Dandelyon's Worlds

EDIT: This draw has been unofficially closed since lunchtime; I suppose I should make it official. Since this is still (barely) the first day of the lunar new year, I'll honor all requests to date, over the next day or two. Unfortunately, though my throat is better, my sinuses are now trying to imitate fountains, and I'm out of energy for this evening. Thanks again for your patience and for your tips!
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I've been trying to hold off a sore throat all week, with limited success, but it is Imbolc, and there's so much snow the City is basically shut down, so I'm going to do a Card Draw. Since I've got lots to do, even if we could ignore the snow, which we can't--I should have to go in to work tomorrow--I'm limiting this to one card.

Rai Kunabei thinks this is a very strange, outlandish way to do things.  However, since she was a child, she has always wanted to travel and try new things, so she's willing to give it a try.  She does ask, however, that if you want a Torn World disk reading, you should please either ask a question or indicate which of the three aspects your question or concern is rooted in--natural, artificial, or abstract.

I also offer readings from the Faeries' Oracle.  I always find them inspiring, and I get the feeling that they'd be happy to be out playing on such a wild, snowy day.

For a third deck...hmm...I really don't feel a particular draw to any of my other decks today. If you want something else, give me an idea what you are seeking and I'll compare it to what I have, and try to pick something appropriate.

As always, these readings are for entertainment and inspiration only, and you are welcome to ask about your creative endeavors as well as more traditional questions.  See my new "Dandelyon's Readings" page if you  have questions.

And please consider dropping something in the case!  Readings take time and energy, and temporary workers don't get paid just because the office is closed due to a blizzard.  If you can't tip, signal boosts are appreciated both for these readings and for Torn World.  However, I understand all too well that sometimes people don't have the spoons to reciprocate, and it is generally during those times when people most need inspiration! 

I hope you will consider voting for  Torn World in the top web fiction poll (you can vote for all of your favorites, and your vote will affect what shows up on their landing page for a week).  Finally, the Rose and Bay Award nominations are now all up over in  crowdfunding , and assuming that the organizers' internet connections are working despite ice storms and blizzards, there should be voting polls up in all categories. I hope you'll check out the nominees and consider voting for one of my projects. 

But whether those things interest you or not, if you'd like a reading, please ask!

The photos here, as my friends here requested, are from my Dance of Leaves dress, which I was working on during the Tricky Pixie concert, which as I remember is where I left off in the story last night.

Eventually, as must always happen, the music ended and the lights brightened again. I had brought some of my own fairy gold (the chocolate sort), and gifted the performers after the Tricky Pixie concert. Dragon shared her artwork, and promised to send the original if we can get an address.

And then we headed off to feast our eyes on visual arts, our heads full of music.

Sadly, in the art show, I realized I had only one of the beautiful amethyst and quartz earrings I’d made still dangling from an ear. The other ear was sad and naked. We checked all the likely spots, in the process picking up a bit of cloth that had fallen from my appliqué project during the concert, and which must have been hidden under a chair before the denizens of that place rearranged the chairs—the concerts used a wall as backdrop, but the masquerade was to use the glass windows and doors on the side of the room instead, so when we returned to the same place a few minutes later, all the chairs had been magically moved.

Then My Angel fled to take a nap, as if a field of poppies had stolen all her energy. Dragon invited me to dinner, and we discovered that all the tables in the restaurant had been reserved. We were invited to wait in the bar for an hour. Dragon used words of power, and they admitted that yes, indeed, they could serve dinner in the bar as well. I challenged the restaurant to feed me safely, and they succeeded most elegantly, and the food (stuffed flounder for me and seafood risotto for Dragon) was delightful. So, reportedly, was the lobster ravioli we took back to My Angel. And I heard the dealers’ lament that during the Tricky Pixie concert no one was there to buy things but the other dealers. As Dragon said, everyone who was anyone was at the concert.

And then there was more music. I didn’t quite make it to the Ninjas’ concert, though I played music with them both the night before and the night after.

It may have been a fae blessing, or perhaps the simple mundane blessing of a government that banned cigarette smoking in hotels, but my voice got stronger all weekend, if you discount a few wobbles after 3 am. One of the handles to the bag holding my laptop came apart—but as I was bending to pick it up, so the laptop wasn’t jostled. I was able to tune the autoharp to itself by ear so I could do a request without spending a half hour on retuning every string.

After a modicum of sleep, while packing up to get out of the hotel, I found the missing earring, which had fallen into my sewing rather than wandering off to serve as an accidental toll for my passage.

