Leah: Just the Average Morning

Again, I love Michigan weather.

The rain started early this morning on my way into the gallery. Four hours later, it was still going, not really hard, but the drops were big and sloppy, coating the words, “McArthur’s Art” painted on the double picture window at the front of the gallery. Today was going to prove to me that it was a bad time to quit smoking.

I had finished the store opening sequence: Unlock the doors, start the coffee pot, and flip the open sign around. The door opened fine, though the light in the back room popped out when I flipped it on. I had to start the coffee in the dark, which isn’t as hard as it sounds. The signs flipped easily, and the cash register actually did was it was supposed to do at the start of another day at work. By the time I had logged into my various work related, and not work related websites, I decided that fixing the light was going to have to wait because getting a stool and finding another bulb was just too much effort for a rainy morning. I got my coffee in the dark.

After sipping the first smooth cup of coffee I started with the usual time waster of checking my email and proceeding to the rest of the internet within twenty minutes after deleting my inbox of spam. It wasn’t all spam, there were some updates that I had voluntarily subscribed to from various websites that I would usually end up visiting in my daily routine anyways after deleting the emails. That was about three hours ago. Mornings were usually slow, the gallery didn’t really pick up until late afternoon, and that was just the art students trying to work up the nerve to get shot down on their proposal to showcase their art at the gallery.

My father, big-daddy McArthur was very picky about what kind of art was shown at the gallery. Not that you could blame him, his name was on the door. We specialized in artifacts more than art. Ancient arrowheads from the Byzantine Empire and the Romans were in glass cases near the front of the gallery. Coins from sunken Spanish galleons were in another case near-by. My father, in one of his few attempts to keep up with the times, had bought the coins to capture the popularity of pirates. At the back of the gallery we had various replicas of weapons. Five different interations of the legendary Excalibur were hung on the walls, near a cabinet that held battle worthy daggers and katana’s, small price tags attached to each one. The katana’s, unlike the coins were not there to cater to the popularity of ninjas.

The art we showcased took up the rest of the wall reality. The paintings created pockets of fantasy worlds with landscapes of lush, green forests surrounding impossibly huge castles and scenes of war between storybook races of elves and orcs. The art was mostly for sale, though there were no price tags attached. The paintings came from a very specific group of local, and not so local artists.

Suddenly, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end when I heard the door in the back open.

I heard the floor in the back room creak and groan as I tried to look through the tiny window in the door above the “Employees Only” sign on the door to the back room. A dark shadow moved behind the glass. I stepped forward with hesitating steps, wondering who would be coming in my back door. Peaking through the window, I watched an 8 foot tall beast shrug his way through the door frame. Rain flowed down a dirty trench-coat, through shaggy brown and black fur covering platter sized hands. It stepped forward and the wooden floor moaned in protest, and something wooden cracked.

I breathed in deeply, steadying my nerves and pushed through the door into the black, back room.

“What’d you do?” I asked stalking into the room.

“You need a new coat-rack,” growled the beast through something more like the snout of a dog rather than a round mouth. It even had the pearly, white fangs to match. My cheap wooden coat-rack, which was proving its discount cost as it lay in pieces on the floor. The beast leaned over and pointed at the pieces of wood with black talons.

“You can’t go anywhere without breaking something, can you?”

“I was trying to turn the light on,” said the beast, slipping out of his massive leather coat and nodding to the floor where my broken coat rack was, “You know this light doesn’t work right?”

I leaned down and began picking up the broken pieces of the coat rack, “Yup, it was on my list of stuff to do,” I said, stepping over taking the giants coat and hanging the sopping mass on a coat rack by the door. The smell of wet dog assaulted my nose and I had to breathe from my mouth to stop from gagging. Imagine an 8 foot tall, 400 pound dog, still dripping wet, and you realize that smell is proportional to size. “So, what’s up Brutus?”

