Moonflowers

Table of Contents

Dedication

Exordium

Episode 13

Episode 14

Episode 15

Episode 16

Episode 17

Episode 18

Episode 19

Episode 20

Episode 21

Episode 22

Episode 23

Episode 24

Episode 25

Episode 26

Episode 27

Episode 28

Episode 29

Episode 30

Episode 31

Episode 32

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also from Ellysian Press

About Ellysian Press

MOONFLOWERS

Armageddon-Lite, Volume 1

David A. Gray

MOONFLOWERS

David A. Gray

www.ellysianpress.com

MOONFLOWERS

© Copyright David A. Gray 2019. All rights reserved.

Print ISBN: 978-1-941637-60-9

First Edition, 2019

Editor: Maer Wilson, M Joseph Murphy

Cover Art: David A. Gray

Ebooks/Books are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared, or given away, as this is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Quote from H.P. Lovecraft short story, The Horror at Red Hook, 1925, published in 1927 in Weird Tales magazine used via Fair Use.

Dedication

To my mum, who didn’t suffer fools, and armed me with the greatest treasure in the world – a library card.

And to all the outliers, freaks and weirdos – because the center of the bell curve is boring.

Exordium

From the collected, incomplete recordings of the legendary but controversial individual known as Officer Petal, made during his early time with the precinct, starting date 29 A.A-L. (Anno Armageddon-Lite).

Listeners should bear in mind that even though Petal must be considered an unreliable witness, not even his harshest critics would challenge his place in events best described as incredible.

Note: while some episodes are lost, some were almost certainly redacted due to human and supra-natural security reasons.

— Broadcast under the license of the Armageddon Museum’s Moonflower Archives

Episode 13

The Manticore and the Crimson Snow

Have you ever dodged burning snowflakes as you chased a manticore through the blood-red streets of hell’s outpost in Brooklyn? Thought not. Which makes you a lot smarter than me, and way more likely to still be alive after sixty seconds.

My mistake was not listening to Ovid, when he grunted, Kid, on no account should you catch the thing we’re chasing, as we’d jumped down on to the warehouse roof. If you see it, holler. Then run the opposite way.

I wasn’t the slowest out of the hovering chopper, but I was the only one who fell on my face, dropped my kitbag, and watched it slide down the sloped roof, over the edge into the dark. I ignored the mixed groans, titters and curses. And chose not to acknowledge the hissed Asshole! That was Jinx. Of course. She probably made me fall: that’s her freak ability, you see.

My freak ability? You already know that all the rejects that end up in America’s weirdest precinct have some kind of gift or curse. Well, I can see into the future.

All of three seconds’ worth. Which is exactly as useless as you’re thinking.

And right then, I didn’t need to see the future to know that the misshapen collection of animal and human parts in front of me was planning on making me an amuse bouche, before devouring the crowd of truly stupid bystanders who thought this was all part of the nightly floorshow. I’d never seen a manticore before (and never would again, if that one got its way). It was a pretty messed-up version of the original Persian idea, in my opinion – a pumped lion’s body the size of a small car, with raggedy batwings that were never going to be functional. The head was that of an old woman, scaled up to the size of a pumpkin and mostly comprised of a circular mouth with way too many rows of jagged teeth.

Manticores are real? Well, that was news to me, too. And to think that after the awful months there, I’d been starting to think I’d seen it all. Blasé and a poor listener – a deadly combination in this neighborhood.

"A gift from Duat in Egypt, the sarge had told us as we were herded into the waiting Ospreys an hour before. To cement demonic cooperation globally. Seems the local bosses underestimated how smart it is, and it got loose. Oh, and it’s hungry. And has a taste for human flesh," he’d added casually.

The plan had been for the dozen of us on night shift to herd it toward the docks, to a waiting contingent of local heavies and a specially reinforced shipping container. We’d have left those demonic assholes to fix it themselves – or be eaten trying – except it was a major party night in The Hook. We really didn’t need human casualties. Other than the usual crop of self or consensually inflicted ones that is.

So, to cut a long but exciting chase short, there I was, about to become the victim of my own fast feet and youthful enthusiasm, in a red-lit, narrow alleyway between a casino and a shooting gallery. A real shooting gallery, not the old-timey drug ones – nothing so boring as that in The Hook. Thrill-seekers could shoot at each other and demons. Hellborn chirurgeons stitched them up afterward. Apparently, it’s on all the coolest bucket lists this year.