Then, there was more music! I think the dead dog filk was possibly the best open filk this weekend, perhaps because everyone was relaxed, and no one had to worry about preparing for a concert or running off to a panel or event. Filkart ended up on the other side of the room, which was fine for the songs we do together that I have memorized. When he did a song where I needed to see the words, I borrowed the seat next to him, but soon stood up, since the fey magic, though strong, didn’t extend far enough to let me see through his guitar neck. And I even ended up playing guitar standing for two songs—something I haven’t done in ages. I was having so much fun, and despite mundane standards suggesting I’d had less sleep and should therefore be tireder than when I arrived, I felt energized.

Of course, finally, we had to head home. We set out to reverse the path we’d trod (well, driven). But Faerie didn’t want to let us go, and I finally had to resort to Modern Technology to start to banish the hold on our travels and let us return to paths we were familiar with. Verizon was, no doubt, pleased to add a GPS charge to my bill.

The road grew treacherously slippery, and the voice in my ear kept telling me to make a u-turn. And even when, at last, we arrived in sight of our home there was danger there too. The road was littered with police vehicles, five marked vehicles, one of them with a spotlight trained on a house across the street. We didn’t go look to see that the police had a spotlight on the back door, though you know they did. Very quietly, we unloaded the car and headed inside to feed the cats.

Far too late, I fell into bed, only to have the police bring in a paddy wagon with a megaphone at about 3 am, so My Angel and I could hear them (in English and Spanish) spend most of an hour talking two guys out of that house. “We have a warrant…we have permission to gas the house…come out with your hands up and nobody will get hurt…we don’t want to gas the house, please come out….”

Eventually, while I tried to get enough sleep to be professional and efficient at work, they succeeded in getting the two men to come out, and by the time I left for work the next day, everything looked perfectly normal and safe. I never heard what all that was about and I wonder, which realm is truly more mysterious?

Now, having returned from the real Windy City, I should get back to my alternate Windy City.  November is more than half over, and I have many words to go.

In other news, the editor liked the surprise collaboration story!  I'll share more details when I have them.  That, too, was a creative magical journey of sorts.

What magical things have you been involved in lately?

We didn’t escape the mundane world as quickly as I’d planned. My Angel hasn’t been doing well lately, with physical pain wearing down her already fragile emotional status, to the point where she agreed to go see a pain specialist for her back, despite having seen too many people (including her mother) who had poor results from back surgery.

But once again, I’m getting ahead of myself. The important stuff isn’t properly linear.

So we wound our way through the modern wilderness of concrete and orange barrels, evading man-made and natural hazards alike, and eventually arrived at the hotel too late to see s00j and Betsy Tinney’s concert. Am I always destined to be late to see s00j? The last time we braved the wilderness to see her, the turnoff from the highway had been torn down, and either there were no detour signs, or they were hidden from view, so we were long past where we should have turned before we realized we had to turn around.

When we arrived at the hotel my brain was addled by too much driving through headlight glare (to say nothing of too much peering at underlit street signs). But I got keys, My Angel got a luggage cart, and I got stuff packed into the room while My Angel got lost on the way up and got her registration.

In the room, I again wanted to wear my dance of leaves, and tried it on with the expected results. So I got my helpers to tell me how far I had to go, and changed into a skirt and top, adding fairy foo-fraw and lots of jewelry before setting off to obtain my badge and catch a bit of Tomboat, mostly from outside the room. I love all those people, but the volume they project when playing as Toyboat hurts my eardrums. Probably one of the legacies of the allergies being so bad when I was a teenager that sneezes used to make my ears whistle.

There were fairy wings and fairy dust everywhere, and friends, and cheese and grapes in the con suite, which (along with some carrots and celery) did a lot to remove the aftereffects of the trip, leaving me much more focused and able to enjoy things.  And somehow the necklaces, rows and rows of gleaming stone, laid light on my shoulders and the back of my neck, almost as if it were gleaming illusions.

At the open Filk, once My Angel brought my guitar, I found it was still in tune. Sadly, I was still tireder than I thought—I ended up using the computer not for nano, but as a cheat sheet for songs I’ve had memorized for years. But still, there was live music, and a bed to fall into once everyone gave up and I headed back to the room.

Saturday, rise to dress for more music. I put on my spring sky with butterflies, since it’s layered and I was cold. And, of course, the hand-me-up shoes. I then went to go grab milk and more grapes in the con suite. The display got my hopes up, with one box mentioning rice chex, but sadly, they were mixed in with wheat and corn chex, and so were not Deirdre food.

Then to see Alexander James, whose voice I like quite as much as I did his predecessor’s. I got to briefly say hi before the concert, while they were doing a sound check for the concert after his.

Music and appliqué – relatively simple appliqué, to be sure, since the siren call of wearing the dress was still sounding. But the music, the music was magical. I watched Alec’s concert and then Heather Dale’s (If you haven’t heard of her, go thou to heatherdale.com)

Then I met My Angel to look at the art show a bit, before running back to return to appliqué and music, to watch the guests of honor—Tricky Pixie.

