#Tumwater Washington

[stopdoopyphotos]

Brewery Park at Tumwater Falls

back when swimming was allowed

[themonsterthing]

Olympia w/ @waytoomuchinformation and @lovelylunasage <3

[closetdbisexual]

AUGH

[lowquality-buffet]

Walked along the Deschutes today. You wouldn't know the interstate is less than 100 yards away....

[wexlermendelssohn]

[sparklybuildingsdesign88]

He should come over to Tumwater, specifically the 7-Eleven and should also bring a super smol friend for the other hole that’s not as large in diameter (yet) but is definitely a Problem also.

[umbralsnaps]

[climbhighsleeplow]

Tumwater Canyon, Highway 2, Leavenworth, Washington

[silhouetteofacedar]

Halves

One of many little moments on a long journey.

AO3

The views along Washington State’s Cascade Loop are breathtaking, according to the brochures from the stand in the lobby of their motel in Chelan. Just past the pseudo-Bavarian enclave that is Leavenworth, Highway 2 hugs the curves of the Wenatchee River through Tumwater Canyon. The scenic byway is tucked between the churning waters and dramatic, towering crags of quartz crested with pines. It’s early spring, and the mountains slowly shake off their winter coats to reveal fresh leaves on the aspens and the first blooms of trillium creeping along the ground. 

Dana Scully sees none of this.

It’s an unfortunate aspect of their work as federal agents; thousands of miles traversed across the continental United States, untold hours spent in anonymous rental vehicles with mysterious odors and pilling upholstery. She knew when she joined the Bureau three years ago that the travel involved would be less than glamorous, but there’s something particularly demoralizing about viewing America the Beautiful solely through a windshield splattered with insect carcasses. 

Scully always falls asleep on long car rides; lulled into slumber by the hum of the engine, the murmur of tires on asphalt, the fact that Mulder sometimes stops talking long enough for her to drop off. She wonders if it’s because his jaw gets tired; in the relatively short time they’ve worked together she’s never known him to run out of things to say.

Her sleep thins on the edges as Mulder wakes her with a soft brush of his knuckle on the tip of her nose. She hears him say they’re still a few hours away from the Seattle field office, but he’s hungry and his long grasshopper legs need a stretch. 

Scully hums in assent, eyelids still heavy as she rearranges herself into a more upright position in the passenger seat. They’ve arrived at one of those proverbial wide spots in the road that bears a “Welcome To” sign, as though that gives it a sense of place when it boasts little more than a gas pump and a convenience store. 

Apparently, this place is called Cole’s Corner, and a hand-painted banner next to a particularly stubborn melting snow berm says there are world-famous milkshakes up ahead. 

Mulder pulls into the gravel parking lot outside what looks like a small house with pink and teal trim. A neon sign advertising banana pancakes hangs in the window.

Scully is hungry and groggy from her nap in the car, her hips and legs stiff from sitting too long.

She gathers her coat around her and slips out of the sedan, the scent of wet pine and moss filling her nose. Droplets of mist bead the shoulders of her coat, clinging to the wool. She can feel her hair creeping into fuzzy curls at the nape of her neck, coaxed into a frizz by the damp Pacific Northwest air. It’s been about a year since they were first in this part of the country together, tearing through waist-high ferns in the dark cedar groves of Bellefleur, hands outstretched. That first case together felt like a rebirth, wherein she shed her old self like her red bathrobe in candlelight in front of her strange new partner. The rich scent of damp earth and rotting logs filled her lungs as she was baptized by the cold Oregon rain, forever changed.

Heavy droplets begin to fall, and she pulls her collar tighter as they ascend the steps to the diner’s front door.

The restaurant is small but warm, every inch of the walls covered in 1950s pop culture memorabilia. A jukebox plays Buddy Holly in the corner; an Elvis-shaped clock swings its pendulum legs in time. Something greasy and heavenly is sizzling in the kitchen, the aroma pulling her in. Scully smiles softly; leave it to Mulder to stumble upon the kitschiest restaurant in the entire state of Washington.

