#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]

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]

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.

[lakelewisia]

Ze had been tinkering with the idea long before fidget spinners became a trend, but all that potential energy certainly served as an incentive to go from designs to prototypes. The fidget toys ze created whirred and clicked and jangled like any other, but each one also had a tiny generator in its heart. Each unconscious twitch and fuss converted into energy, harnessed in the background like a spark of starlight too precious to waste.

[lakelewisia]

As the wider world has raised concerns about election integrity, we thought it worthwhile to address Lewisia’s voting policies. Provisions have been made to ensure that nationally acceptable ballots are available to those lacking in traditional identification (feral humans, fae folk, sentient trees, etc), on the grounds that living here is reason enough for your voice to be heard. Ballot counting is conducted by traditionalist vampires, which satisfies their arithmomania, with the added benefit that anyone attempting to tamper with ballots will provide a much-needed snack break for these civil servants.

[lakelewisia]

Those hiking around Lewisia, especially during the warm months, took precautions to avoid an assortment of insects, parasites, and toxins that could turn a nice day out into days or years of medical complications. Trained chickens often waited at trailheads to assist those returning from a romp in the grass by picking off ticks, mites, and hitchhiking rot sprites. Athletic clothing sold by local makers might include bug netting, warded hems, or the ever-popular threat-activated expanding bubble cocoons, often seen being deliberately triggered to enable harmless hillside tumbling.

[lakelewisia]

Buffet bread, they started calling it: so long they had to bring in another table to lay it out, stitched together with half a dozen doughs and twice as many fillings, it was a banquet of meats and cheeses and fruits around which the judges and the audience alike could crowd. The salamander, since apologized to and properly won over, had been critical in getting everything baked at once and now gnawed happily on a blackened length of crust. The little pockets of filling and secret layers to be pulled apart were akin to the poisoner’s art in so many ways, but Lennox found a new sort of satisfaction in watching it be blithely devoured.