• 22, Pertinent Questions
• 21, Waiting
• 20, An Arrow To The Knee
• 19, What Have I Done
• 17, Dear Diary
• 16, Commercial Transaction
• 15, I Am so Dead
• 14, Drinks & Boys
• 13, I’m Gonna Get’cha
• 12, Healing

Schooling:

• PK-7th ish- Good Shepherd Episcopal
• 7th ish-8th- Good Shepherd Episcopal, supplemented by Hadley School For the Blind
• 9th-12th- Booker T Washington HS (Arts Magnet), supplemented by Hadley School For the Blind
  Graduated in 2009
• College- Univ. of Texas, Dallas (UTD), supplemented by various national and Texas Book/Recording Programs for the Blind (Learning Ally, Books Aloud, Bookshare, National Braille Assoc., National Braille Press, American Action Fund for Blind Children And Adults, Dallas Lighthouse, etc.)
  • Junior Year (Double Major in: Arts & Performance with Music Emphasis, Physics)
  • Music Scholarship
  • Blind/Deaf Student Exemption Program
  • Projected Graduation Date: Spring 2014 (5 year program)(side note: Music Scholarship stops after 4th year)

Hobbies:

• Hatha/Raja Yoga, Namaste Yoga
• Practicing techniques from the “Blind Tiger Self Defense” audio CD by Mitch Durance, “Blind Zen, Martial Arts and Zen for the Blind and Visually Impaired” book and audio CD by Stefan Verstappen, and Judo basics at the Red Tiger Karate Dojo

Phase One: Background

I had a knack for music, even at an early age. Momma used to say that I learned to sing before I learned to talk, and that one time during the summer, she saw me sing a butterfly out of it’s cocoon. My momma said my voice was magic in itself, and that I had been thrice-blessed: Talent for music, a Talent for magic, and a voice that seemed to combine and defy them both. That last part freaked out Daddy a little, I think. He got nervous everytime Momma or I would do something magical, or “irrational” as he called it. Of course, being a physics professor at the local college sometimes made it hard to be wedded to a reformed “sorceress”, or have a daughter that started using magic before she was in grade school, but he loved us both all the same. “Irrational Love”, he’d called it, and Mom would kiss him and say he was as magical as she was.

Growing up, I was such a little brat that the grown-ups would upgrade to the other ‘b’ word when they thought I couldn’t hear. I’d pester Dad to let me sit in on his classes when they discussed Acoustics, or sing Mom’s shirt canary yellow when she made me mad, or sneak downstairs in the middle of the night to watch Star Trek reruns. I suppose I upgraded to “Diva” in middle school, imagining the world staring in awe as I sang Donna Anna of Don Giovanni on a grand stage, being asked for my autograph and brushing them off to sip champagne with wealthy suitors, etc. Of course, It was certainly that arrogance that led to… My “incident”.

I would spend the summers in East Texas, on a small ranch that my father had bought from a retiree coworker for pennies on the dollar. When I was 13, I had an epiphany in the night, about how I could use magic to ‘see’ my music better. I, in my grand arrogance, believed that I had the requisite understanding of all the factors involved: science from my dad, arcane lore from my mother, and an unrelenting (read: stubborn) will of iron. I stayed up all night working on the equations, and in the morning I stole off to the pond behind the woods and sang my spell into the air. In my defense, the spell was beautiful, in its simplicity. Maybe that had been the problem, that I, in feigning maturity, had chosen to make it “simple”. I was very talented, but also very foolish. Something my mother tried to teach me but I never learned until that morning: To choose wisely, and to never think myself immune to my own mistakes. I sang my spell, catching all the sounds around me, harnessing them, amplifying them, and directing all of that energy directly into my eyes and optic nerves. You can guess the rest. The last thing I ever saw was the air turn golden in front of me, then, Blackness.

Mom and Dad could hear my screaming from the house, and when they found me, they saw blood all over my face and what was left of my eyes trying to seep through my fingers as I pressed them to the now empty sockets.