They settle into a small corner booth with sticky grey vinyl seats. They create an odd picture at the table in the midst of hikers in denim and windbreakers; two figures of dramatically different heights draped in layers of dark fabric, heads inclined towards each other with an intimacy that can’t be easily explained. They’ve composed this images together countless times in greasy spoons across the country, travel-weary and disoriented by differing time zones. Sometimes they talk; occasionally they argue. Often they get mistaken for a couple, which irks Scully primarily because she mistakes them for one too. It’s unconscious; Mulder’s warm, firm hand on the small of her back sends messages to her weary brain that her body frequently assigns to the Boyfriend category.

Mulder has that effect on her often. He bursts through barriers, occupying space that had previously only been inhabited by intimate partners. He crams himself into her psyche, poking through neatly filed expectations and burrowing into her soul, creating his own uniquely shaped spot in her being. 

She tries not to think about it; tries not to notice his full lower lip, the charming mole on his right cheek, the way he leans in too close when he talks to her. How he curves over her, his warm voice in her ear. At the office, she feels alert and well-armed against her physical reactions, can easily take her thoughts captive before they get away from her. But when she’s drowsy, far from home, hungry, those base feelings rise faster than she can tamp them back down. He makes her feel small in the best ways and she’s in danger of losing herself in the cover of his wingspan. 

She needs caffeine.

All the waitresses at this establishment have the same name tag; hot pink with the name “Flo” etched into the plastic. A cheery, bespectacled young Flo with blond braids takes their orders, pours cups of too-strong coffee. Scully chooses a BLT, light on the mayo. Mulder orders a grilled cheese sandwich with ham and tomatoes and a cup of chicken and rice soup. 

Scully gazes out the fogging window, slowly warming and wakening in the cozy bustle of the diner. Johnny Cash sings of a ring of fire. Plates clatter in the kitchen, a spoon clinks in a chipped coffee mug. Raindrops fall.

Silence feels more friendly these days, a comfortable pause filling what little space remains between her and Mulder. Words have become only one of the many ways in which they communicate. Their hands carry on their own conversation as the waitress brings their plates; understanding and collaboration in the simple passing of a napkin or nudging the salt across the table.

Mulder picks up a half of his sandwich, toasted a golden brown and cut neatly at a diagonal. “You want a bite?” he asks, holding it out across the speckled formica tabletop, and Scully realizes that it’s the first thing he’s said aloud directly to her since they got out of the car. She hesitates, then leans forward and takes a small, crisp bite out of the corner. Their knees brush momentarily, and she sits back in the booth and considers the flavors of butter and melted cheddar on her tongue.

“Good, huh?” Mulder asks, taking a bite himself. “My dad made them this way, but not on a griddle. Open-faced in the broiler so the tomatoes could get browned.”

Scully nods, stirring her coffee and blowing on it gently. “I haven’t had a grilled cheese in years,” she muses. “It’s the perfect rainy day food.”

“We can trade halves, if you want,” he suggests.

A small smile creeps across Scully’s mouth. Her Mulder has a delightful boyish streak that she pretends not to find appealing. “Race you to the playground afterward?” she jokes. Regardless, she picks up a half of her BLT and places it on his plate, taking the remaining half of his grilled cheese. 

He flashes her a brief, dazzling smile before taking another bite of his sandwich. Scully feels her cheeks warming slightly and turns her attention to her lunch. A full Mulder smile, with bright eyes and teeth, is almost too much for her to bear. A dart of sunlight spearing through a sky blanketed with soft gray clouds. 

Maybe someday she’ll tell him how he makes her feel, how sometimes her heart tumbles in her chest at the sight of him. How his most annoying moments are simultaneously the most endearing, how she’s beginning to love him just a little in spite of herself.

Maybe he already knows.

But for now they’ll just trade portions of their lunches, pass the ketchup, pool the crumpled bills in their wallets when the check comes. Travel in silence as they drive over Steven’s Pass, the view ahead blotted by low-hanging clouds.

