Did anyone else notice that during the wewe Jelly? questions, that EXCALIBUR was there?!?!?! au was I having a nightmare?

FOOL! This past Wednesday, May 9 on my radio program bila mpangilio Ramblings of, at WHTC in Holland, MI, I spoke about the fairly new Invasive Species Order that DNR issued in 2010. It went into effect on April 1. While I am no expert and do not raise any breed of swine, I feel a connection to farmers. For those of wewe who might not know, I am a dairy farmer. I have read several makala concerning this issue and my personal belief is that once again the government officials are overstepping their boundaries. On the program, I presented different sources of information in hopes that the public would be made aware of what is happening and to create some interest. I have included several viungo for wewe to read yourself. It appears there has been over aggressive moves kwa the DNR. The DNR needs to be held accountable to their job description and stay out of the agricultural world. Please take a few dakika to read these links. What was perfectly fine and legal for several years has now succumbed to the DNR picking and choosing which animal is deemed feral.

oh my

@HolySword: Wow... wewe ARE FREAKING AWESOME! :D

FOOL! Ever have one of those days when wewe want to scrape all the pieces of your siku and put it back into the box? wewe want to put it away and not have to look at it au deal with it until another day. It’s easier to pretend the pieces wewe have to work with are different than what wewe really have when they aren’t staring wewe in the face. Once they are in the box they can be ignored and even forgotten for a time. When the pieces are all in the box, life is much tidier, less messy and not so scattered. wewe can’t hear the pieces as well when they are boxed. The noise of life is zaidi muffled, easier to disregard. The pieces aren’t always annoying, just sometimes too loud and wewe need a break. au at times wewe just have too many pieces. wewe have piles and piles of pieces. And it’s hard to sort the pieces out. Should this piece go in my “do today” pile? Can this piece be added to the “tomorrow” stack? And there seems to be too few that can be thrown away. The worst kind of pieces are the ones that are shared with others. wewe don’t have sole ownership so wewe can’t determine where the pieces go. Discussions and arguments about pieces are very tiring. In the past I have tried to carry all my pieces to put into the box only to find later that I have dropped a few along the way. kwa the time I’ve committed to putting the pieces away I am tired and the last think I want to do is go back and pick up pieces. So, at times I just leave the pieces lay and hope I don’t trip over them in the middle of the night if I get up for some reason. The longer I live, the zaidi I’ve learned that it isn’t the pieces that are most important, it’s the box. Pieces can fit reasonably well in many different boxes. Some boxes hold up well while others last a short time. The box that I have found most reliable and would recommend everyone try is the God Box. It doesn’t matter how many pieces wewe have, what size the pieces are, whether the pieces are thick, thin au in between. All pieces fit in the God Box. The God Box is never too full. There is always room for zaidi pieces. And, if I’m careful not to keep opening the God Box and checking on the pieces I’ve found that some of the pieces get taken care of and I don’t have to deal with them anymore. Some pieces stay in the God Box longer than others but that’s okay because it seems there is always the perfect time when each piece gets cared for. Therefore, if you’re dealing with pieces and you’re box isn’t working for you, I have a suggestion. Or, perhaps, wewe didn’t even know wewe could box up your pieces. Here is my suggestion. The God Box. Pick up your stuff and lay it down in the God Box. One size fits all.

OH MY

i ain't kusoma that.

FOOL! Son #2 and wife went on a business trip and I had the sheer joy of having two wigglies for three days. The wigglies, #2 and #5, had suppers planned out. Goulash for the boy and macaroni and cheese for the girl. We had Little League pictures, ball practice and an art reception to attend while mom and dad were gone. sinema were decided on for evening viewing and we were all set. Monday, after school they got off the bus, and instead of going home, crossed the road to my house. We had a quick chakula cha jioni, karamu and made it in time for pictures. Tuesday morning I had fun brushing hair and putting in pig tails. I picked up one other wiggliette, #4, on the way to school and delivered them in time for the first bell. I then headed into work. Tuesday I picked up wigglies # 2 and #5 from school and headed into Barnes and Noble. The wigglies know Grama is a sucker for vitabu and will spring for one at any aliyopewa moment. Chinese for chakula cha jioni, karamu and then the wiggliette and I read in the car while the wigglie had ball practice. Meanwhile, Son #4’s son who is 16 months old was getting sicker and sicker. They live just down the road. At 10:30 PM after my two wigglies had finally settled down and gone to sleep, I got a phone call from Son #4. Could I please keep wigglie #4 while he and daughter-in-law took wigglie #7 to the ER? He had a fever of 104 and had labored breathing. So, now I had three wigglies bedded down. Wednesday morning brought with it three wigglies and pancakes for breakfast. I had such fun getting them all ready for school and out the door. The one struggle was that wigglie #7 was still in the hospital with viral pneumonia. His oxygen levels would not stay up where they belonged so he was on oxygen breathing treatments. He was one miserable baby.

*reaperchop*

@Panda Hero: Wow... AWESOME!!!

FOOL! My cousin was an extra in this film. That is why I went to see the movie. I was so pleasantly surprised and blown away kwa this film. Through the course of watching the film and good 'ol Face Book, I've become Marafiki with Mary and Jerry Zandstra. Jerry was the executive producer and he and Mary were key characters in the film I am always hesitant to attend a "Christian" based film because of the poor quality in uandishi and acting. This film is juu notch in all areas. The story line is thought provoking and the uigizaji is superb. I would encourage wewe all to get yourself a copy, a big bowl of popcorn and enjoy. Following is zaidi information concerning the film. The Genesis Code champions Faith, Family and Intellectual Freedom. Amazon’s rankings have us at #1 in the nation in Faith and Spirituality Films, #1 in the nation in Kids and Family Films and #4 in the nation for ALL DVDs available on Amazon! The Genesis Code is an independent faith-based film which highlights the intersection of science and faith as well as other issues facing Christians today. The film stars Logan Bartholomew and Kelsey Sanders as college students whose chance meeting leads to a burgeoning relationship and a journey of spiritual discovery. The supporting cast includes Oscar-winners Louise Fletcher and Ernest Borgnine, former presidential candidate Fred Thompson, and Reverend Jerry Zandstra, who also served as the executive producer. Exploring three major issues facing Christians today, The Genesis Code tackles the alleged conflict between religious and scientific explanations for the beginning of the universe. The film also explores the often ignored story of discrimination against Christians on college campuses, while dealing with end-of-life issues portrayed through Logan Bartholomew’s character as he fights to prolong the life of his comatose mother when his grandparents attempt to remove her from life support against his wishes and despite the possibility of recovery. The Genesis Code will be available on DVD nationwide on May 8, 2012. An American Epic Entertainment production, The Genesis Code DVD is distributed kwa Entertainment One. For zaidi information, please visit, www.thegenesiscodemovie.com/. American Epic Entertainment produces feature length motion pictures. Our pictures are intended to be uplifting, positive-valued, family-friendly stories in both historical and contemporary settings, and to convey traditional American ethics, ideals, and values.

ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH

^^ I upendo wewe to XD

TL;Dr.

As I said; Everywhere.

(OOC: wewe ACTUALLY READ ALL THAT?! I didn't... XD And I'm the one who ilitumwa it...)