A fat, smoldering snowflake went down the front of my ill-fitting body armor, singeing what little chest hair I have. It also tingled like ice. Hook snow sums up the demons’ and angels’ disdain for the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.

An encouraging shout of get him! from the gathering crowd forced my attention back to the five-hundred-pound monster who slavered acidic drool at the thought of dining on me. There wasn’t anyone in a square mile who cared much about motivating yours truly.

Eat him! a skinny guy with a rotted face added salaciously. A knot of human bros – in town for a bachelor party, if their matching and prematurely optimistic I survived Hell in Brooklyn tees were any indication – pumped their fists and made woo-hoo noises. I wasn’t sure if they thought I was just part of the evening’s entertainment, or if they knew they were about to witness the messy end of the shortest ever police career in post-Armageddon-Lite America. I guess I don’t look much like a cop, so much as a gangly kid who dresses from an army thrift store.

Hey, freak! someone/thing else screamed, Yeah, Moonflower! I know what you are!

The shouter wasn’t a real demon, just a melted-looking hellborn with a ridge of bone and wobbly skin atop his mangy head. Hellborns. I knew way too much about them even before I was drafted there: those poor schmucks who had the ill luck to enter this world in a demonic enclave and were physically and mentally screwed up because of it. They tended to be nasty inside and out, in my experience.

I should have ignored him and focused on the rabid monster, but then I never did know when to keep my mouth shut. And I had the beginning of an idea.

I don’t know what you are! I yelled back, but I’m guessing your dad was a rooster and your mom a plate of jello, right?

The crowd of workers and thrill-seekers hooted and applauded. The hellborn stepped forward in a rage, into the rough circle of spectators, and accidentally caught the manticore’s attention. Which just goes to show that no matter how dumb your plan, there will be someone in The Hook stupid enough to fall for it. The beast’s startlingly blue eyes flickered from me to the hellborn, who’d skidded to a halt in the slush, rheumy eyes wide in horror at his mistake.

There’s an ancient classic western movie, where the pivotal scene is in a cemetery, with the three gunslingers’ eyes filling the screen as they dart around. That was us, minus the hats and the coolness. And the guns. Mine had gone over the edge of the roof with the rest of my stuff, but I had been too embarrassed to tell anyone. Not that it mattered: I’m not fond of guns and have yet to hit anything when I’ve fired one anyway.

I didn’t move either. I focused on the manticore, unsure if it even thought enough like a person for me to use my freak talent and get a sense of what it was about to do. It had intent, all right; a determination to get out of there, and a keen enthusiasm for killing anyone who got in the way. I shuffled slowly to one side, offering a gap, and I saw its plan to leap through, taking a mouthful of the bystanders as it did. I was mostly okay with that. Anyone dumb enough to go seeking their pleasure in The Hook, they signed a contract that covered a wide range of gruesome ends.

The manticore bunched knotted muscles like sandbags, ready to leap. I felt a moment of hope, which goes against my general code. And rightly so, because nothing good happens when you get optimistic. And, on cue, the hellborn broke and ran. I don’t blame him, really. They’re houses built on weak foundations. But his timing stank. The manticore leapt and twisted in mid-air – an impressive feat for something the size of a small car – and snapped the hellborn in two with those awful jaws, landing facing back the way it’d come, gore dripping down its chin. Right in front of me.

Its eyes were wide, now, shining with intelligent malice, and I knew flight was off the menu, replaced with rookie cops and anyone else not able to run fast enough. But did the crowd of spectators run? Only the smartest, which is to say hardly any.

I focused, hard, and it pounced, massive paws coming down where I was standing. Or had been standing. I was three feet off to the right, trying not to fall in the smoldering slush. It spun, gathered and leaped, missing me by inches. We did that again, me leaving part of my sleeve in its jaws. My head hurt. I was predicting its moves, but only just. It was smart and adapting. I saw the false move coming, about a second early, and jumped back, falling and smacking my head on a curb as the real attack snapped shut a foot above me.

