added tonight's 1000

1 files changed, 76 insertions, 12 deletions

diff --git a/lbh.txt b/lbh.txt
index 6a3cd00..608f2f8 100644
--- a/lbh.txt
+++ b/lbh.txt
@@ -223,7 +223,7 @@ The tk tacked back and forth up and down the windward side of the island for mos
 
 Though it was very likely everyone on the island had seen them come in, they were still too deep in the marsh to make it to camp before dark. They made the last meal of the season on the ship with Birdie's fish and hatched plans to get tk unloaded the next morning. Birdie, Lulu, and Henri fell asleep making plans for what they would do when the saw their cousins again the next day.
 
-## Chapter 2 Off The Sea
+## Chapter 2: Off The Sea
 
 The feel of sand stuck to her fingers. Lulu flicked her fingers and felt the rough sand fall away and the smooth skin beneath. She was inside a pale white cocoon of sheet. She stretched her arms up over her head, feeling for the edge, for the sand. She found it and pull it down over her head and sat up to look around.
 
@@ -279,25 +279,93 @@ Her father was just completely the outdoor cooking area, which consisted of a fi
 
 Lulu turned and looked west. A little back from camp there was a like of oak trees and that then gave way to the marsh where the tk would be anchored for the season. In those oaks they would soon construct great kilns that would be used to make the tar that brought them to the island in the first place. Across the flat reedy world of marsh was another line of oaks and then a no man's land of cypress swamp and brackish water that slowly, as you moved south, resolved itself into the southern fork of the Edistow. Another half mile beyond that was Kadiatu's family's house and farm. Beyond that were the great pine forests of the low country where they would dig stumps and then haul them by barge and horse out here to the beach where they would burn them, slowly extracting the sap and then boiling it down into a sticky resin that sealed wood against the sea.
 
+They ate as the sun set through the trees behind their half-finished hut. Lulu went down to the shore and rinsed her abalone bowl. The air had a hint of chill at the edge of it. The sea was cold on her feet. When she came back her father and Kobayashi were laying oak logs on the coals that had cooked dinner. It wasn't long before the fire was roaring and light filled the circle of dune. Lulu sat on a log gray driftwood and watched her uncle play the fiddle while Birdie and her father danced in circles. Henri and Owen sat on a log next to her Aunt Māra and directly across the fire. Lulu smiled. She like winter camp, she liked her family. She knew enough of the world to know they were different. Perhaps even odd to most people. But she didn't care. She was just glad they had a place to live their lives the way they wanted to, a place they could fish, a place they could weather storms. 
 
+She had heard someone once whispering in a shop, calling them pirates, but she didn't think they were. They had never captured a ship or found any treasure. She asked her father about it and he just laughed and said no, pirates have much bigger ships than we do. But maybe someday Lulu. He had that twinkle in his eye that made it seem like just about anything was possible, like when he told stories around the fire on winter evenings and Lulu felt like the worlds he described were out there somewhere, waiting for her to discover. Worlds of pirates and ships and storms, talking animals, and tk and tk. Her father never failed to take what would always tart as a normal story and turn it in someway that you never saw coming but afterward couldn't imagine turning out any other way.
 
-They unload the boat and set up camp, big bonfire, scene with her uncle being rough with Francis, or being mean to Francis. Partial explanation of the Aunt being around more. Her father turned to Māra, "you can come down here whenever you need to. You're family, not him."
+Tonight though he did not tell any stories. He danced. First with Birdie, then we Henri, then with her. After a while Uncle Clay professed he was tired and put away the fiddle and sat down by the fire. There was catching up, plenty of poking fun, a rather long story about planting rice that Lulu lost track of in the middle when she began to doze off. She found a blanket in the pile of still unsorted belongings in the hut and went partway up a dune where she could still feel the heat the fire, which was not much smaller, but also see the stars. She fell asleep trying to find the tk, lost somewhere up among all the others.
 
-"He's my husband."
+## Chapter 3: Birdie Organizing Camp
 
-Her father shrugged. "Doesn't mean you have to go down with the ship."
+It was hard to believe it would be cold in another turning of the moon. Maybe two this year, thought Birdie as she sat sweating in the sweltering afternoon heat weaving swamp grass with Kadiatu and her mother. They were making the last five or six mats that would serve as the walls to their house. Birdie and her father had already set up the hut. She loved to organize things, to find a place for everything and put everything in her place. Her father loved the result, but not the process, he left that to Birdie, only stepping in from time to time to point out that they needed something to be in a particular place. Pans by the fire for instance. Birdie had wanted to hang them from the rafters, but her father said no, by the fire. Where we use them. Besides, if they hang they can fall. If they're on the ground they'll never fall on someone's head. The thing was, they would have look so beautifully organized hanging there. Kobayashi agreed and he cooked nearly as many meals as their father, but he too wanted them on the ground. It is sometimes necessary to not be quite a as beautiful so that it can be more safe. 
 