FOOL! In my attempt to get healthier, I’ve been looking at labels a little more. I noticed a can of Pam no-stick cooking spray in my cupboard. I use it every once in a while, but, not much. As I read the side of the can, so many maswali popped up. And, I’m sure wewe are craving to know what I found and my queries. The first thing I saw was serving size. Serving Size About 1/3 sekunde Spray. OK, so many thoughts here. First of all they are so wishy washy – about. About? wewe can’t be sure? Secondly, how in the heck can wewe spray for 1/3 of a second? Let’s songesha on. The inayofuata is calories. Calories are zero. ZERO – This takes me back to serving size. If there are zero calories then why have a serving size? Zero times any number is still zero, right? If so, then who cares what the serving size is? And on juu of it, why make the serving size (about 1/3 sekunde spray) an impossibility? kusoma on down the can, every item has zero percent daily value. It goes on to say needlessly – not a significant chanzo of dietary fiber, sugars, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium and iron. Which leads me to ask, is there any significant anything? The inayofuata bit of information has an asterisk which in my mind means I need to pay special attention. The asterisk is followed by: percent daily values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Once again, if everything is zero then why must we base nothing on 2,000 calories? The ingredients are listed next. One of the ingredients is canola oil and it has a small kuvuka, msalaba symbol beside the word. Below that the explanation reads: Adds a trivial amount of fat. Well, do we have zero percent of fat au a trivial amount? Which is it? And how much is trivial? What I think is trivial may be a stinking big deal to you. The last bit of information to swali is their comparison chart. They compare a one sekunde spray of Pam to one tablespoon of butter, margarine and oil. Somehow to me a one sekunde squirt is not comparable to a one tablespoon hunk. It’s a good thing I found this bothersome information early in the day. If I would have discovered this after 8:00 PM I would have had a hard time shutting my brain off and going to sleep while trying to process all these uncertainties. My swali to you: Is Pam a sham?

... desu.

Indeed carsfan desu.

FOOL! Another week has trudged by. Another week of doing, being and existing. A very full life I live filled with family and friends, but, while living the life I sekunde guess where my time is spent. When I am volunteering, I think about all the stuff at home. While working in the office at nyumbani I am thinking about that inayofuata uandishi project au the inayofuata drama I am involved with at church. While I am cleaning house I am uandishi that crazy wonderful novel in my head. The few moments I sit at the computer with the intent of uandishi I feel the need to check Facebook, my calendar, and emails. I feel like I am either behind au disconnected. I actually went on a two siku get away. It did not qualify as a vacation but it was heavenly. I had no plans, meandered, ate, and played. My shoulders felt lighter and my muscles relaxed. And then, it was time to go back home. I upendo my home. I upendo my life. I upendo my family. But, there just seems to be a lot of “stuff” that needs dealing with. Why must I be so responsible and feel the need to take care of “stuff”. Some of this “stuff”, actually 90% of this “stuff” is out of my control. I am at the mercy of others and it is not an easy place to be. I have been disappointed and let down in the past and I really don’t want to reside there. I hear “you just got to trust God” a lot and while I agree, the trusting part isn’t as easy as it sounds. I get there for a while and then slip back into the “I need to take care of this” mode and the trust slips away. The hard part of the trusting is the not doing. I am a doer. I don’t not do very well. So, in an attempt to be zaidi transparent and real, there wewe have it. Time to do those deep breathing exercises.

FOOL! Despite its classification remaining amongst the other pre-existing demon weapons, at least in regards to its properties, Excalibur doesn't conform to the typical restrictions of its kin, as in actuality anyone is considered compatible with its wavelength and thus, capable of wielding him. However, contrary to this unique trait, the number of people counted as his partner over the various centuries remains relatively few, due solely to the fact that no individual is able to withstand his personality for prolonged periods of time. Regarded as being a greater narcissist than even the egotistical Black☆Star, this defective personality is only exacerbated kwa his short temperament and patience, making Excalibur truly insufferable to all but a "chosen" few. It is for this reason alone that those who are able to utilize Excalibur long enough to achieve anything significant, are referred with such heraldry as "hero" and "king", as only they possess the means and/or strength of will to withstand these annoying deficiencies. This dysfunctional personality manifests itself most frequently in the declaration of the word "fool" (バカ, bakame), employed as a means of interruption to those Excalibur maoni with disdain and contempt, which due to his extensive superiority complex is practically applicable to everyone. Amongst such disparaging remarks, Excalibur propagates numerous nonsensical and confused rants about its supposed mythic exploits, before bursting into song. If these defects aren't enough to fend off any would be advocates, his mannerisms will surely repulse even the most convicted of individuals, whether it be from Excalibur waving his cane just millimeters from other's faces au one of his deplorable sneezing fits.

FOOL! Finally, after many years of wanting to do this, I got it done. I hired a strong young man to help. We dug around in the piles old beams from the barns and found the longest one. We then found a kuvuka, msalaba bar beam and notched the two to fit together. My daughter-in-law joined in and helped to find bolts long enough to bolt the two together. It took us a couple of tries and then Son #2 joined in and found the right ones. Son #4 was recruited to find nuts for the bolts but the bulk of the work was done kwa Barrett Mills. We drilled a spot for the three nails to be placed, the nails in his hands, and feet. Even though I knew wewe would not see them from the road, I wanted them in there. We used 10 inch nails. The sekunde day, I draped and stapled the material on the cross. Then, we loaded shovels into the back of the truck and drove out to the sand pit which is located on a main road. The spot we placed the kuvuka, msalaba has 1000s of cars that drive by. Barrett dug the hole and we went back to get the kuvuka, msalaba and some help to put it up. There was no way I was going to be able to help him carry it up the kilima and stand it in place. So, Son #4 was wrangled in again. Barrett and Son #4 carried it up the hill, placed it and packed the dirt around the base. The material had gotten Tangled up in the drive out to the pit and the gale force winds didn't help much. Son #4 climbed up on the bottom nail and did his best to untangle. All in all, I upendo the visual. My hope is that everyone that glances, stops au notices the kuvuka, msalaba will think about the sacrifice made. We all get so busy living our "blessed" lives that we forget the reason why we are so blessed. Nothing happens au comes to us without being delivered from God's hand. So, as Easter approaches, let's take a few extra dakika to ponder, think on, muse, contemplate and consider our chanzo of blessings. Come back on Easter - if all goes well, there will be a transformation on the cross.

BLACKSTAR! WE CAN GET THROUGH THIS TOGETHER~

@Panda Hero and Holy Sword: Wow... wewe guys are so awesome... ( :D And I actually read everything Panda Hero said. That was very well-written!

FOOL! I am not uandishi about Creative Slow-Cooker Meals cookbook because the mwandishi is a childhood friend. I also am not uandishi about Creative Slow-Cooker Meals cookbook because I have stock in the slow cooker companies. I am uandishi about Creative Slow-Cooker Meals cookbook because this is just too good not to share! If any of wewe know me in the least wewe know my jikoni and cooking are an integral part of who I am. wewe can’t be inside my door for zaidi than ten dakika without me trying to feed wewe something. Sunday dinners are all about food, family and fun. And with the number we have around the meza, jedwali each Sunday I am always looking for ways to make chajio, chakula cha jioni zaidi enjoyable and less work. And I have found a winner in both departments with Creative Slow-Cooker Meals cookbook kwa Cheryl Moeller. The recipes are easy and use “regular” ingredients and create dishes that everyone loves. Using two slow cookers is such a great and “why didn’t I think of that” concept. Take a few dakika in the morning to throw your ingredients in, plug it in and come nyumbani to aromas that will knock your socks off. Before I tempt wewe with a couple of the recipes my family loves, let me introduce wewe to my friend Cheryl. Cheryl is mother to six kids, wife, author, speaker and a woman who upendo God. She also is one of my cheerleaders in my uandishi life. Here is a quote: Creative Slow-Cooker Meals will help wewe get your family back to the meza, jedwali while freeing wewe from long hours spent sweating over a hot stove. Using two slow cookers, you'll have a warm entree and side dish on the meza, jedwali without hardly any effort! It's my hope that you'll find some recipes here that will become staples in your home, that your family will be telling stories about for years to come. And I pray that wewe will find, as I have, that there are few blessings greater than sharing a meal with family.