I was running out of ideas and courage fast. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t stupid, and it started to inch forward like a cat stalking a bird. I scrambled to my feet and backed away at the same speed, feeling behind me with the toes of my clunky hand-me-down boots, keeping my attention on the manticore as I went. I had a flash of its next attack: leap, feint left, strike right with one massive paw. I had a second to react, leaping to its left. As I did, it changed the plan, lightning fast, and twisted in the air again. Its jaws snagged the back of my armor, through my overcoat, tossing me an easy ten feet to land in the middle of the street. That hurt. But not as much as what it had planned: a simple sprint, with a vivid mental image of me being snatched up in that awful maw.

I scrambled in the messy, hot/cold snow, looking for a weapon. In the movies, there’s always something at hand, a plot device left there in an earlier scene. Like, a pneumatic robotic loader, or a sharpened stake. All I found was a long plastic party tooter, like dumbasses with something to be cheery about blow through at New Year’s. Or when planning a riotous night in The Hook, I guess. So, a comedy death. How disappointing and yet fitting, a detached part of my mind said.

I lurched to my feet, looking for any flaw in the manticore’s approach, finding none. That’s the thing about my freak ability – most often three seconds isn’t enough.

Something boomed like thunder, and again. And the monster actually shuddered and howled. It spun, spraying gouts of dark sticky goop from two head-sized holes in its back. I caught a glimpse of Ovid, that huge cannon in one hand, taking aim.

Run, kid, he rumbled. I would have, except I was still tuned into the manticore and knew it was about to try one of those feints. And Ovid wouldn’t know it was coming. Now, I’ve been called a lot of things, but not a coward. Well, not often. Okay, sometimes. But not when someone just saved my life. He was meant to make sure your life didn’t need saving in the first place, that pesky inner voice said. I shushed it.

This would be the perfect time for me to say that someone pivotal in my life had once said something wise about courage, blah blah blah. That’d be a lie, though, as nobody ever cared enough to offer me wisdom that wasn’t delivered via the toe of their boot, or a bendy, thin stick (thanks, Father Eli).

But standing unsteadily in the burning snow, I noticed two things. One, manticores have lion’s tails. Like, twitching ones. Or at least this one did. Two, they poop. Or must, on account of having a, well, you know . . . 

The beast leapt at Ovid, screaming as a shot struck home, but knocking the big man flat. It lifted its head, howling into the filthy night air, and lunged. Or started to – I ran up behind it and, with no brighter ideas coming to mind, thrust with the party tooter. Hard. That stopped it in its tracks, and I actually laughed out loud, a wild, manic laugh, I grant you. I didn’t get to finish the laugh, as it wheeled, raging, and swiped me with a clawed paw like a shovel. I felt coat tear, armor shred and something break wetly and noisily under all that, as I flew through the air and bounced, fetching up in a smoking snowdrift. Another boom followed, then a few more, as I lay flat on my back, looking up at the roiling, reddish-black clouds that always hang over The Hook. I wasn’t able to move, really, but couldn’t bring myself to care. I just wanted to sleep.

That went well, I thought, I whispered to no one.

Ovid’s wide, scarred face loomed into view like a crudely made statue of someone really ugly. Whatever had happened to him in the war had made a real mess, and it was hard to judge his expressions, but his eyes seemed kindly and sort of sad as he gazed down.

I dunno, kid . . . I mean, you got nerve, chasing that thing, unarmed, and you move fast, but . . . it’s been months, now . . . is that all you got? Like, your freak talent?

Pretty much, I admitted. But look . . . I turned my head a little, with great pain and difficulty, and lifted a trembling finger to where the now-partially-headless manticore was lying in the snow. The glittery plastic party tooter protruded proudly from its ass.

I heard Ovid laugh, a noise like distant thunder, and I gratefully passed out.

Episode 14

Moonflowers: An Explanation, of Sorts

You’d think I’d keep a low profile at my first shift briefing after my stay in the hospital, right? Well, so did I, but I sort of tuned out and heard my mouth take the lead. I’d spent two weeks in the rather charming medical building, letting the weird energies of the place wash over me. It had the effect of accelerating the healing process by a frankly insane factor.

Mostly I slept, or read, with a sprinkling of visitors who failed to relieve the boredom.