+She settled for hanging the bag she had made last year from the rafters. She had woven it from spare hemp, scrap fabric, and the occasional reed to make it more water proof. It held her book, which she brought everywhere with her, sketching the things she saw all around her. Shells, plants, birds, boats, the shore, the clouds, the sea, Birdie drew everything. When she wasn't drawing she was imagining the drawing should soon make. Sometimes she drew what she saw around her, other times she drew when she saw in her mind. She would lay in the dark of the hut at night, listening to the soft sigh of the others breathing while white shapes danced in the darkness behind her half closed eyes. She would watch them until she made some sense out of them and then arrange them into scenes, organize them, find where each belonged. Sometimes, when the moon was waxing, she could creep silently out from under the warmth of the covers, and slip outside, her feet silent on the sand, to draw by the moonlight, or firelight if her father was still up, as he often was. He would stare at the glowing coals, she would draw, and they would be together silently in some way that felt to her deeper connected than when she was talking to someone, despite the fact that neither of them ever said a word, or even acknowledged each others presence. 
 
+Drawing as much as she required Birdie to make her own ink. She did it the way her father taught her, blending octopus and pine tar to make a dark grayish purple that was good for outlines. She made green paint from just about any plant, and she'd discovered how to make yellows and reds be experimenting with flowers that grew around the island. She needed a good blue though, blue had thus far eluded her. Paper and brushes were harder to come by, those she had to buy.
 
+She still had two of the three brushes she'd bought last year in Charlestown using the money she'd managed to make by drying fish with Lulu and Francis. They fished and dried all through the first Autumn moon and managed to preserve enough of their catch that they were able to trade in Charlestown. They spent some of their money on enough peppermint sticks for everyone back at camp, and then they split the leftover money evenly between them. Lulu bought a doll, Birdie bought horsehair paint brushes, and Francis bought a small compass which Birdie did not have the heart to tell him, was not very accurate.
 
+One of the brushes she'd lost somewhere on the voyage north to summer camp on the cape. She thought she had packed them carefully away after she tried (and failed) to paint the ship's rigging one day, but the next day when she went to get them out there were only two. She'd searched the entire hold, everyone had pitched in, but they never found it. The tk claimed that brush as her own. Luckily it was her least favorite brush anyway. Still, she had already built a new rack to dry fish on again. As soon as their camp was set up, the hut thatching finished, she was planning to get out to the bank to start fishing. She was going to get more brushes, and this time they weren't going to get lost, she was going to sleep with them if she had to.
 
+"Birdie?" Kadi was looking at her with a curled smile. "Your mind moves much faster than your hands."
 
+Birdie looked down and realized she'd been holding the same strand of reed for, how long? She did not know. She had been thinking of drawing, painting. "Sorry, I was thinking." 
 
-Just then her father walked by with a barrel that he set down rather ceremoniously next to Lulu and began to open. "You'll come with us today I think," he said, not bothering to look up from what he was doing. "They cut a whole forest down, so we're going stumping early this year." He pulled what he wanted out of the barrel, small bundle that she new help his tools for marking stumps. "Go get in the boat Lu."
+Kadi's mother laughed, "How old are you Birdie?" She shook her head. "Lost in thought, stopping work at the age of eight. You are your father's child." She laughed again.
 