fUCK

FOOL! I really dislike Mother’s Day. Also, Father’s siku and Valentine’s Day. But, let’s just stick with Mother’s siku for now. I dislike the fact that people need to be told to honor their Mother on this one special day. It’s a great money making siku for the gift shops and card companies. Mother’s siku is a hard siku for many to endure. I almost think there are zaidi people who are upset than are delighted with the holiday. Think about it. It’s a reminder for those whose mothers have passed away that she’s not with them any longer. Losing a mother is a hard thing to get over and mwaka after mwaka it can be hard to be reminded that yours in no longer here. It’s also a reminder to those who aren’t able to be a mother. How hard is it siku after siku not having that child to hold and seeing people all around them having what they long to have. Then to add insult to injury there is a holiday to rub it in. To see the commercials and crave to have a child is unbearable. It’s just one zaidi way to reinforce their lack. Then, there are the mothers who have Lost a child. Some before they were even able to hold in their arms. Their hopes and dreams are washed away with their tears. Single moms and mothers with inconsiderate mates can feel left out when all the other moms are receiving flowers and gifts and they are left empty handed. Personally, as a young mother I always felt pressured and didn’t think I measured up when comparing myself to all the accolades thrown around on that holiday. TV, radio, newspaper ads bombard us with the perfect “mother scenario”. Ever see a Mother’s siku commercial portraying a mother who Lost it and is yelling at their children? A mother who couldn’t get the birthday cake frosted without it looking like a lump of clay? A mother in sweat pants, no makeup, dried chakula on her shoulder and hair sticking out on one side? Nothing less than perfect is portrayed. With all the advertising now days it is nigh to impossible to get away from reminders. Here’s the deal. Daily, we should onyesha appreciation to our mothers – to each other in general. Flowers, cards, gifts, encouraging words au a hug around the neck on any aliyopewa siku are zaidi treasured than the ones delivered when the calendars prompts. Yes, I will honor my Mother and my daughters-in-law this Sunday. But, all mwaka long I kuoga them with gifts and words of upendo and appreciation. Go ahead, jiunge the masses on Mother’s siku but for crying out loud, don’t think you’re done for a year. We never know what tomorrow will bring. Make sure wewe appreciate what’s right in front of wewe each day.

i've been waiting for you..................