Jinx had shown up and made me retell the story about the party tooter and the manticore’s rear end, laughing so much that her silver bracelets had all tinkled. She called me an asshole and left, still chuckling. Just as I was starting to dislike her a little less, too.

Phasers had drifted in unnoticed, and we chatted about nothing before he wandered out again.

Ovid had shown up and dropped a heavy, dog-eared paper and ink diary on the bed.

Wishes Eddy’s journal, he’d grunted. With my notes. Since you’ve not learned a damn thing, you need to read it.

Eddy had been Ovid’s partner. I’d met him, liked him. Eddy had been one of the most famous Moonflowers of all, but he burned out. He now worked at the notorious Arkham hospital/nuthatch in the dead zone. I shook my head. We all ended up like Eddy.

But his book, all written in neat, little cursive, with elaborate margin notes by Ovid, had been a real eye-opener. A bit crazy, but still, the tome was a treasure trove. After scanning it, I was a hundred times more clued in than before. And that wasn’t nearly enough to survive The Hook (or The Park) for long. I guess that was what having an actual mentor was like. Except it was just a scrawled collection of notes, ideas and tips on how to survive, and what some really obvious mistakes were. And how not to make them. I was grateful, though, and also scared.

So, I’d resolved to talk less and listen more. Fat chance.

Sergeant Ember blinked as a tiny flame guttered briefly on the bridge of his nose. He ignored it and read from his clipboard.

Jinx, Jane Doe, get your bony asses over to The Park. Angel security has intercepted a container full of Satanists trying to get smuggled in through the dock. It’s getting ugly. There’s people taking the name of the Lord in all kinds of vain, and tempers are fraying. Apparently, Gabe himself is on his way, in a real fun mood. Let’s avoid excess blood on the morning news, okay?

Jinx raised a hand, silver chains and charms rattling, Sarge, how much would you consider ‘excess’ to be, exactly?

Ember stared hard for a moment and we all tensed. If Ember was the barrel of gunpowder in the room, Jinx was the one always trying to apply a lit match.

If Gabe draws his flaming sword, what follows will be very much the definition of excess. And it will be added to later by however much blood you have in your own scrawny little cadaver. Got it?

Jinx put on a fake-thoughtful expression and opened her mouth to say something disastrous. Jane Doe delivered a hard nudge to the ribs and the smaller woman shut her mouth with a resentful nod.

Ovid, since you’re back in what passes for action, you and—

Aw Sarge, can you give it to someone else? I hate missing-person reports, I whined, then froze. I’d been too caught up in Jinx’s antics to think before speaking.

Ovid carefully leaned his three-hundred-pound slab of a body away from me, with a whispered, You didn’t even let him say it, jackass!

If there’s one thing you don’t do to Ember, it’s interrupt him when he’s handing out the night shift assignments. If there’s two things you don’t do to Ember, it’s interrupt him by using your freak ability. Especially when he thinks your skill is about as much use as a fart in a spacesuit. And that was a quote. Minus some choice swear words.

I always assumed his temper was on account of the occasional flames that ran up and down his body at random, but Ovid says he was just as miserable back before it happened in the war.

I thought fast, but talked faster, once again. Which was a shame.

Sorry, Sarge. Please, do go on. The accompanying hand movement was meant to be encouraging everyone to just pretend I’d not said a thing, and to keep things moving along, but it came over like the Queen of England giving her tiresome subjects a bored wave from her golden carriage as she passed by.

Ember went even redder than usual. No mean feat for a walking, spontaneous human combustion. Ovid rattled his shaky, wooden chair away from me across the rickety floorboards with a noise like Pinocchio being worked over with a two-by-four.

Are you sure I should continue? I mean, only if you’re okay with it. Ember grated in a voice that sounded like a pack of hunting wolves’ raised hackles looked. In fact, why don’t you tell me what I was going to say next, Petal?

Jinx snorted with laughter, coughed and lowered her head, shooting me a look that was pure, delighted malice. The others wore expressions that ranged from mild sympathy to gratitude that it wasn’t them.

Petal isn’t my real name, I should point out. But whichever nickname strikes the captain as funniest and least kind on first meeting, that’s what you’re called there. I’d barely opened my mouth to introduce myself after the unmarked chopper dropped me on Governors Island one dark night, when the captain’s high, bored nasal tone had cut through the chilly darkness of the landing pad. Well, look what we have here, he’d announced. If it isn’t the most delicate little Petal.

