#Lake Lewisia

[lakelewisia]

“I’m sorry,” he told the princess as she lay in her crystal coffin, “I won’t be able to kiss you.” The prince explained, as best he could without actually understanding a bit of it, how her coffin had become a real tourist attraction, how the whole kingdom’s economy relied on her miraculous and tragic unwaking like a machine relies on a battery. “You’re just too important,” he informed her, as she went on dreaming of stretching her legs down to touch the forest’s mossy floor just once.

[valhikes]

Russian Wilderness

Klamath National Forest, California

My second day backpacking the Russian Wilderness started as a short plan, but couldn't stay that way. I added on a cross country hike to a little peak to see a hidden lake before starting. I added on a cross country hike to the biggest peak in the Wilderness after the hike.

[lakelewisia]

They called it dissociation, how she would find herself mindlessly scrolling, sitting still and unremarkable, while in her head she was a whirlwind of noise and destruction, screaming and smashing furniture. A trauma response, they said, born out of her inability to express her negative emotions appropriately, and in saying so, they implied even her outbursts were defective. Meanwhile, in the parallel dimension she had inadvertently been bleeding into for years, rooms burst into sprays of shattered china in response to her slipstream emotions, not so much lost as forwarded to a new address.

[lakelewisia]

She had been trapped in the tower for a long time, surrounded by silk and lace that held her as firmly as chains (though the unclimbable tower walls certainly did their part as well), but at last the one tiny blessing at her birth sparked and took hold. They had laid curses on her infant self--of wealth beyond use and luxury beyond pleasure and safety beyond comfort--that led her to this bower prison. But her godmother had been fae and strange and had understood that guards and barred doors tear as easily as silk and lace in the face of a two-hundred-pound teenage wolf wearing the tattered remains of a princess’s gown.

[lakelewisia]

For those who use wood for heating their homes or cooking this winter, we remind you to obtain firewood locally and avoid transporting wood across regions. Invasive insects, parasites, and evil spirits can hitch rides in firewood, allowing them to spread to previously healthy and unhaunted woodlands. And in the event that you mistakenly obtained wood from sentient trees and are about to be subject to their wrath, it is actually easier to cope with attack by a walking tree spirit in the open woods than it is in your living room.

[lakelewisia]

We have received some complaints that figures in dark hoodies, pulled-down baseball caps, and comically oversized coats have been congregating on park benches or in the doorways of businesses after hours. These are just our local conspirators, who discuss sinister plots and exchange Byzantine secrets to generate a certain mood of menace and mystery. While they might sometimes pose an inconvenience, these figures represent a vital part of our town’s cultural system and they are largely harmless to uninvolved observers, however much they may glare and posture.

[lakelewisia]

This is a final reminder to those who craft poppets that we are fast approaching the end of the season for magically imbuing them with life and purpose. If you find, as crafters often do, that your project is nowhere near completion when you need it, there are a number of crafty sorts around town selling or trading for completed poppets--remember, if you can’t make your own, locally bought is fine. When all else fails, you would be amazed at what you can accomplish with some twine-bound corn husks and dried acorns for your humanoid-based rituals, emergency soul vessels, and scrappy supernatural offspring.

[lakelewisia]

As a child, he didn't understand the concept of sundowner winds or even entirely understand that his mother picked him up so late from school because she had to get off work first. He simply said, "Look, mommy, the wind is carrying us home," each evening when gusts would buffet the car and whistle through the one window that didn't seal quite right. One day, he would go in search of his father, after he learned about gods and mortal women and heroic bloodlines, only for his long search to lead him right back home, to the highway where each night the local god of the winds escorted his beloved and his son home safely.

[lakelewisia]

The health clinic is offering a new service as part of their mental health program: guided nightmares. Recently returned with degrees in psychology and intraplanar studies, a Lewisia-native dream folk can serve as a calm and reassuring companion to explore the landscapes of patients’ nightmares as part of treatment for depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other traumas. Note that these services are strictly therapeutic and should not be used as part of any quest involving more literal battling of inner demons.

[lakelewisia]

Flocks of tiny, long-beaked plague doctors roosted in the trees every autumn, when the onset of winter colds drew them back to town. Greatly diminished in number since the heights of illness, they had seen a resurgence in recent years and happily claimed territory abandoned by birds of sunnier disposition. Though generally inclined to encourage wildlife around town, most residents found themselves putting up deterrents of face masks soaked in hand sanitizer for their peace of mind.

[lakelewisia]

The clinic served as a base of operations and fit well in the town, but most of the clientele were outsiders--one town usually can’t produce enough cursed individuals to make the clinic a going proposition. In the wider world, though, there was always a steady trickle of people who had been cursed to be animals or blind or only able to communicate via song-and-dance routines. For some, breaking the curse broke them as well, and the recursing clinic was there to help them through what came after the fairy tale ending.

[lakelewisia]

“Tell me a story,” she asked, and the old maintenance tech told her a story from when the building was young and still unfinished, how he would find little hand prints left in the fresh primer on the walls, and where she could still see one of them that never got painted over. “Tell me a story,” she asked, and the creature in the half-finished supply closet told her a story from when the ground had not been broken yet, how there was a tunnel among the roots of a tree, and what his little hands had dug up before concrete hid it again. “Tell me a story,” she asked, and the old fragments of roots that were slowly upheaving the lunch patio told her a story from when their tree had been a sapling, how they burrowed around the wide underground boulevards of a sunken city, and why the people there had not minded what happened above them when there was still room to dig down.

[lakelewisia]

For those who will be traveling over the holidays or any other time of year, we encourage you to seek out a housesitter to look after your domicile in your absence. Housesitters provide peace of mind for you and valuable enrichment for your home by maintaining its normal routines of opening doors, creaking floorboards, endlessly adjusting the thermostat, and making little comments to the furniture when you bump into it. This is particularly important for older houses or those with structural issues, as these can be more vulnerable to hauntings and possessions if left unoccupied, leading to unpleasant surprises at the end of your travels.

[lakelewisia]

While swimming lessons are offered year-round, as a safety precaution suitable for any community built around a lake, it’s not always water that a swimmer needs to navigate. This summer, we will be offering advanced lessons for those who need to swim in blood, soup, jelly (edible), jelly (sentient), and space void. Lists of suitable clothing and equipment will be provided in advance for those who have not, for whatever reason, preemptively stocked their wardrobes and toolboxes for such common hazards.

[lakelewisia]

As the weather cooled and the first promises of rain to come saturated the air, pockets of mist could sometimes be seen descending on the town. Small and highly localized despite their ragged and transparent edges, the mist pockets usually surrounded a single person or occasionally a doorway through which someone might momentarily walk. The experience almost never had any greater effect on a person than slightly frizzy hair and a spirit uplifted by a brisk encounter with the strange, and the rare corporeal disappearance was assumed to be a similarly pleasant process.

[lakelewisia]

He thumbed through the old gardening guide, full of ink sketches and archaic names that made even the most commonplace plants seem suddenly strange and impressive. The book’s climate zones were decades and degrees out of date, and it had a whole chapter dedicated to determining if your well water had ghosts in it, but it was still more promising than anything else. He didn’t know if the tree in front of his new house was haunted, possessed, or just iron deficient, but he was determined to do something about it.