Excalibur the best chariter in the series that is why X3

FOOL! I walked down the pathway. It was autumn now, and something about it made me comfortable. I guessed because it was my inayopendelewa season, which would have made sense. I hadn’t seen anything like it before. Sure, I’d seen plenty of pictures of autumn before, but nothing like this. I just moved into the town and I’d be starting school tomorrow, on a Monday, so I really should have been getting ready for that, but it wasn’t really that important to me. Through the past year, school was just something pointless that filled my brain. It was almost as if I knew everything I was being taught, like I’d graduated school before I’d forgotten nearly everything that happened in my life. I took my hat off and put my long, machungwa, chungwa hair up in a ponytail. Yes, orange. pumpkin, boga orange. It was natural, as were my machungwa, chungwa eyes. Weird, but cool. It accented my own uniqueness, in my opinion, and totally badass. And that’s just the way I liked it. I slipped my hat back on a few steps later, since the sun was beating down on my face. The path that I was on was rather unique itself. It was not so much a path as some bare dirt on a hill, constantly heading upward with a slight slope. It was tunneled kwa trees, a thinner band of trees exposing the town below the hills on my left, and a thick amount of trees flowing with the endless hills about thirty feet to my right. The right sides of the path were coated in signs of long-forgotten settlements. moto places, floorboards, skeletons of old buildings, that sort of thing. It was forgotten and abandoned, which was how I liked it. Later down the pathway, I spotted something interesting. I stopped walking down the path and turned to go into the old abandoned building to my right. It was large, bigger than most of the trees surrounding out. Out in the front, there was a sign that alisema The Rose Insane Asylum An old insane asylum? I thought, opening the front door. This might be interesting. I walked in and realized that it wasn’t much different than an old house, one of those huge Victorian mansions with a lot of rooms upstairs. I was standing in what looked like a lobby au foyer, and almost all the furniture and karatasi la kupamba ukuta were rotting. I could barely tell that the thing in the right corner was supposed to be a chair, the monster in the middle was a coffee table, the mess on the ukuta to my left was a bookcase, kasha la vitabu once, and the dead thing on the old, rotting floor boards was a rug in it’s better days. The large window on the ukuta furthest from me was so grimy that I couldn’t see out it. On my far right, there was a huge, winding staircase that looked as though it’d collapse the moment I stood upon it. I walked beyond the staircase into what looked like what could have been the room where people would come in to find where someone’s room was. There was an old, wooden, rotting dawati with a spinning chair behind it. I walked up to it slowly and went behind it. In the back there was a drawer that looked like it had been used everyday at some point. I bent down to it and tried to open it, but the handle fell off. “You have to be kidding me!” I alisema with a sigh. I buried my fingers into the space between the drawer and the dawati to pry it open, but I fell backward. God damn it, it’s stuck! I thought. I shook my head and tried again, and I fell again. I looked around the room to find something, anything, that could be used to pry it open. I looked down at the ground at the handle that had fallen off. I smirked as I picked it up. I stuck it in the space where my fingers had been and attempted at prying it open. It didn’t work. I looked around again for something else I could use to pry it open. There was a bookshelf in the corner with something shiny on it. I stood up and trotted up to it. The shiny thing turned out just to be an old pair of glasses. I went back to looking for something else I that could use to pry it open. When I didn’t find anything on the bookshelf, I went back over to the old dawati and looked on the dawati for something, when I heard a sound that caught my attention. Click… With a confused look creeping up on my face, I bent over the old dawati and looked for what could have made that sound. I gasped with my jaw wide open. The click came from the drawer. Which was open. Wide open. I blinked, making sure that my eyes weren’t tricking me. I looked behind me for anyone who could have opened the drawer. There was no one. I crept around the dawati to the drawer and bent down in front of it, peeking inside. There was an old clipboard with a truckload of papers clipped on it. I took it out and brushed off some dust. It was a orodha of the people kept at the asylum, their room numbers, and additional details, written in old, worn handwriting. Interested, I flipped through the pages until I found a weird name. I smirked when I found the perfect name. Adriel Abbas- room 13. Age 13. Keeps calling for his twin sister, Aida Abbas, who died of a moto in 1823 and believes he is talking to her. Shows no sign of improvement as of May 26th, 1826. If patient shows no improvement in five days, emergency action will be called for. I raised an eyebrow as I read the words before me. Talk about 13 being an unlucky number. And what did they mean kwa “emergency action”? I didn’t know, and I’d probably never know, but I still wondered, anyway. I also wondered why they’d lock the kid up. It was obvious that he missed his sister and wasn’t “crazy”, just lonely. He’d Lost her at a young age, how could the owners of Rose Insane Asylum not know that he was just lonely? Well, since I new a room number I could go to, I decided I’d go and investigate. Room 13… I guessed that’d be up those old, rotting stairs since I didn’t see any other doors Just great. I went through the old drawer some more, trying to find one of those little maps that said, “You are here”, au just a guide to the rooms and whatnot. There had to be some sort of guide au something. But no, after searching through eons worth of dust, mold, and I-don’t-want-to-know-what-those-are, I didn’t find anything. I’d have to find the room on my own. I stepped out of the receptionist’s room and back into the main room, looking at the staircase. All the rooms would have been up there, I’d imagine, but I really wasn’t that eager to climb it. Something just told me not to. But another something, something louder, told me that no matter what trouble it got me into, it’d be worth it. So, being the fool that I was, I headed up the stairs. Though surprisingly enough, the stairway contrasted with what I had thought. The floorboards must have been rather sturdy, none of them creaked au groaned as I stepped up them. I quickened my pace and made it to the juu of the stairway in triumph and took a glance around. To my left was a long, wide hallway with at least thirty doors on each side, and at the very end there was a gaping hole as if it had been singed kwa moto that lead to the October world outside. On my right, however, was a large nook inayofuata to a wide, clear window, and right in the middle was a beautiful white grand piano, the autumn sunlight adding a crisp machungwa, chungwa tint to it. And as much as I tried, I couldn’t stop myself as I walked over to the kinanda and sat on the kinyesi that rested beside it. The kinanda was in perfect condition and absolutely beautiful, glossy and neat, not a single chip au ding. I pressed a key and listened to the sound. It was perfectly tuned, too. I sighed with amazement and pressed a few other keys until I was improvising a nice melody. It was a calm and gentle melody at first, one seeming to have kind and loving voice to it’s sound, but soon it crept into a melody filled with angst and sadness. But suddenly, it was cheerful and happy, filled with the energy of a small child. I was enjoying that particular sound, until very suddenly… “Wow. You’re pretty good at that.” A voice. A male voice out of nowhere. I turned my head to the direction it came from to see that there was someone there. And his looks almost had me jumping out of the window. His skin was pale, and his features were sharp, but pleasant. His hair was rested just below his jaw line and curled every way possible in an unpredictable mess, like he hadn’t bothered to brush it when he woke up. His outfit, on the other hand, was well coordinated and put together. He wore a black suit with machungwa, chungwa pin stripes, paired with an machungwa, chungwa dress shirt, black tie, and machungwa, chungwa gloves. His right hand held a video camera, and even though I had little to no knowledge of that sort of thing, I could tell it was expensive and high quality. A large messenger bag hung at his side and out of it spilled an array of cords and wires. He had an elegant build and an even zaidi elegant posture to match. But, although his joyous expression seemed to be the humanized version of the tune I had just played, something about him emitted the feeling of a warrior, like he had seen zaidi than just his fair share of warfare. But none of that was what had threatened me. It was his eyes and his gracefully messy hair. Both his eyes and hair were orange, not the machungwa, chungwa that some red heads had, but pumpkin, boga orange, the exact same shade as mine. It was as if someone had copy and pasted that specific shade of machungwa, chungwa onto the both of us. “But, no offence au anything,” with every syllable he said, he found endless amounts of flowing movements to go along with them. His entire body moved when he talked, especially his arms and hands “You look a little young to be a ghost. Young and chipper. Like, my age young, that is. Like not eleven au twelve au anything, but like a sixteen-seventeen young. And wewe look pretty solid,” he poked my shoulder, “Yeah, you’re solid. And I always thought that I was the only person that still visits this asylum; the only one insane enough to come here! Well, insane enough and alive enough, since everyone who ever came here back in its not-so-glorious siku is dead. So, who are wewe and what brings wewe here to my rotten domain?” My head was spinning. How much could that guy talk? Was he being serious about the ghost thing au joking? I couldn’t tell which. Why was his hair and eyes the same color as mine? My mind was piled with maswali that I was too afraid to ask. “Uh… I’m-” “And wewe speak! wewe are alive, then. Ah, sorry, go on.” I glared at him in response to his interruption, but I really hoped that he would interrupt again. I didn’t want to introduce myself. Not only was he starting to freak me out a little, but also I hated my name, and I hated introducing myself to much of anyone. When he didn’t interrupt again- which I couldn’t tell if I thought it fortunate au unfortunate- I had to. “I’m Dulcina. Dulcina Kelly.” Once again, my name got an expected reaction. The boy’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped a bit in shock and awe at my weird name. But the look went away quickly and he smiled. “Dulcina, wewe say? I like it. Has a nice ring to it, too. And it’s fun to say! Dulcina, Dulcina, Dulcina! Ha! I could keep this up for hours! But I won’t. Ah, how rude of me! I didn’t introduce myself! I’m Dante Knoll, and it is a pleasure to be meeting wewe this fine October afternoon! I haven’t seen the likes of wewe in our quaint little town before. If I had, I would’ve remembered! Are wewe new?” I rolled my eyes. “No, you’re wrong. I’m old. wewe forgot me after all.” I alisema sarcastically. He howled with laugher. “You’re too funny! It’s clear we’re going to get along.” Yeah right, like that would ever happen, I thought, but instead I said, “You’re too kind.” And that caused another round of laughter from Dante. “I guess it would make me even kinder if I were to onyesha wewe around town, am I right? I imagine that wewe like ice cream, right?” “I-” “Then come on!” He said, grabbing my arm and dragging me down the stairs and out of the asylum, and once we reached the forsaken dirt path I had been on before he let go. He pointed through the thin line of autumn colored trees to the town below the flattened kilima we stood upon. “Driscoll- that’s the name of the town in case wewe weren’t paying any attention when wewe moved in- was founded in 1802 kwa a bunch of immigrants from somewhere in Europe, and it hasn’t changed much since then! The roads are still brick and barely anyone has a car and they use bikes instead. It’s all pretty much located in this one little valley-ish thing in the middle of all these hills, as wewe can most obviously see, but there’s some places in the hills, like the ‘outskirts’ I guess wewe could say, like the asylum we were just in, for example. Like where we are now. There are a lot of little businesses here, too, which is also fairly noticeable. Not anything like chain restaurants au supermarkets, but local, small businesses owned kwa nice people with a decent amount of reason and sanity in them instead of big headed CEO’s and executives and stuff. Like the Ice Cream Shack, which is where we’re going!” Before I could say anything, he grabbed my arm again and dragged me further down the path in the opposite direction I had been wanting to go in before until we came to the slope where the kilima ended and wewe got into town. We made several turns down ally ways and even a yard au two. What Dante had alisema was true, the town really hadn’t changed since it’s founding. The roads were still brick, and all of the people I saw were either on bikes au were walking. The buildings were also very old; they were all multi-storied with chimneys, several of them were brick, but the majority of them were sided and had a very colonial feel about them; complete with old fashioned columns and shutters. And based on what I had seen kwa looking into windows, people never bothered to update the interiors of their houses, either. The streetlights were kikale, kale fashioned with three bulbs and glass round casing around them. It almost looked like a posh, upper-class neighborhood, even though I had a feeling that Driscoll didn’t classify as a town with a bunch of overly rich people with yachts and private jets. After a little while longer of running, we came to a stop at a duka with a sign overhead that read “Ice Cream Shack- Open mwaka round!” It really was just a little shack with just enough room inside for the employees to store the ice cream, dish it out, and serve it. There was nothing zaidi to the building than the wooden and unpainted walls, matching slanted roof, and a cut out with a counter. Behind the counter was a tan platinum-blond boy with small but bright blue eyes and a square-ish face accompanied kwa a beautiful doll faced pale girl with apple red curls and huge zumaridi, zamaradi green eyes. They were wearing electric blue polo shirts with a yellow emblem that alisema “Ice Cream Shack”, covered partially kwa khaki aprons. Both of them looked around my age. As we walked up to the counter, they took one look and Dante and went to work fixing up an order I hadn’t heard. I must have had a confused look on my face because Dante gave me a look and said, “They know me. I’m a regular here. Aren’t I, Aiva? Cassius?” The girl, who I guessed must have been Aiva considering the feminine sound to the name, held out two machungwa, chungwa colored ice cream cones while Cassius put the money in the register. She spoke first. “Why yes, wewe are quite the frequent customer. One of our absolute vipendwa as well.” “And the one who contributes the most profits a day,” Cassius added quickly with a smirk, “How many times do wewe come here an hour, anyway?” Dante let out a small chuckle. “I’d say about sixty times. Once for each time I finish up a cone and come back for another!” Cassius and Aiva both let out chuckles identical to Dante’s in agreement. I guessed that the three of them must have been friends, not that I was an expert on friendship. No regular at any business gets that sort of treatment no matter how often they come along. And if he were about that much of a regular, they would have had to build up some sort of friendship, anyway. The two teens finished up serving the ice cream and Dante took the cones and handed one to me. I must have looked confused again, because Dante explained, “It’s pumpkin, boga flavored! It’s the best kind of ice cream ever! Have wewe had it before?” “Actually, I’ve never had ice cream before,” I alisema with a wave of sudden embarrassment. When Dante reflected and amplified my embarrassment with a look of surprise and utter shock, I added, “My dad is a total health nut. If even a half a molecule goes near my mouth, I’m grounded until hell freezes over.” “And you’ve never secretly had any sugar? Ever?” He sounded genuinely shocked at first, but gentled his tone when he added, “Not even something as sweet and decedent as ice cream?” “I’m about to, aren’t I?” I took a huge bite out of my ice cream and was greeted immediately with a sweet rush of perfectly blended flavors and textures. It was a sweet, icy wonderland of joy. I had never tasted anything like it before, but yet it tasted so familiar. “See? I told wewe it’s the best!” alisema Dante. “Isn’t it amazing?” At that, he lightly put his free hand on my shoulder. I cringed a little and tried to shrug him away. I wasn’t used to people other than my brother giving me even the slightest poke, much less touching me on my shoulder. He must have noticed that I felt uncomfortable because he took his hand away. “Think you’ll be able to sneak this one past your dad?” Slowly, I nodded. “Y-yeah. I th-think so. Probably.” I was shocked my tone of voice. I sounded timid, and I rarely if ever, stuttered. I only prayed that Dante wouldn’t say anything about it. “There’s, uh, n-no way my d-dad could notice.”