He’d stressed the capital P in Petal, too. At his side, the mountain that I later learned was called Ember had wheezed in what passed for amusement, a couple of ground crew rats had snickered, and that was that. In my defense, I’m not especially delicate looking, but I am skinny and wan, and he was of course testing me with the flower jibe. You see, no one has the right to know where you come from, here in the precinct. Your record, sure. But not your birth circumstances. Because none of the roads that lead to The Chateau (as the Captain had dubbed our precinct house) are well traveled or even paved, and it’s considered rude and sometimes fatal to dig too deep. But you can assume plenty, and that was the captain’s way of saying he’d chosen to assume I was a Moonflower. Petal, flower, see? I thought it was about that funny, too.

What can I tell you about Moonflowers, except that most of the things you see in the movies are wrong? Moonflowers are the least common and hardest to categorize of all the freaks caused by Armageddon-Lite and its aftermath. Which is why the mocking name originated from those rare blooms that come out only in the night. Moonflowers are different from the humans who got caught in the supernatural crossfire and survived. And a species apart from the poor saps unlucky enough to be born inside a demon or angel enclave. Those – and a dozen other weird subsets beside – are the obvious monsters, the predicable by-blows, sports and curiosities. Moonflowers are a quantum leap onward from that, and as different from one another as they are from normal humans. The only thing they have in common is they’re all freaks. And yes, I said they because, while everyone takes me for a Moonflower, I’m not one of them. Not really.

But more about the whole complex and messy matter of Moonflowers later. And maybe a little more about me a lot later. Time to get back to my story.

Of course, I knew what Ember was going to say next. It was a long, detailed and anatomically infeasible series of instructions for me to carry out. And he knew I knew, so that was why he was thinking that. But telling him that would make it worse, so I needed to defuse the situation. The trouble was, Ember had never really understood that I can’t read minds, so much as just know what people are planning to do next. So, like a lot of folks, he gets antsy round about me, as if I can look into his head and see his deepest darkest secrets. Some folks can. Perky, for example. But not me.

Instead, I just get a three-second warning. Which can be useful, believe me, when you work with demons and angels and everything in between. But three seconds isn’t enough time to actually do much. Really, my ability is mostly just to look like a champion smartass. Which is what the government swiftly concluded, and suggested I’d be of more use to the precinct. Or anywhere that wasn’t the army.

Sarge, you are planning to say how you realize that deep down I am honored and thrilled to be taking on another challenging missing-person case, and you’re going to tell me that you’re happy I plan on keeping my mouth shut from now on.

Ass-kisser! Jinx coughed into her hand.

Ember stared hard for a few seconds and nodded. His rock-like skin mostly subsided to a dull glow, with only a few singes on the fire-resistant material of his uniform.

As Petal was saying, he went on, he and Ovid will be delighted to go over to The Hook and find a probably-not-actually-missing person. And because they’re so keen, they also want to look into a heist involving a quantity of hellstones.

Ovid shuffled and rattled his chair back across the boards like a long slow collapse in a lumber yard and punched me hard on the arm. Hard for me, that is. It was a gentle tap for him. A hard Ovid punch would have had me through the wall, with only a cartoon-outline hole the shape of me to mark my departure. I knew it was coming, but thought best to just act contrite, so yelped and rubbed the spot he’d hit.

Normally we’d all wait for the briefing to end, so that we had a rough idea what the others were up to. It avoided misunderstandings and the occasional friendly fire incident. And gave the entirely false impression we were kind of a community and cared for each other, rather than being a bunch of freaks and sociopaths thrown together like a supernatural band-aid.

That time, though, with Ember not my greatest fan, I raced to the front and took the briefing sheets from his outstretched hand. I blew out a smoldering flame on the corner and followed Ovid out the back door into the freezing night.

We paused on the porch to button our coats up. I have to say, Governors Island is one sensationally pretty place, even bathed in the hellish glow of The Hook just across the water in Brooklyn. We call it The Hook, because it was Red Hook long before it had the bad luck to be hell’s home base on the East Coast of North America. If we’d gone out the front door of The Chateau, rather than scuttling out the back, we’d have been lit in a pure white light from the angels’ turf over on the southern tip of Manhattan. That starts on what used to be Battery Park on the old maps, so it’s The Park to us. Officially, the two are Postwar Temporary Enclave East Coast US (demonic) and (angelic). But nobody calls them that.

