Ylcarath

I watch you as you move about your space each leg placed so softly and delicately as though you wish to make sure you do not step onto unstable ground. Your little black body and the brilliant red and orange bands on your legs are such you almost look a toy rather than the tiny little life I have come to love so much. I am still nervous as I reach into your home and try to coax you to move where I need you to go. As you submit to the direction of the paintbrush I wonder if you are as anxious as I am. Taking a calming breath, I drop the paintbrush and this time it is my finger that ghosts over one red-banded leg. You flinch a

When the world closes too tight around me and I can't breathe I sit down at my piano and close my eyes. I don't need to see the keys. I know where they are. Hours and hours and hours of worshiping black and white, my fingers have memorized the placement of every note. With a soft tone it begins. Resonating gently the music begins to fill the space and slowly I begin to breathe. The key may be in minor, quiet and tragic and melancholy, bleeding in the air around me, distant and troubled and asking me for the resolution. The key may be in major, strong and triumphant and proud, a firm reassurance in the air around me as it

Like a poisonous veil the thick mist hovered over the murky swamps. The terrors it concealed was the stuff of stories to make misbehaving children mind. The smell hanging in the air was so foul it could almost be tasted, so heavy and choking it was difficult to breathe. The plants growing here were not the healthy green of normal vegetation. The twisted, half-dead trees clawed up out of the mist as though desperate for clean, fresh air. The sun did not pierce the oppressive gloom. Maps named this place the Dead Swamps, for no fool who'd ever ventured here had never returned. Only the border was outlined--none knew exactly what lay inside. A