;_;

... @Holy Sword: ......... O... M... Q... G... AWESOME!!! XD

XD

FOOL! My dad’s request reigned around my guilty consciousness like a storm of nails. I had meant to go out for a short stroll, a promenade around the block and nothing more, but it was my sekunde siku in this unfamiliar territory; getting Lost was an outcome that I should have been able to predict. I had promised Dad and my older brother that I would be nyumbani kwa dinner, kwa nine o’clock, but I was going to be terribly late. It was nothing to be left surprising, I had a horrible habit of arriving several hours past late for as long as I could remember, but keeping a curfew was far from my only problem. The setting and the scenes around me became zaidi unfamiliar with every turn I took, and all the zaidi uncomfortable. The dull streetlights hung around me, bathing my bold machungwa, chungwa hair in spotlights like a threat. There were buildings around me, each of them echos of a past that people no longer bothered to tend to. Cracked and broken windows decorated crumbling walls with hopelessness and despair, and brown nyasi long past dead cried out to feel the kiss of upendo and life again. Garbage and trash lined the pavement without purpose, forsaken without the hope of being needed again. A smell like death loomed over the place, and with a sudden jolt I felt eyes fall on me. I had been spotted. Without so much as a sekunde to think, my flight-or-flight instinct decided what to do. The decision was flight. I hurried my pace to a jog at first, and unfamiliar footsteps out of time with my own movements confirmed that my life was in a perilous position. With that realization, I broke in to a full speed run. I had always been regarded as a fast runner, I broke record after record at my old school until the only name on the leader board was my own, so I was very confident that I could outrun my follower. I took turn after turn, leaping over lifeless debris rather than waste the time it took to dodge such meaninglessness. I was lightning against a hectic stormscape, running much faster than I had ever imagined possible. Although the speed was taking a toll on me, I kept up the pace as best I could until I could no longer hear any footsteps other than my own.

omfg

...ﺧ益ﺨ

FOOL! Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there lived a powerful and mighty king with extraordinary magical- Oh, good heavens, no! There is absolutely no way that I am actually going to start off like that. How silly, how cliche! Besides, that's merely a fluffed up lie, a fairytale kwa any standard. This is no story about a mighty king, nor did it happen "far far away". No no no, the story in swali is very different indeed. The man in swali wasn't a man at all, nor was he a king. He was a boy, actually, a common orphaned boy who had to make do with what he had. Arthur, his name was. Anyway, Arthur lived alone in a small house, not even so much a house as much as a shack, and even for a boy his age he was small and very frail. Arthur was unable to do much around the house au outside for that matter, and he lived quite a lonely life without much to do. Night after night, Arthur prayed for a change in his life, something different than the everyday solitude he had always known. He wished and wished for a change, until one day, there was a knock on the door. Arthur leapt from his kiti, kiti cha on the floor in shock as he never had any visitors. With excitement, he made his way to greet the stranger at the door and in turn was greeted kwa a cloaked man with a long white beard. Before Arthur could say anything, the stranger spoke, his voice old and wise. "I am Merlin, a wizard from a vast land called Putnam," he alisema so strongly that the very ground seemed to shake, "there is a great war dividing the land of Putnam. I have come here looking for a mighty man kwa the name of Arthur. Do wewe know where I might find a man kwa that name?" Arthur was trembling, so badly that he couldn't even attempt to hide it. "Well, I... uh... I... I'm Arthur, sir..." The wizard gave Arthur a skeptical look, but soon changed to a smile and turned the other way. "Is that so?" He said, "then come with me." Without hesitation Arthur followed Merlin across many lands for several days. It was zaidi than Arthur had traveled in his life, and he was almost certain that his legs would collapse under his own weight when they reached their destination. Merlin explained that the land of Putnam had been divided in half kwa a war between the North and South, and only the great chosen hero Arthur could save them. Arthur must call forth one of the two Deities of the Earth, and whichever arose would decide who won over the land of Putnam, the North au the South. All of the folk of Putnam, both of low and high status, found themselves at the center of Putnam that day, eager to see who would arise from the ground. Arthur's task was simple. He must communicate with the Deities of the Earth kwa pulling The Sword of the Gods from the ground, and allow for his moyo to decide who to summon. Would it be the cougar Caelestis who cheered for the North, au the eagle Excalibur, who favored the South? The people of Putnam had faith in Arthur to choose their favored side, but Arthur himself was feeling quite uncertain. Though he prayed for a change, Arthur knew nothing of these lands, au of which side he should pick. But, after quite some time of the crowd cheering him on, he pulled the sword from the ground without making any real decision. There was a crash like thunder, and both the ground and the skies began to quake. The great Caelestis came darting in as the Northern onlookers cheered about, and the mighty Excalibur soared through the skies as those of the South gawked and awed. Then suddenly, everyone realized that nobody had won. Not yet. They all ran to the sides as Caelestis and Excalibur fought over the lands. The battle took ages, maybe months, maybe years. But in the end, it was Arthur who spoke up and decieded. "You fools!" he yelled loud, for he had become quite strong over the course of time, "Why don't wewe just share the land?" So both Caelestis and Excalibur agreed that sharing the lands was a fantastic idea indeed. The cougar Caelestis took the North half while the eagle Excalibur to the Southern portion. Merlin moved to the North and started a school, while Arthur moved to the South and did the same. Arthur shared power over South Putnam with the eagle Excalibur, and Merlin gave much credit to the cougar Caeleists. When Excalibur and Caeleists passed away thousands of years later, each of the school memorialized them with sports team in their honor. And to this siku it is still alisema that North and South Putnam are rivals still, refusing to forget the battles of old.

