said.

           It must have come out sounding very bitter, because Hanana started and said, “I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. That’s water under the bridge.”

           “What I don’t understand is why you would like us to be close friends,” Yukiki said. “Mekeke and Putata have probably told you enough horrible things about me to keep your distance.”

           “I don’t think you’re as awful as they say you are and they don’t either.”

           Yukiki frowned. How she had come to that conclusion, he had no idea, seeing as he’d been distant and cold to her until now.

           “I guess you don’t hear that often,” she continued, seeing his confused expression. “I believe in finding good in everyone. Don’t you ever get tired of being angry?”

           She was something else. “Anger is power. And I’m not angry all the time.”

           “Obviously. You’re a person too. You feel differently depending on the situation.”

           Yukiki laughed dryly. “I’m not really a person.”

           “But you’re alive.”

           She’s more alive than you. Yukiki pressed his lips together. He remembered his dream, the roses bursting from his mouth and dragging their thorns up his throat. When he didn’t answer, Hanana stood up, taking her tea with her.

           “You’re not a bad person,” she said. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have apologized.”

           Her smile was radiant. It hurt Yukiki’s eyes. He looked away. Snow kills flowers, but warmth melts the snow. This was dangerous.