I wasn’t such a brat after that. I learned my lesson, and learned it well. After the doctors had cut and cleaned and mended what they could from where my eyes had been, I went back to school and continued my studies, now with the aid of various appropriate Texas Blind Assistance programs. But I didn’t sing after that, pouring my energy into my guitar instead. Dad and I would jam sometimes, but I wouldn’t sing. Momma said that I had hurt my magic too, that I had set up some sort of feedback with my spell that had ripped a chunk of it out. What I had been left with was pure Sonomancy, the barest sympathetic sliver of a much mightier Power. But to be perfectly honest, I was glad that Power was gone. If I had been capable of using my Magic to the extant that I would permanently injure myself for the sake of my own ego, then I didn’t want that part of me to come back. I didn’t deserve it.

ASPECT(S): Midas Voice

Phase Two: Rising Conflict

After my accident, I pursued my studies with extra vigor, capitalizing on my father’s salary and the plethora of Blind Assistance Services available in Dallas and over the web or by mail. My parents managed to work out an arrangement with Booker T Washington High, the Arts Magnet located Downtown. I would be in their AP music program if I was allowed to conduct the rest of my studies from home by mail rather than email, and that I be exempt from any computer-required classes. I managed to make it through 3 bars in my first solo performance before I got caught up in the song and accidentally hexed the entire auditorium. Evidentally, light and sound boards are expensive because after that my mother made me wear a hex-guard ring during all my performances. I made it through the rest of my Freshmen and Sophomore years without any accidents, but the headaches that thing gave me were pretty epic.

One night during the start of my Junior year, I stayed out late at a friend’s house, and came home smelling of alcohol and cigarette smoke. I hadn’t had any, of course, but my friends certainly had, and enough of it had rubbed off onto me that my Mother practically blew apart the living room when I walked inside. We shouted at each other, she accusing me of disobedience and recklessness and how I never sang anymore while I rallied against her hex-guard ring and the headaches and how it wasn’t rebellion to go out with friends once in a while, and how she could test me however she wanted to prove I hadn’t done anything wrong. She retreated to her basement lab after that, still fuming and quietly muttering about how easy ‘breathalyzer equations’ would be. I cried, having never really had a fight like that with my mother, and I felt horrible even though I believed I had been right. Dad played me his acoustic version of ‘Enter Sandman’ (my favorite) to lure me to sleep afterwards.

Later in the night, I’m not sure how much later, I woke up coughing and barely able to breath. I fumbled around for my nightgown and my cane, but I was too disoriented from the oak and carbon flavored air to get very far. My door burst open not a minute later with Dad screaming my name, letting in a blast of hot dry air with him. He picked me up like a rag doll, which impressed me since he had the hernia operation the year before, and he ran down the stairs and out the door as fast as he could. I could feel the oppressive heat at that point, strong and almost alive in its intensity even after we got outside into the chilly night air, and my father put me down on the sidewalk by the mailbox so I would know where I was. Then he told me he had to go back inside for my mother, that she was still in the basement. He left me there, on the side walk, and even though I shouted and cried for him to come back, I knew he couldn’t hear me over the popping and crumbling of charred wood and the roar of the biggest fire I could have imagined. After an eternity, sirens drowned out my cries, and firm but compassionate hands put a blanket on me and walked me to a vehicle that smelled like cotton and plastic. My parents never came out of that house, not even after I told the firefighters about the basement.

I went to live with my Great-Aunt Margarette after that, being my only family they could find, especially in DFW. I went along quietly when she came for me, and she, in her great compassion and unrelenting practicality, didn’t ask me about her only nephew who they had found in the hallway crushed under a burning support beam, or the old calvary sabers and other ‘questionable items’ in the basement that stern voice had asked me about until I screamed at him, or that my mother had evidentally burned so completely that there was no sign of her in the house whatsoever.

ASPECT(S): Aunt Margarette

Phase Three: The Story

Music Soothes the Savage Beast

When a couple of were-wolf gang-bangers try to storm Erica’s home while her Aunt is away, Erica puts on her big-girl britches to protect herself from Danger. But will Erica succeed when the bangers break through her window and through her threshold? And will she be able to help a lost cat that seems to be caught in the middle of this hullabaloo?