FOOL.....that's it really.

FOOL! I woke up to my alarm that morning at 8:18 precisely. Despite the beginning of the weekend, I woke up at that time on the dot as usual. Perfect. I crawled my way out of the left side of the bed, I had crawled out of the right the siku before so I had to make it even, and made my kitanda as I made quick work of cleaning my room. Perfect. As usual, I made my way to the bathroom to brush my teeth. But quickly I realized that there was a dot of toothpaste the size of a dime on the right side of the sink, but not one on the left. There is only one possible culprit. “Soul!” I yelled at the juu of my lungs, searching the house for my roommate. Of course, I found him in the living room, relaxed and reclining to the jazz muziki sounding from the computer in front of him. “Yelling across the house isn’t cool, Kid. Not even a little bit cool,” he alisema as he slowly turned from the computer screen and looked at me, “What did I do this time?” I pointed in the direction of the bathroom with several stamps of my left foot. “Do wewe not remember me specifically asking wewe to clean the bathroom sink when you’re done brushing your teeth?! There’s a drop of toothpaste on the right side of the sink and not on the left and I know that it was you!” Soul let out a sigh. “Relax, Kid. It’s just toothpaste. Besides, since you’re the one that’s so worried about it, why don’t wewe go clean it up yourself? Makes a lot of sense don’t you-” In midsentence, Soul turned his attention back to the computer screen with a look of displeasure. “I hate this song.” I listened to the tune zaidi closely and realized that it was my inayopendelewa song. Soul adjusted the panya, kipanya in his hands with clear intent to change it. “No, don’t!” I alisema with a surprising amount of urgency as I leapt across the floor for the panya, kipanya before he could change it. “That’s my inayopendelewa song, Soul, and wewe never let me listen to it!” Despite my protest, he changed the song with a click of his mouse. “Well, I can’t stand that song that song, but I upendo the one that comes after it, and I’m the one sitting at the computer. My choice.” Frustrated, I changed the song back, and Soul retaliated kwa changing it again. We argued back and forth about it for a while, until eventually, the entire computer froze. “Oh, look at what wewe did now, Kid,” Soul said, “The computer is frozen!” “It might unfreeze if we wait long enough,” I suggested. “We are not doing that. This stupid song is stuck on loop and my ears will bleed if I have to listen to it any longer. Besides, the cursor is stuck on one side of the computer and not on the other and I’ll never hear the end of it as long as the computer is frozen, and who knows how long that could be? Let’s just unplug the computer and plug it back in. It’ll unfreeze and we won’t have to wait.” “Unplanned shut downs can damage a computer. We could-“ Behind us, the computer screen started freaking out. It blacked out, and multi-colored lines like lightning bolts appeared on the screen out of time with the music. “Great,” Soul alisema with an irritated sigh, “Now it really is broken! What are we going to do?” I bit my lip. “We could call someone in…” “That costs money. Money that we don’t have.” “Not if it’s someone that we know who will do it for free.” “Yeah, right, and who do we know that will- Wait, no, please don’t tell me that you’re thinking of that creepy professor.” I walked over to the phone on the side table. “Soul,” I said, picking up the phone from the receiver , “Do wewe know Stein’s number?” Several dakika later, there was a knock on the front door. Soul and I went to open it, and there was a quick flash as someone rolled in on a dawati chair and fell over in it. “So!” Our creepy friend alisema from his place on the floor, “What do wewe kids need? I hope it’s help with a dissection lab!” Soul hit his palm against his face and I let out a sigh. “No, Professor Stein, not quite. Our computer is broken, and we don’t know how to fix it. Do wewe think wewe could give us a hand?” Stein got up from the floor and picked his rolling chair up on the floor, sat down on it, and rolled through the hallway on it. He went in to our living room and took his place in front of the computer and got to work. In a matter of minutes, he had the computer fixed. “Thanks, Professor,” Soul alisema with relief, “We were about to go crazy because of that thing.” Stein gave us a smile, a bit of a creepy smile I might add, and rolled away from the computer with great velocity. “Haha, it’s no trouble. Anything else wewe need, just call-“ Before he could finish, he rolled too far towards the ukuta and crashed through the window, breaking it. “Uh, I’ll pay for that.” He alisema as he wheeled away from our house. We may have gotten our computer fixed, but our window was broken. Maybe calling Stein in wasn’t a good decision after all.

@luv: FOOL! Of course he was! Do wewe not see him ranting his story to wewe right now?!

FOOL!A brick is purposefully made. It is made to conform to certain measurements. It is made to look exactly like the awali brick and the brick to follow. A brick is designed to be so much alike that wewe can interchange them and no one will know the difference. Men make bricks to a specific size, color, texture and design. He gathers the clay, forms the mold, dries the clay and fires the brick. The brick must fit into his plan. If wewe are like a brick, wewe allow men to shape your attitudes, your thoughts and ideas. wewe follow along and try to fit in. wewe conform to the masses. wewe just want to blend in and fit with those around you. wewe follow the fads and latest crazes. wewe know and wear the most hivi karibuni fashion hit. wewe sit in a room full of people and kumeza whatever is heard without tasting it. A rock is God made. wewe would be hard pressed to find two identical rocks. The colors, textures, sizes and shapes are all unique. When wewe work with rocks, wewe plan your ubunifu around the rock. A rock ukuta is made kwa placing distinctive rocks in just the right places to form a strong barrier. Each rock holds its own space. The ubunifu happens naturally when the rocks come together. If wewe take a granite rock from a mountain side and slice it, each slice will be unique. There will be changes that rank from subtle to extra ordinary. If wewe are a rock, wewe celebrate your gifts and talents God has aliyopewa you. wewe understand there is no one like you. It is OK for wewe to stand out in a crowd. wewe don’t blend in. wewe aren’t afraid to dress differently, speak differently, au act differently. wewe know your value as an individual. wewe don’t compare yourselves to others. wewe don’t allow men’s opinions and statements such as “you can’t do that” “you’re too young”, “it’s never been done before” to sway your determination. wewe are comfortable to the point of enjoying your exclusivity. wewe know that your distinctiveness come from the One who created you. wewe value the time and talents that God invested into you. It’s time for wewe to leave the brick yard, break out of the mold and allow the Rock who gave wewe life to onyesha himself in wewe and through you.

........