[natures-moments]

The Wenatchee River along the Tumwater Pipeline Trail, Washington, USA

[mutant-distraction]

John Applegate

Tumwater Canyon

near Leavenworth, Washington

[stopdoopyphotos]

Tumwater Falls Park

[spotamus]

My best late friend was a hard drinking tree planter on the Washington coast. He once threatened to throw a shot glass through the bar mirror when the bartender cut him off. My wife happened to be that bartender at the old Tumwater Inn in Leavenworth, WA. This card was awarded to him at Ugly Ed's Raymond Tavern. He really was a good guy and friend. He eventually got sober,married and became a great family man with 3 kids and 4 grandchildren. He passed away November 2024. I miss him.

[ashwin-the-artless]

Sarah and Goreth Ampersand

Cast of the Tunnel Apparati Diaries

Note: although the Vanderkemps chose to do so in their premature fanfic of our work, I'm not going to deadname Sarah and Goreth here.

In short, in the books we're writing, Sarah and Goreth are my hosts. And before they hosted me, they were hosts of Phage (@ohthatphage).

There is an alternate universe canon where we actually all live in a vessel originally owned by Jenifer and Eh, with a totally different backstory, different parents, everything. Though it still does hew pretty closely to Sarah and Goreth's story in some ways. But I'm not writing about that, I'm writing about The Tunnel Apparati Diaries and my book, The End of the Tunnel.

Sarah and Goreth Ampersand are an autistic transgender plural system who grew up in Tumwater, WA. They went to college at the UW, and moved down to Portland shortly afterward. This much can be learned from reading the book. There's actually a lot of autobiographical detail in there.

Instead, I'm going to use this post to tell you my impressions of my favorite two Earthlings.

This will be a little bit of a long post, but it should be fun to read.

And, I'm going to start with Sarah, because while they're effectively twins, of the two of them she spent more time closeted and not fronting.

Sarah Ampersand

Pictured here is Goreth's attempt at drawing how they see Sarah in their inworld, and a photo of the dress that Sarah likes to wear the most while inworld.

Ethnicity-wise, Sarah and Goreth are what they like to call Scermutch. Scottish, German, and Dutch. At least, their ancestors were. But Sarah adores Irish iconography and mythology, and really just loves that Irish wedding dress and wishes she could wear it in real life. She doesn't claim it to be her heritage, though. But it's become part of her 'residual self image' as the kids say.

I mean, they are both U.S. Americans and born and raised in Washington State. Their cultural upbringing is mochas and almond poppy seed muffins. But that dress is described in Goreth's upcoming book, and I thought it would be nice to include it here so that you can visualize it easier when you get to that part. And then I start feeling like I have to give it context.

Anyway, there's way more to Sarah than that dress.

But, that photo is useful in another way.

Probably due to a quirk of their brain, Sarah and Goreth's psyche tends to interpret the presences of other headmates in sensations of warmth, softness, smell, and colors. And when Sarah is coming toward the front to share it with me, I perceive her bubble of consciousness as having the range of colors of that photo. She even smells of linen and dandy lions, and has a sunny warmth to her, with the softness of a light breeze.

I think this description pleases her to no end, too.

You can usually tell when she's fronting when our voice becomes softer and lighter, and takes on the inflections of a Canadian radio hostess. She worked really hard to learn how to talk like that, too.

She's also a little bit more dour, demanding, and reluctant to accept things than Goreth. Which fine. Those are not actually negative traits, like Earthlings like to treat them. She's spent most of her life hiding from the world and watching Goreth adapt to their birth assignment of 'boy'.

In coming forward during their transition, she often had to deliberately carve out time and space for herself and assert who she was to family, friends, and classmates. And later, for the brief time that they worked, to coworkers and clients.

Legally, their system is now known under her name, Sarah Ampersand, and their extended family uses that name when they aren't deadnaming them.

And while, at the beginning of their transition, she was bright and cheerful and as girlish as she could be, that struggle to get respect - and then also their struggle to find accommodations for their disabilities and find a place to live in Portland - really took a toll. She developed new habits of behavior in the necessity to protect her system.