Leah: Foundlings and Snow Angles

The one thing I hate the most about living in Michigan is the weather.
I know in other states, they must say the same thing, but I don't live in other states and the weather here is insane. We just went from 40 to 50 degree weather with beautiful skies, down to 20 degrees and snow. But, of course, that wasn't enough. It had to rain before all the snow.
But, I have to keep on the good side of things, so lets stop bitching about the snow and onto the part-time job with Old Man Winters.
When Wyld fold come over through the portals, there's usually a period of adjustment time. OMW calls them "Foundlings" and well the term is appropriate enough. I was given the job (more like an internship though cause I don't get paid) to help foundlings in their transition period.
And Portals only stay open for about an hour.
Timmy Guttersnipe is like the radar for our Wyld-Folk-Immigration-Program. He's a cute little halfling with a great laugh and a pair of foot-long blades he called "daggers" that were as sharp as his wit and longer then his forearm. Timmy had found the portal that night.
The snow was coming down steady by then and had already coated the roads in about a inch of snow that hide the layer of ice underneath. I slipped across three lanes of 94 to get off at my exit and almost was hit twice by jackasses driving like there wasn't any ice on the ground. It always happens. Whenever the snow stops, everyone like forgets how to drive.
The portal was between two abandoned factories within earshot of EMU's campus. Luckily the weather was keeping the college kids in their house parties.
By the time I arrived at the portal, it had just closed and OMW was wrapping the foundling up in a thick cloak. The girl was a daemon, specifically a fire-daemon. Daemon were the offspring of an elemental and a more human like Wyldfolk, something like an elf, dwarf, or orc.
Only the girls light red face was visible in the cloak. She had two small horns that peaked out from her fiery red hair. Each snowflake that touched her skin turned into a sizzle of steam.
But, she wasn't the only thing that came through the portal. I smelled the beast before I saw it, giving me the time to aim.
The worg slipped out from behind a Dumpster and leaped us, the spines around its neck quivering in anticipation, the stench hitting me like a wall. I widened my stance and raised my right hand like I was telling the 600 pound wolf on steroids to stop, summoning all my anger and frustration from the slippery Michigan road. I felt magic gather in my chest and waited for a clean shot at the worg's chest. It reared back in mid-air to strike and I saw my chance. A lance of dark purple, almost black energy shot from my hand and struck the worg directly in the chest.
I felt the magic leave me and readied another blast while the worg flew backwards and dented in the Dumpster. I smelled burning fur and flesh and aimed the second lance directly between the black, beady eyes. It snarled once more and I lashed out, splitting the things face down the middle.
Suddenly Timmy appeared next to it, a "dagger" in each hand. I stepped around OMW as he gathered up the girl in his arms and watched as the worg fell limp. The worg slowly turned black then began slowly swirled into shadows and melted into the night.
When beings of the Wyld died, there wasn't anything left. No body was left to announce that anything had ever existed here on Earth. All the Wyld can do is remember what they left behind through their dreams.
OMW had slid the girl into the back seat of my SUV and was waving to me as he walked down the street in the snow. I still don't know how that old coot gets around so fast without a car. Timmy was already sitting in mine, seat-belt bucked and ready to go.
I lit a cigarette on my way back to the car.
Nasty habit I know, but it's the little things that help.
We dropped off the girl with Sister Deborah, an old orc women who worked at a homeless shelter in Ann Arbor. She wasn't really a nun, but she could crack your knuckles like a nun in a catholic school. Sister Deborah gave the foundlings a place to stay until they got their bearings.
By the time I dropped Timmy off and got back to my home in Canton, the sun was coming up and I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.
Some girls go out dancing, I get to help the immigrants of the Wyld-World.

-Leah

Leah: Here's to the beginning:

I'm not sure why, but Rudy and Old Man Winters insisted I should be the one to start this. Old Man Winders always says I was brought here for something greater, but I never thought a blog was it.

Anyways, it's snowing here in Ann Arbor. They plowed the roads this morning, but they didn't seem to notice my car was parked in the street, so now my car resembles more a mound of now. So, I actually have time to sit here and put out this blog.

I'm not really sure what to write, but Old Man Winters insisted I include enough history to tell our story, but not enough to get us stalked, so here goes.

I wanted to talk about vision, like in the mind's eye. When you read something or see something about love and hate, or right and wrong, you have to equate it that back to something in your past. You see the couple kissing in the rain on the movie screen and you remember your first kiss, or maybe the last kiss you had greeting the person next to you in the theater. Once you've got this memory, the image of love becomes true, at least to you. It something that happens all the time. History colors of decisions of the future. It also allows us dimensional immigrants to hide so well among humans.

Humans are not alone here on Earth.

Elves, dwarves, gnolls, and other creatures inhabit the Earth right along with humans, mostly under their noses. It helps too that most races from the Wyld are more or less human shape. Sure a dwarf is only 3 feet tall, but so are the Roloffs. And hey, Gnolls are big and hairy, but so is Tom Selleck. And when human's look at me, the almond shaped eyes and pointed ears of my elven heritage melt away, at least to humans. Though, everyone once in awhile when I get my hair cut, I can see sidelong glances from the hair dresser as they navigate around something that's physically there, but their mind won't let them see.

We come from a dimension that sometimes overlaps with Earth's dimension that we've come to call the Wyld. It's a place a lot like Earth, filled with rolling hills and magic, as far as I've heard. Every creature of the Wyld dreams of the Wyld, seeing the world they left behind, longing to go home, but we can't. The portals that pull us here are only open long enough to drop us off, there's no return trip.

But, unlike everyone else from the Wyld, I don't dream. Every other Wyld folk dreams of snippets and scenes from their past in the Wyld. I've been able to paint some interesting memory pictures from listening to those freaky friends at Rudy's bar and movies like Lord of the Rings. Sorry Rudy, if you're reading this before I can tell you.

I was brought over still in my mother's womb and born here on Earth. It's given me a unique perspective, torn between the heritage I can't remember and the world I don't feel completely in place in.

So, I've done the college thing, still looking for the career thing, working at the family art gallery thing, and trying to have as much fun as possible on the side.

Here's to happy times and no regrets.

-Leah