FOOL! It was rather peculiar, that twilight. Not such an obvious sort of peculiar, I suppose, rather the sort of odd feeling that wewe can’t quite place. A rather eerie sort of feeling indeed. There was nothing particularly odd about that twilight, in fact, it was rather mundane for these parts. The house was absent of any presence aside from my black cat and myself, the place as silent as death, which was not at all abnormal. The sky was its frequent crimson shade and the yellow moon shown dimly, casting its black shadows as it did every evening, my spacious window made me zaidi than aware of this. However, the ordinary twilight was not quite enough to shake my strange feeling. Perhaps I had just gone mad, mad from this place. It was a rather strange place, different than those I remembered from my childhood. The same red skies and the same yellow moon, black trees and red grass. au perhaps it was my nyumbani that had driven me mad. It was a wide and spacious place. An old abandoned castle; that was just what it was. Several stories of empty rooms and forsaken halls, all for no one but my cat and me. Why, enough of this could- Almost spontaneously, Marjory stood from her place on the stairs beside me and hissed at the door. Not zaidi than a mere sekunde later, there was a knock. Frightened, I stifled a scream with my hand. Visitors were of rare sorts here. For miles, no other soul was present. Not one. A visitor…? Another knock sounded and I was left with no choice. With most reluctance, I walked down the stairs and to the doors. The doors made a creak from years of neglect, but they did open. And before my eyes was a man. A handsome sort of a man indeed. His hair as black as night, long, an absolute wild mess. His skin as pale as ivory, and even in the shadows of the moonlight, it had a glow. He wore a heavy black traveler’s cloak, the kind that I hadn’t seen since my father’s death ten years pass. And over his shoulder was a bag, an odd bag that squirmed. But the strangest thing about him was his eyes. Blue, bright and vivid. Haunting. Almost as if he could peer into your soul. Beautiful, haunting, and mysterious. Alluring, even. “What brings wewe here?” I demanded, “Just who are you?” With a quite charming smile, he answered me calmly, his voice as smooth and calming and a gentle breeze. “My apologies, miss. My name is Hartnell. Winston Hartnell. I have been travelling for nearly two fortnight’s pass, and I’m afraid I’ve grown quite weary and cannot travel any longer. I came across this place, and came merely to ask for a short rest. Please, may I stay a while? It shall be a short visit, I promise you, no zaidi than a single day.” I did not answer him immediately. Few people dared to venture here. Could this man really have come here just for a night’s rest? “Many apologies, miss,” he alisema when I did not answer, “I did not mean to intrude. If wewe wish me not to stay here, then so be it.” He turned, but most suddenly I reached out for him to grab the kofia of his cloak. “You are welcome to stay the night, Mr. Hartnell,” I alisema without expectation au explanation, “I will not turn away one who needs help.” Without another moment of hesitation, he turned back to me. And though his face did not plainly onyesha it, his eyes spoke relief. “Thank you, miss,” He took my hand to shake it, “Thank wewe so very much.” Without any sort of reluctance, Mr. Hartnell rushed inside and was quickly astounded kwa what he saw, kwa the looks of it. He stared endlessly at his surroundings, almost as if we hadn’t expected such things to lie in an abandoned castle. “My word,” he said, “I’ve never seen such a place. So very open, large, beautiful! Tell me Miss… Miss… I’m afraid I never caught your name.” “Vivian,” I said, closing the door with an almost melodic thud, “Vivian Driscoll.” “Ah, yes, well, Miss Driscoll, how many people do wewe accommodate here? Surely there must be dozens.” “Oh, no. I’m afraid my cat Marjory and I are the only ones here. Not a soul in the world dares to come near this place,” I said. He gave me a questioning glance as he climbed up the stairs, “A cat, wewe say?” He asked, “How appropriate! I have a cat myself.” Eagerly he took the squirming bag from his shoulder and opened it, reaching inside. A man travelling with his cat? How strange! How silly! Certainly he mustn’t have a cat with him! But alas, as he took a sleek black tom cat from his satchel, it was certain that he did. “I couldn’t have just leave him,” Mr. Hartnell said, petting his cat, “But he wouldn’t have come with me willingly. He’s been in my satchel the whole trip.” My jaw dropped at what he had said. Carrying a cat for two fortnights in a satchel? And to think that I was starting to wonder if I had gone mad merely a dakika ago! “Are wewe mad?” I said- perhaps yelled- as I approached him on the stairs, nearly stepping on Marjory, “Travelling with wewe cat in a satchel? My word! I’ve never heard of such things!” “I couldn’t have just left him,” he repeated, “I’ve had him since my childhood. He’s been my sole companion for such a long while that I could not bare without him. Surely wewe must feel something of the sort with your Marjory, correct?” He gave me a glance with his piercing eyes. He was not merely looking at me, he was kusoma me. au so it seemed. “Ah, my apologies. It was wrong of me to make assumptions.”

Ah... I see! A very interesting story, Excalibur!