As they were still working on getting the sound levels right, and attempting to chase away the loud gremlins of feedback, my sister Dragon (yes, she who gave me the hand-me-up shoes, and indeed who painted them in green lightning knotwork) slid into the chair next to me, and asked if I had a sketching pencil and paper.

The gremlins being well entrenched and the feedback squeals hurting my ears helped convince me to run (yes, run, as in actual running in the halls, as if the hands of time were running backward) to my room to grab the sketchbook and colored pencils I’d packed. And then they turned the lights down, and we shifted so the spotlight aimed at the stage bled onto our creative projects, and we settled in to enjoy the magic, both the magic from the stage and the magic flowing from our own fingers.

It’s not as if they were totally separate. Dragon noted that she was drawing in time to the music, and as for me? My fingers were dancing on the fabric, letting me resist the call to stand up and dance, if only barely.

See what my sister drew with my pencils, sitting there in the twilight where the audience sat spellbound? 

I suppose it makes sense that nothing about a trip to Faerie would be straightforward.

I started my preparations for the convention as I always do, by writing an e-mail to the programming department, offering to participate on panels. For the first time in…I don’t know how long, the convention had more than enough people doing panels, and the ones I was most interested in doing ended up being ideas saved for another convention, so I had no panels to do. Which, although I love doing panels—you get to talk with the most interesting people—was a nice change of pace.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, I knew there were to be no panels, and I was already behind on NaNoWriMo, despite nearly catching up last weekend (next year I’m going to do a nano novel where I don’t have to keep stopping and thinking about worldbuilding stuff), and I’m working to impress my current employers because my current assignment is a much better fit for how my brain works than the previous one, and I want to get a good recommendation out of this when I’m again looking for permanent work. And, of course, I wanted energy to enjoy the con and to perform in the song circles, so when I was running short on time I gave up the plan to take art for the art show.

So, although I have cool wing-stuff to put on my fairy cat from sketchfest, and the guardian gargoyle to finish, and a plan for this music box that would make a perfect yule gift for the right demented fan, I didn’t push myself to get them finished or to take other art for the art show. And I didn’t try to squeeze in time to go buy a new tuner to replace the one that has suddenly gone dead, despite new batteries.

Instead, I grabbed my hand-me-up hand-painted green knotwork shoes, and my spring sky with butterflies, packed instruments and music and my dance of leaves, with material to add some gussets in hopes of wearing it again. I left the easel behind, and the acrylics, packing only a single sketchbook and my ancient store of colored pencils. And I packed jewelry—amber, amethyst, and the foam of volcanoes, moons, stars and leaves, butterflies, spirits and peace signs, and the stag who found me in festival mud.

And, after consulting with My Angel regarding arcane matters of wood and leather, I went to sleep and then to work with dreams of good music and maybe dancing filling my head.

I returned from work to find a box on my front porch. A box? Was I expecting a box? I couldn’t think of anything.

I took a few minutes before starting to pack the car to open the box. Inside were an owl, a mushroom, and a leaf – all hand-made shakers, with a card that said,


As soon as I could get us out of the house, we set off with an arcane set of directions, to wander unfamiliar streets that shone in the dark, hoping that if we performed the spell just right, we’d arrive in a place of music and magic, friendship and fun.


(Pictured here are the three shakers, on my drum, but once again, I'm getting ahead of myself.  More after I've had a chance to catch up on some sleep.)

I'm not sure what they made the walls with at Dragon's house, but they're harder than the plaster in my old Victorian.  Lots harder.  The first attempt to drill holes that would hold the plastic thingies that came with the cubes failed miserably, and I ended up patching the holes with fresh-mixed plaster and we started again an inch higher.

Here's Dragon hanging the first cube!

Next I worked on one of the 3-D branches.

Yeah, that's some plaster there, to help the curve of the stick.  There's some on the second (and last) stick we got mounted.  Apparently Dragon's husband likes to burn hardwood in his fireplace.  The drill bits didn't so much drill as burn their way through the wood, slowly.    It took long enough that the plaster I'd mixed was almost too set to use at all by the time I got to the second stick.

Dragon has promised to paint over the plaster once it dries.

Some things you only learn once you try them--the cages will clearly need chains, so they hang free!  And apparently Spooky gets a key to the city too.

Yes, that's two different things hanging from the same stick.  It's still a work in progress.  Witness the blue painter's tape that's protecting the wood of the doorways and floor edging.

In other news, I'm working on a science fiction short story involving polar bears, an amphibious robot, and the North Pacific Gyre. 

I want to finish it--and the snippet I started today that arose from a picture of gorgeous multi-colored yarn--before the Muse Fusion on Sunday.

And I'll finish this post with two more pictures of the mural, adjusted to different light levels so you can see different parts of the details.  The human eye is still more sensitive than the camera (or at least than the cell phone).  Go figure!