And so, for those of you who might not know, let me explain about Governors Island, and I guess, about us. Not that I seriously believe I have any listeners at all – podcasts went out of fashion way before I was born. Chances are that if you’re listening to this, you found a bunch of old audio chips in a shoe box when they came to clear out my locker. Or maybe you did accidentally stumble on my podcast late one night, and you’re my only fan. I’ll opt for the latter.

So here I am, sitting in the dark, telling a story you probably won’t believe – if you even hear it. But it makes me feel better.

Anyway, Governors Island is right in the middle – neutral ground, and probably the best real estate for a police-station-slash-army-base-slash-halfway-house-for-problem-people I’ve ever seen. The island used to be one hundred and seventy acres of lawns and parkland, complete with an authentic Revolutionary War fort with cannons (now the jail and armory), a scattering of magnificent old naval officer’s mansions, and even a church that looks like it was teleported from old England. It’s still beautiful, if you ignore all the hardware that a cop dealing with heaven and hell needs, and the wandering demons, angels, diplomats and lawyers. Yes, lawyers, as if we haven’t got enough troublemakers here.

Most of the mansions have been fixed up nicely and used for consulates, legal offices, guest quarters and a medical center that treats the most imaginative injuries you can have nightmares about – and not all on humans, either. In fact, not many on humans, as few of us are technically homo sapiens in the pure, unadulterated, non-messed-up sense of the definition.

The precinct’s mansion is the exception to the gentrified vibe, of course. It has a certain haughty elegance, some fine, old, wooden staircases and even fancy pillars holding up the porch roof. But close up it’s a mess, and if you lean too hard on anything it tends to break. Which isn’t a bad metaphor for the cops inside, either.

Officially, we make sure the two weird turfs are safe and law-abiding. In reality, we barely keep the lids on the places, and we do that through a mix of intimidation, fear, persuasion and blind luck. For the sake of clarity, as far as my partnership with Ovid goes, he’s the intimidation and fear, while I’m the persuasion and blind luck.

The non-blind luck on the shift is Jinx, who’s a total nightmare, but I must admit, a force to be reckoned with. She’s also really pretty, but don’t tell her that. Her freak talent is just that: luck. When she needs it the most. The downside? She takes the luck from people around her. That can come in handy when some demon is about to stick you, but less so if you need to work with her. That’s why she’s paired with Jane Doe. Doe is immune to all and everything in The Park, The Hook and in between. Except sarcasm. Just don’t go there. Or ask her anything about herself. As far as Doe’s concerned, she didn’t exist before she turned up on The Chateau doorstep one night with signed papers.

Anyway, enough of the bios. I’d be all night trying to explain Pinky and Perky, let alone Phasers on Stun, or the rest of the roughly thirty-strong precinct denizens. Ovid is the muscle and I’m the brains, I like to say. He likes to say he’s the muscle and the brains, and I’m a dead weight. Whatever, his talents lie in the physical – Ovid is a hellvet. One of the soldiers who were flung into the fight to buy time, to let humanity decide what to do when the gates opened and their worst nightmares and wildest dreams came through. Most soldiers died in various inventive ways in the beginning, without effective weapons, armor or tactics. Some went mad. A smaller percentage, exposed to the otherwordly energies that flew around from both sides, picked up certain abilities. And also went mad, though in a manageable way, like Ember and Ovid. Ovid had been a two-hundred-pound Ranger. Now he’s a three-hundred-pound cartoon of a soldier with skin that can stop a 50-caliber bullet and fists that can hit harder than an express train. Ugly as sin, mind you, but somehow, that doesn’t deter the ladies from describing him as rugged. And there’s me, young, handsome (in a sallow kind of way), funny and yet single.

I know, I’m waffling. I do it to keep myself grounded. We all do something mundane and ordinary like that for relaxation. Working where we work, and coming from where we came from, you need to ease off on the weird intensity, sometimes. Ovid plays chess, Ember reads, Jinx knits. Me,