After the fire, Aunt Margarette became executator of my “estate”, as it were. It wasn’t much, just the ranch that we had never returned to and Dad’s savings. My Dad had had a pretty nice fire insurance policy, as well as a decent life insurance policy through his college, but those never came through. “Questionable circumstances”, the letter read. The bastards couldn’t tell me in person that the fire appeared to have been started “intentionally”, or that my father had obviously been “suicidal” to run back into a burning building, even for his wife. Aunt Margarette fought them for me, of course, and we sold the ranch to pay for legal fees, but we never saw hide nor hair of that insurance money. I, for obvious reasons, barely noticed any of this. I was so stooped in my own depression and frustrated anger that I could barely eat or sleep, much less care about money.

You wanna know the thing I hate the most about being blind? It’s not the bumping into things that are not in their place or the sickenly sweet sympathy from complete strangers, it’s that my imagination still thinks that I can see. My dreams, for instance, frequently have visual elements. Natural, right? My visual cortex still functions, I used to be able to see, so why not keep that part of the brain running, right? So now, since I have no eyes and therefore no new input for my visual cortex to process, my nightmares of fire and soot and screaming and golden light and mom yelling plus whatever else my damn brain comes up with on its own stays with me in full horrifying detail when I wake up. You know that place between Sleep and Awake, where Tinkerbell loves the grownup Peter Pan in the movie Hook? Yeah, I hate that place.

It was on one such night that I awoke saturated in sweat to hear a mewling sound coming from downstairs. After a brief moment of concentration to put out the “fires” in my mind, I put on my robe and went downstairs to investigate. The sound had been coming from outside the front door, but had stopped by the time I was halfway down the staircase. Auntie M (my nickname for her) wasn’t home due to being an avid “Bingo for Dinner then Bridge for Dessert” kind of old lady, so I was extra cautious about opening that heavy oak door. My Aunt, by the way, has lived in this house for close to 60 years. It was built just after WW2 specifically for her and her new husband after he got back from Germany, and it was built to last. They raised 4 kids and a basket load of grandkids here so the Threshold on this place is stout. Still, being a appropriate knowledgable practioner of the “Arcane Arts”, and only wearing a bathrobe, I cautiously opened the front door.

Nothing. Of course, I’m blind, so I expected as much. Sorry, bad joke. Anyway, the night was like any other Texas Autumn night, my braille watch read about 11:00pm, and I could not hear anything out of the ordinary. I took a step or two onto the front porch and my feet hit something furry and wet. When I knelt down to touch it, I could smell blood and piss and that ragged bitter fear smell that creatures and people get sometimes, and it was all over this thing. After my hands explored appropriately, it was obviously a cat, and a nice sized one too. It was still breathing, but just barely, so I picked it up as gently as I could and brought it inside (yes i know it was a dumb move, just shh i’m getting to that part).

I cleaned it up as best I could under the circumstances, but I’m not a vet and he was pretty beat up. He had several fresh wounds, a nearly severed ear and possibly an lost eye, although it was difficult to tell just by feeling around even after I cleaned up all the blood. The poor thing was unconscious still, so I put Growltiger (I decided on a name from T.S. Eliot’s Cats during his bath) into my bed hoping he wouldn’t freak out and pee all over everthing like male cats do when they get upset (ie pissy, ba dum ching). As I contemplated the unfortunate plight of my patient, his possible foe(s) that caused his wounds, and how I was going to explain to Auntie M about all the blood and why I had adopted a wild tom, there was a knock on the door.

Her name was Marisa, she was a little older than me by the sound of her voice, and she told me (through the mail slot) that she was looking for her lost cat who had been attacked by the neighborhood dog, and if I had seen it. I asked her what the cat looked like, and she told me, and I told her that I hadn’t seen any cats around here that looked like that (sneaky, aren’t I?). She said thank you and left. Not 5 minutes later someone else pounded on the door, this time a macho masculine voice with grammar that screamed private school thug insisted that I return their cat to them immediately. I said something to the effect of “nuh uh” and double deadbolted the door for good measure. Then this guy went totally berserk, screaming from the porch about he was gonna kill me and eat my heart and then do other B-horror movie villian stuff. This guy was clearly crazy, so I called the police.