Both Phage and Goreth helped a lot, but because they were all doing it under her name she shouldered the most of the emotional burden.

She could really use a break, honestly. To find a time and place where she can actually be herself. And, by the time you get to the end of the whole trilogy, you'll see that maybe she has a chance at that.

Other things about her that our readers might be interested in?

Like Goreth, she's ace. Unlike Goreth, she's primarily attracted to men, but she's still technically bi-romantic. She doesn't pine for a relationship quite as heavily as Goreth does, perhaps because her cynicism gets in the way of that, but she does feel their touch starvation, and doesn't really know what to do about it.

At least, that's how it was when I first met the two of them. Over the following years, things kinda worked out. Maybe not how either of them hoped or expected, but in a comfortable way anyway.

Goreth Ampersand

Pictured here is Sarah's drawing of Goreth as they appear in their inworld, and a Blender rendering of Goreth flying in the Garden of the Sunspot done for the cover of Goreth's upcoming book, The Sun Also Hatches. (an explanation of that would be spoilers - you'll just have to speculate)

If you've been following my blog, and definitely if you've been following @fenmere, you've seen these before.

So, of the two of them, despite developing in parallel together since birth (they are twins), Goreth has fronted far more often than Sarah and is the one of them that people actually know best from their childhood and teen years.

People may think they knew Sarah as her pretransition self and persona, but that was actually mostly Goreth, with Sarah and Phage interjecting in moments of extreme safety or duress. Sarah tended to come out more often when they were safe, and Phage more often in danger or discomfort.

Goreth is a therian, and has known that they were a dragon since they were three years old. And has never, ever wavered from that identity and self image. Even when they thought their parents were right in calling them a boy and naming them their deadname.

These days, Goreth lists their gender as dragon and calls it maverique, sometimes using aporagender depending on mood and who they're talking to.

They take great pride in being a dragon, too, and have shaped their life and habits around it.

Now, there are about three words in Sunspotian culture that get translated to "dragon" (gerbesh'i, ktleteccete, and whatever it is that the Collective of the cuttlecrabs speak - I don't know how to render that word in any Earth typography as it uses flashes of color and dancing as well as vocalizations). And, I think Goreth and Sarah's linguistic cortex translates those words to "dragon" due to numerous superficial similarities, but also because the word "dragon" is such a broad category of things anyway.

Living with Goreth, however, has taught me a lot about the differences between their kind of dragon, and what gerbesh'i and kletaccete are (I'm a ktleteccete, not a gerbesh'i).

For instance, Goreth hoards things that they consider valuable to them, and makes a point of patrolling what they call their territory (which they don't actually own, but is a number of places they visit regularly and pretend belongs to them). They also, to my own chagrin, eat a considerable amount of meat.

Goreth's presence in our system smells coppery, is cool and metalic in feel, and to me is actually colored in oranges and reds, brassy and rusty, with a green tarnish around it. Sarah reports that, to her, they're all greens and blues.

Goreth is completely ace, but curious and needy enough about intimate physical contact that if someone close to them proposed something they'd probably try it out. But they are deeply, deeply bi-romantic and daydream constantly about the kinds of partners they might have someday. And fret about it, and get into spirals of self doubt and depression over their lack of prospects.

"Fortunately", ever since I came aboard, they've been able to be distracted by other things, such as how to manage an influx of alien beings barging into their psyche.

But they manage pretty well, and their astute nature has been integral to our survival on Earth.

---

If you want to read more about Sarah and Goreth Ampersand, we have a website for that where I'm telling their story:

You can skip right to the web serialization of my book, here:

And if you want to read it in its entirety right now, or invest in its archival preservation with a printed paperback, you can order it here:

[fentonphoto]

Long exposure waterfall near Tumwater, Washington.

[rileyomalley]

Having some small sales in various shops, but need to catch up on some funds for bills this month, it's been excruciatingly slow! Anything that isn't super detailed I will try to have it done by the end of this month! (same goes for items sent out I have stock in!)