----
+This last comment startled her, did she disappear like her father? Was that what it was like for other people when she was thinking? What that what it was like for her father when he disappeared from the present?
+
+Kadi laughed again, "right back to it. Go girl, go and play, we will finish this."
+
+Birdie looked up at her to see if she was serious. Kadi and her family never let anyone out of chores, but they seemed serious. Birdie had a momentary pang, she was abandoning them to work on her own house, she should make her own house. 
+
+"Don't worry," said Kadi, "go and play. This is almost done anyway."
+
+Birdie jumped up, blurted out a thank you and took off down toward the dunes where she knew Lulu and Francis were digging up last year's stumped and spreading cut reeds to dry. She reached the top of the dune and stopped so abruptly she nearly toppled over. Lulu and Francis were down below, spreading reeds along the side the dune and weighting them down with drift wood gathered from the beach. Judging by the pile near Lulu they had about ten minutes of work left. Birdie shouted in the wind, "Hurry up, and meet me at the ship."
+
+They looked up at her squinting. She saw Lulu nod. Birdie turned and walked out to the harder sand near the shoreline and made her way down to the Arkhangelsk. She saw Henri and Owen playing on the rear deck. For reasons she did not understand no one ever made either of them do any chores, though both were perfectly capable of helping out. Somehow they both got a pass. Birdie was pretty sure she'd had chores at their age. She tried to set aside the anger she felt rising in her chest when she realized they'd had nothing to do all day but go play hunting in the forest with their bows and arrows and play out here on the ship. Her ship. She stopped herself. Their ship. Everyone's ship. Poseidon's ship. The island's ship that it had been so kind as to preserve so they could use it. 
+
+It wasn't long before Lulu and Francis arrived and they began to play. As with most of their adventure's it started with Lulu creating a back story. They were a family of sea gods who had been cast out of the high temples where their mother and father had disowned them for some reason that Birdie was entirely clear on. From that time they were doomed to wander the seas for forty years, and woe to any ships that crossed their path for they would devour them and all their sailors. As captain is was Birdie's task to find a new homeland, but since they could not find it for forty years she mostly just conjured ships for them to attack. 
+
+Lulu had a back story for every one of those ships too. Birdie sometimes complained to her that half the time they were playing they were just listening to Lulu tell stories, but everyone else seemed to really enjoy these outlandish tales. Too outlandish for Birdie's taste. Who had ever heard of sea gods cast out of somewhere? How did a god get cast out of something? What was the point of being a god if you can get cast out just like a person?
+
+"Because Bee, Gods are just like us, they have to deal with other gods. They get in fights and stuff. They have to 
+
+"My dad says there's only one god." Owen looked at Lulu accusingly.
+
+Lulu, Birdie, and Henri exchanged a glance so quickly neither of the other two noticed it. "Well," said Birdie, "that may be. Who knows? We're just playing anyway."
+
+Lulu climbed up on the railing of the ship, balanced for a moment there and then, with a wild yell, leaped off and started running down the beach, shrieking like a banshee. Birdie climbed up and looked after her. "Well," she said slowly, "I have heard that Poseidon used to drive some people mad."
+
+"What?" said Francis. "Does this mean the game is over?"
+
+"I guess so." Birdie smiled helplessly.
+
+"Come on Owen. Let's see if we can find some duck eggs in the marsh."
+
+They left. Henri sighed and climbed up to look after Lulu. "You think she'll come back."
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Should we go get her?"
 
-###Among the Stumps
+Birdie studied her brother. He could be completely infuriating sometimes, but Birdie realized for the first time that her Aunt was right when she called him "the sweetest boy I ever met."
+
+"Let's go find her. I want to know what she was yelling about."
+
+They climbed up on the railing just as Lulu had and, though neither of them said anything they both knew what they had to do. They jumped off the railing, hit the sand running and began to shriek like banshees as they ran down the shoreline after Lulu.
+
+Lulu is mad about the gods thing. Their father has sworn them to never say anything bad about monotheism, not to tell how they worsip the gods. 
+
+“Everything is possible to him who wills only what is true! Rest in Nature, study, know, then dare; dare to will, dare to act and be silent!”
+― Éliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual 
+
+“Weak people talk and do not act, strong people act and keep silent.”
+― Éliphas Lévi, El libro de los sabios: Obra postuma
+
+
+Birdie the artist, Lulu the what? What does Lulu do? We need to get deeper into the kids playing at some point. Maybe this chapter something about them making figures and playing. Or perhaps playing in the Arkhangelsk. Could I insert adventures of the Arkhangelsk as little mini stories within the story? Or should I do that with Papa's stories? I kind of like it as a tale within a tail. Maybe that's Lulu's talent, telling stories. Birdie pants pictures, Lulu tells stories, Henri has adventures or writes maybe?
+
+
+
+
+bonfire, scene with her uncle being rough with Francis, or being mean to Francis. Partial explanation of the Aunt being around more. Her father turned to Māra, "you can come down here whenever you need to. You're family, not him."
+
+"He's my husband."
+
+Her father shrugged. "Doesn't mean you have to go down with the ship."
+
+## Chapter 4: Among the Stumps
 
 Lulu hopped from stump to stump. Crouching down, her knees bent like coiled springs and then sprong, she exploded toward the next stump, landed, teetered, stopped there. There were plenty of stumps. The whole forest was gone. 
 
@@ -420,11 +488,7 @@ Lulu ducked under the crumbing beam that had once supported the deck, following
 It was dark by the time they walked back to camp. The air had turned cold as the sun set. Not cold, but cool enough that Lulu got her blanket out of the pole lodge. They only ever slept indoors in the worst of weather. Lulu brought out her blanket and lay down in the sand, pulling it over her. She lay for along time whispering with Birdie about plans for the next day, watching the thin sliver of moon drag its light across the shifting ripple of the sea.
 
 
-
-
-
-
-## Chapter 3: Fishing the Bank
+## Chapter 5: Fishing the Bank
 
 Birdie woke early, before first light. She sat up on the dune where she had slept and looked off toward the sea. She saw the silhouette of her father down by the shore, his back to her. His hand went up and pulled down to his head with a movement so sharp and sudden she felt as if the starlight itself bent down to him. She watched at he turned to each direction, and then back to the center where he stood still, facing east.