As I was on the phone with the dispatch, a window broke downstairs. I dropped the phone and immediately fled to my room, deadbolting that door behind me. I would have activated my ward if I had made one (I hadn’t made one for my room yet because I live with an old person who likes to wander), so instead I crawled quickly but carefully into bed with Growltiger. There was a lot of ruckus downstairs, someone big was breaking everything they could get their hands on, and it was obvious they were looking for something. As he came up the stairs towards my room, I shouted at him that this was my cat now and so to bugger off (another stupid move you say? Aha, but wait…). He came up to the door, started banging on it and kicking at the door jam to get it to open, screaming the entire time about how he wanted his “prey”. I put on my choker and finger cymbals that I keep close by, scooted out of bed and stood about ten feet directly in front of the door. I said nothing, and after about a minute he finally burst through the door. That’s when I hit him.

I am a Sonomancer, which means I deal in Sound. I am very good at what I do, “limited” as my magic may seem. But one of the things that I have learned in my own studies as well as my father’s early physics lectures is that Sound is exceptionally versatile and quite underrated. Once he was fully thru the doorway, I shouted “Mua’dhib!”, and a shimmer in the air (I assume) hit him square in the chest and knocked him straight back out of my room, through my Aunt’s guest bedroom door, and into the adjoining closet. I walked quickly up to wear I had heard him hit the wall and turned on my passive sonar spell, after which I could “see” him quite clearly.

He was a big guy, 6ft and 230lbs easy. College coed by the look, with a hoddie and sweatpants but no shirt, and he had some serious muscles. He was so clean and ripped my sonar could even make out his abs. He would have been hot had he not been talking earlier about ripping my throat out. As he started to rouse, I hit him with my “Nauseator” spell, which produces a similar effect to the Navy’s LRAD’s “Deterrent” setting, only with a lot more power and at point blank range. At this point he got a lot less attractive. Like I said, I’m good at what I do. And I study.

After the guy stopped begging for me to “oh for the love of gawd stop” while simultaneously trying to stand up, cover his ears, and not vomit, he passed out. About that time Marisa from earlier started calling outside for “Carlos”, asking if he was ok. I projected my voice (Sonomancer here) to the front door and told her that no he was not ok and if she wanted him back then she would have to wait for the police to show up. She evidentally didn’t like that, and proceeded to threaten me herself in a similar manner as her man Carlos had. She said that they knew their prey was inside the house, that they could smell it, and that she would get more of them to come if I didn’t turn over “the damn cat” and Carlos to her immediately. I moved the cat to my bedroom closet, gave him a comfy little bed of my pillow, and got my ritual rope out of my pack. I use my ritual rope for Thaumaturgy because my Aunt doesn’t like chalk stains on her hardwood floor, in case you were wondering. I put it around Carlos, used my lucky spell-stained guitar to put a vibration shield around him, and waited for the cops.

Thankfully I didn’t wait long. Carlos was still unconscious when the policemen found him, and they commenting on how brave I was to watch over the obviously drugged out frat boy that had invaded my home. When Aunt Margarette got back she gave my lots of hugs and “oh dearies” and promised never to leave the house again, which I knew would last until she heard the “call of the ball shuffler” once more, but that was fine.

Afterward, when everything was relatively settled and squared away, I snuck my new little friend out of my closet. As soon as I had him in my lap, I noticed he wasn’t breathing, nor did he have a pulse. I lost it. I had tried to save this little guy and I had failed. His was one more life that I had cared about but was now gone, because of me, and someday that would happen to everyone around me. Something broke inside me, even though I had felt so jazzed and confident before that I, a little blind girl, had stopped a full grown man. I desperately tried to coax him back to life, weeping the entire time, which isn’t easy since my tear ducts were only partially functional after my accident. I was exhausted from my magic use, delirious from the adrenaline of actual combat (my first!), and probably sleep-deprived from all the nightmares, so it’s no small wonder that even though I hadn’t uttered a note since my accident, I started to sing. It was a quiet weeping song, a lullaby I knew from an old USO show, about a mother singing her boy, a soldier overseas, to sleep after a long day’s battle. In the end, she asks that he make it home, or if God so willed it, to Heaven safely, but that she was proud of him regardless.

Just as I ended the song, a voice beneath my bowed head muttered “Could you keep it down? I’m trying to sleep”.

So I screamed. I also jumped, which sort of tossed him back into the closet, but that was completely accidental. I screamed/whispered WTF-esque questions, while he complained about his many injuries and asked why I had tossed him like a sack of potatoes. We went on like this for a while, until I eventually settled down and, politely this time, asked what was going on. He told me he was an orphan magical cat, hinting at a great reward if I let him go. I called BS, and told him that I knew he was a Malk kitten (I study) and not to mess with me. I got him some milk, and told him he could leave whenever he wanted, which seemed to set him back a bit. He then told me, no BS this time, that he was in fact an orphan, that a pack of werewolves had wiped out his clan using their talons and teeth as well as guns and other “ferromantic creations”. He had been the only one to make it out of their den alive, and that two of the werewolves had been sent to finish him off.

I had saved his life, and he owed me, bigtime. He also had no home, and even for a kitten of his breed, he was on the runt-ish side, which made him the size of a regular cat oddly enough. After a brief deliberation, we came to an “mutually beneficial arrangment”. The next morning Auntie M immediately agreed to let me keep him, since she was feeling guilty about last night, and this has been his home ever since.

(Side note: I asked him his name, but he refused to tell me. I asked if that was because it was his secret name out of his normal three names, like in the musical Cats. He pfff’ed and said no, but that he would accept two more if that pleased me. So I named him Hobbes after the cartoon and philospher for his common name, and Growltiger after the piratey cat in the musical for his Jellico name, which he seemed particularly pleased with.)

ASPECT(S): Hobbes, my Seeing eye Malk

Growltiger’s Last Stand

Phase Four: Guest Starring

Who ya gonna call?

What do you do when Belle Starr, the defacto leader of the Freakshow Confederacy, shows up on your doorstep claiming to have a “job” for your recently deceased mother? Then what do you do when Belle Starr asks you to take that “job” instead?

The first time I met Belle Starr was on my doorstep a couple weeks after I got Hobbes. She was very polite, sweet gentle voice, and asked if Aurora Goodchilde was home. I was taken aback, hearing my mother’s name. I managed to squeak out that she had passed away recently, and thanks for stopping by. She offered her immediate condolenses, asking if I was Erica. I, stunned that she also knew my name, said yes. She asked if she could come in, and I responded with a definitive no. She asked very nicely, but I still refused. She said that she had a job that was originally intended for my mother, that they had been friends who had lost touch over the years. She said that she knew this kind of thing was my mother’s cup of tea, and seemed confident that I, my mother’s daughter, could do it as well if I was interested. I was, but I said I wasn’t. I suck at lying, so she told me what the job was anyway.

After about 5 minutes of her explaining the concept of what she wanted done, the time frame required, the situation that required it, and who would be recieving the fruits of the endeavor, I opened the door and invited her in. She seemed harmless enough, I had gotten no negative vibes from her, and it is really hard to debate magical equations through a heavy oak door. We had tea while we discussed what she wanted.

What she wanted was the magical equivalent of a switchboard call center, some way of contacting and connecting multiple predetermined people to a network in order to swiftly convey information. The White Council and The Red Court in the area were at each others throats, and it was only a matter of time until somebody snaps and the ensueing carnage spills into the streets, so she needed some way of broadcasting a distress signal/“tornado warning” to her people should that happen. I loved the idea, and it was right up my alley magically.

However, the final project would take years to construct, with a high cost in energy, material, and time. I suggested a couple of temporary options, which seemed to please her, and offered myself as the “relay” until it was finished. She happily agreed, but was distressed on how to pay me since she and her people were doing everything they could just to stay affloat in the current economic and supernatural climate. She mentioned that she could possibly pay me in ways that were not monetary, hinting that her people and various other friends of hers were very talented with a wide spectrum of abilities. We discussed that for a bit, and eventually we worked out a way for me to get some decent wards on Auntie M’s house.

She left soon afterward, and we chatted warmly the entire time as she left. I really liked her. When she was inside, I had gotten the vibe of a family friend, or the kind of friend that calls your place their second home. She seemed to genuine care about these people, which she made sound kinda like a rag-tag group of supernatural misfits. I immediately jumped to “X-Men” in my head, of course. Maybe that’s why I had let her in thru my threshold so quickly. Before she left, she told me that she was sincerely sorry about the loss of my parents, but she seemed confused and vague about my mother’s “status” in that regard. I asked her what she meant, but she said it was nothing, probably just a glitch in her spell that had led her to me instead of my mother. That in itself sounded dodgy, but like I said, I liked her, so I didn’t hit her with my insistent curiousity.

After she left, Hobbes came in and made some quip about me picking up any more strays. I told him this was for a good cause, and that it was a way for me to contribute and help people and be all noble, etc, etc. Hobbes scoffed quietly to himself, and said that I had really done it because I was lonely, and that connecting with someone who knew my mother would be a placebo for connecting with my own mother, and that by helping Belle, i was in my own subconscious way trying to apologize to my mom for that last night. I think that’s about the time I threw the shoe at him. He scoffed at that too, saying I had displaced aggression issues, at which point I told him to stop reading my diary and my psychology textbooks if he ever wanted to get fed again. He apologized (but only cause I threatened his tuna and salmon flow), and said that the project was a good idea and still worth doing, just to not delude myself on my own motives. I told him that I wasn’t, but thanked him for keeping me honest about it. He brought back my shoe, then asked about dinner.

Aunt Margarette came home soon afterward, and we settled into our normal routine. But that night at dinner, and for weeks aftwards, all I had on my mind was “The Relay Project”, and whether Belle had shown up on my doorstep on accident or on purpose.

ASPECT: Paranet Relay

Phase Five: Guest Starring Redux

Avatar: The Last OHMYGAWDIMONFIRE!!!

When Erica went to the local Anime Con (AKON) downtown dallas on the arm of the Spring- and Elm-smelling Irishman Conor O’Niel, she was not expecting an “Element Bending”-style Martial Arts competition to be there that day, nor was she expecting that one of the runner’s up was a genuine pyromancer who resented coming in third and decided to take it out on the other participants, as well as select convention staff. But the last thing Erica expected was that she was the only one who could track him down in time before he killed again.

ASPECT: Broad Spectrum Geek

Thoughts on Other Characters:

Conor: When Conor O’Neil, otherwise known to college women throughout the metroplex as “Your Next Favorite Mistake”, showed up at Trinity Hall Pub and asked to buy me a drink, I didn’t say that I knew all of his songs by heart plus all the imaginable guitar accompaniments. I also didn’t say that I had been stalking his pub gigs for the last six weeks trying to get the nerve to talk to him, nor that his voice alone was everything I could ever hope for in a man. But what I did say was “Would you like to jam sometime” and “Yes I would love a beer” all mashed together into this unholy affront of a sentence that i’m sure offended both his Irish heritage and his sexual orientation simultaneously. I could hear myself blush, that’s how embarrassed I was. But he came back with a clever quip in that tasty accent and gave me the heaviest most delicious beer I had ever had. So now we’re friends, maybe, probably, gods I hope so.

Elena: She is super nice, really sneaky and knows a LOT about guns. I had a great time playing “Name that Ka-chink” game, although it was a little scary at the time. She also smells “earthy”, like sun-baked cactus over sandstone. She turns into a cougar, like a real one, when she wants to. That explains why I couldn’t get “Maneater” out of my head for a couple weeks after the Louisiana trip. I don’t think she dates, though.

Matthew: Umm…God gives him Holy Hand Lasers…which I’m totally using in my next Firefly/Star Trek TOS crossover audio fan fic, btw. He may be the nicest Lutheran minister I have ever met, and he is super brave to work on the streets as much as he does. He wears the cloister stuff more than the athletic jersey nowadays, but he’s still pretty cool. I should ask him more specifics on where he preaches, maybe I can get Auntie Em to a different church besides Messiah that way.

Ren: Ren is awesomesauce. She’s friends with Midori, she is Stark-lvl snarky, plus she’s some interestingly different type of fae changling. She has some neat oriental magic, she can turn into pure water which is great cause I almost would have killed her otherwise when I blew up that bathroom, and she hates the Yakuza, so i like her even more for that. I wonder if she’ll come over sometime so we can talk about Con- uh i mean boys…

Jaime: I first met the Wardsman when he put the wards up at Aunt Margarette’s. Belle Starr hooked me up, on account of our deal, so he came in and did his thing. He seemed very nice, very professional. I heard thru the grapevine that he does a lot of good in Dallas, but that he has a substance-abuse problem. Not sure what to think about that one, but he loves his son something fierce, and after our trek thru the Cajun NeverNever, I’ve decided his ex really is crazy. I’d probly do coke if I had an ex like that. I should probably let whatshername on the relay know so she’ll shut up about it. Anyway, he’s good in my book, if a touch… high strung…