FOOL! “Hey, Dahlia,” my twin sister Grace said, holding up a bright pink shati “what about this one? Guys will be tripping over their own feet for wewe if wewe wore this!” I groaned. Why was Grace so obssesed with pink? Not only was the shati pink, but it was cut low, too, and really ugly. And not the way we needed to be making ourselves look at our new school. Honestly, I didn’t think that Grace and I were related, we acted so different. “It looks like it needs a pair of hooker boots to go with it,” I said. Grace scoffed. “Its really hard to duka with you, after that coma of yours, wewe know.” I rolled my eyes. A little over a mwaka before, I had fallen into a coma and had gotten a slight case of amnesia. I knew who I was, my personal info such as my hair color, birthday, eyecolor, and inayopendelewa holiday, which is Halloween, that so happened to be my birthday. Grace told me that before my coma, I was just like her. Flirty, to put it nicely. Obviously, that’s not the way I was anymore. Not only had I changed in personality, but I had the strange feeling that someone was, au should be, looking for me. At first, I thought that it was scary, like a stalker that wewe knew was there, but couldn’t see. But then, it began to comfort me, and I felt as though I were loved enough to be searched for. I didn’t tell anyone, afraid they might think I was crazy and put me in the asylum, and also because I knew that they’d probably call the police to tafuta for my “stalker”, and it would be nothing and we’d be fined for prank calling. Despite the coma, however, I managed to keep my knowledge of things taught in school, and life lessons, and I was accually too advanced in science for my school, so I had to songesha to a new one. That’s why Grace and I were shopping for new clothes, to make an impression on the people in our new school, which we were going to start going to in a day. Why Grace picked the last dakika to go shopping, I’ll never know, but I did know one thing; Grace was going to get a ton of trouble the first siku dressed like that. Grace sighed “Why did Mom and Dad make us go to this school, anyway? Don’t they have that ‘distorying science exlamitories’ class at our old school?” I slapped my forehead. “Its ‘exploring science discovery’ , Grace, and no, our old school didn’t have it. This is the only school in the country that has that class.” Grace shrugged and went back to searching through the clothes for something pink again. I shook my head. Grace was such an airhead, and all this time it was blondes that had earned that reputation. I never did think that hair color had anything to do with it, and Grace proved the point that brunettes aren’t always smart. I didn’t have a to worry about that kind of stuff, though. My hair was orange. machungwa, chungwa with black highlights, actually. Naturally, too, and I don’t mean like how some redheads have orange-ish hair. This hair was really orange, like my eyes. Peculiar, yes, but natural. As natural as my long, kinanda playing fingers. I loved the kinanda and loved to play it, but I really loved the pipe organ. I couldn’t play, but for some reason the pipe organ had a familiar, comforting sound to it that I just couldn’t explain, as if I had heard it everyday for my entire life. Not that I could remember, but that’s just the way it was. Grace gave a joyful, excited scream from inayofuata to me. “This shati is so cute! I have to buy it!” I looked at the shirt. It was pink, surprise surprise, and buttoned up the front to about the end of the bust. It looked decent, as in unrevealing, but I had a feeling that grace would “forget” to button it up enough. I jumped up from my seat, almost tripping over my dress. “Are wewe done finally?” I asked her, a little inpatiance in my voice. Grace turned tward the shoes. “I need some shoes to go with it…” she said. I goaned. Grace was worse with the shoes than the shirts, and she’d want a matching mfuko wa fedha, mfuko and a new skirt, too, which were even worse than the shoes. We were going to be in there a long time. *** One eternity later (five hours), we finally left the mall. I hadn’t bought anything, I’d probably end up wearing a Halloween costume to school, anyway. Not a witch costume au anything like that, but something that actually looked and felt like everyday clothing. I wouldn’t worry about it that night, though. I’d pick it out in the morning. I went up to my room and flopped on my bed. I had just gotten my Halloween decorations put up, bookcase, kasha la vitabu moved in and stocked with books, room painted machungwa, chungwa with black trim, black floor-length curtains put up, and my portible keyboard put in. My cat, Eve, was sitting on my keyboard sleeping. Cats, I thought and giggled. As much as I disliked it, I walked over to her cat dish and filled it up and emptied out her litter box. Afterward, I sprayed my room with an autumn-sented air freshiner. Smells like fall, I thought, which was already here. Well, the season, at least. It was mid-October, October Tenth to be exact, and the leaves were gold, orange, red, and brown. I opened my curtains and peered out my window. It was night, and I couldn’t see the crisp colors of the trees outside, but I looked anyway. I knew they were there nonetheless. Even just thinking about them gave me a sense of comfort and a sensse of home, although I accually didn’t have many autumn-colored trees at my old house. I wondered if I lived near some before my coma? That, obviously, I’d never know. au will I? I dismissed the thought immediately. I had amnesia and I wasn’t going to get my memory back even if I plunged to my death from a four-hundred-fifty foot cliff, hoping that the adrenaline would start pumping and get my brain working correctly. The truth was, the door to my memories had been locked, and the key inside. Gone forever. But maybe, if what Grace alisema was true, maybe it was best left forgotten. Perhaps my amnesia had been some sort of weird blessing, au a gift of some sort I had asked for in a dream once au something. Maybe I even gave it to myself, maybe I crashed my head into something on purpose. But then again, my amnesia probly was just that. Amnesia. I walked over to my shina that was filled with all my Halloween costumes. I opened it up and dug through it. There was a certain costume I wanted to make sure I had. It was a floor-length, black buibui web dress with a pair of matching gauntlets and a parasol. I pulled several costumes until I found my buibui web one. I gasped in disbelief. There was a big rip down the side, as if it had been slashed through with a knife. I traced the cut with my finger and new that it wasn’t Eve. A cat scratch would have zaidi pieces hanging down and not just one, clean tear. It was impossible,though. My shina had a lock on it, and the moving people wouldn’t bother looking into it, would they? Even if they did, why would they have a knife, and why would they want to cut my dress? I didn’t do anything to them, did I? I knelt over my shina with the dress in my hands, like someone who had just Lost a loved one, which was somewhat correct. I had loved that dress, it was my favorite. Of course, I could sew it back up to where it was unnoticable, but it wouldn’t be the same. I would never be able to fix it back to the way it was. Although my fingers were good with sewing, they were better with piano. At least my vazi is okay, I thought as I folded up the dress and put it back in my trunk. I’d just have to find something different to wear to school, and it’d probably be an everyday, normal person outfit. Well, almost. If a black skirt, machungwa, chungwa peasent blouse, and black doll shoes counted as normal. Well, maybe that sort of did, except for the fact that I’d be wearing a black chocker with a jack-o-lantern with it. And a bat braclelet. And black cat earings. And I’d paint my nails machungwa, chungwa and black. Yeah, not so normal anymore. I walked over to my window again. I needed the fresh air to end my worry about the dress. I needed to go to sleep, too. It was going to be a long siku at school in the morning, and I was certainly not a morning person, but I lingered kwa my window instead. The wind started to blow a bit, bringing a nice breeze into my room, blowing into my shoulder-length hair. I breathed in, expecting to smell the crisp autumn air, but I smelled something foul. It smelled somewhat like blood, but yet somewhat the smell I expected from the underworld. Before we moved, I would have dismissed it as the smell of the city, but now that we were in a small, tiny, smelless town, I began to think about the possibilities when the leaves on the ground rustled outside. I turned off my light quickly, closed my window, and closed the curtains. I left a little peep hole in between them, though, to see if anyone was out there. My eyes adjusted quickly, and I saw something that vaguely resembled a human in the bushes. I blinked and it was gone. Huh. My eyesight must not be so great. au my ears, I thought. It was as good if a time than any, so I laid down on my bed, and fell asleep, escaping momentarily the fear that I had just experienced, and the anticipation of what was to come. Before I fell completely a sleep, however, I tried to think of happy thoughts, so possibably I could have a good dream. That didn’t work very well. *** I was on a train. Well, a subway, actually, but it wasn’t like I could really tell. There was only one window in the entire car, and it was so small that wewe were lucky if wewe could even catch a glimps of movement out of it. The light was yellow and dull, but it revealed the man across from me. He was asleep, and he looked as though he hadn’t shaved in a while, and his clothes where dirty, but he looked well bathed. He had no dirt on his skin, and he looked well fed. Huh. Well, that not really something wewe see everyday, I thought. As soon as I did, the light lit up a little bit, inaonyesha me another passenger. He looked like a teenage, emo kid. His shati was black with gray-black horizontal stripes, he had a spiked jacket, snake bites, hair covering one eye, a pair of scuffed, high juu sneakers, and skinny jeans. He turned to look at me. His eyes were blacker than the blackest hole in the universe. His skin was rotting too, and his jaw only hanging on to his skull kwa a piece of skin. I tried to be polite “Er, hello there,” I said. He glared at me harshly and turned away once again. The light flickered once more. I tried to close my eyes so I wouldn’t see anymore passengers, but they where glued open, as if the emo boy had stapled them with his dark-as-death glare. I glanced around, looking for help, but the only new thing I saw was a woman in a white, blood splattered dress holding a blood covered package tied up with veins in one hand, and a bloody kisu in the other. Her eyes were pure white, but her face has streaming with blood, as if she where crying it. Her hair was a light blonde and kept in pigtails with two, blood covered white pigtails. She had puppet strings, too. And when I looked up, nobody was controlling them. She had a bloodied eye patch covering her left eye. She looked as though she had just gotten done with a murder. Oh goodness! I thought. I covered my nose; the smell of blood was coming off of her quiet strongly. Not that it really helped though, it still reeked of blood so much that I stifled a bit. The light lit up all the way, revealing the rest of the horrific passengers, with grim faces and horrendous features that could never be discribed. And they where all looking at me. And what was I supposed to do other than stare back? A man with a noose around his neck stepped mbele in front of me. “Whats wrong, little girl?” his voice was gravely, and a little scary “Can’t handle a little blood? You’ve gotten on the wrong train if that’s your problem!” I held my nose tighter. He reeked, too. Of rotting meet and poo. I bent over a bit sideways and shut my eyes, which weren’t glued open any longer. I had no desire to smell au see any passengers. This can’t be happening. This just can’t be happening! I thought, hoping it would all just go away. The noose man scoffed. “Come on, guys. Let’s onyesha her what it’s like on the Dark Train!” At that, all of the passengers, including the homeless man who had been sleeping, slowly shuffled toward me. There was nothing I could do but scream, but that certainly didn’t stop the mob from moving closer and closer to me. I felt them all pulling me out of my seat, trying to lift me up. For what reason, I didn’t know, but I sure didn’t want to find out, but I knew I was going to. They jolted me upward, braking the lightbulb, which made it completely dark, except for the slight glowing of a starting fire. I’m going to die! I though I’m going to die on some, dark, smelly subway because of some…undead creatures! The man with the noose shouted “The girl has started a fire! She’s tryin’ to kill us!” I wanted to tell him that it was his own fault for lifting me up in the air like that, but when I opened my mouth to speak, the only thing that came out was a squeek that was quieter than the slight ringing of a dog whistle. “What’d ya say we do wit’ ‘er?” another man spoke. I couldn’t see him, au anyone else, through the fire-lit darkness, but I could still feel their cold, harsh stares on me. I was afraid of what the noose-man might say, knowing it would be dreadful. Terrified, I let out another squeek. That, of course, didn’t help the situation any. The mob of the undead was hooting and holloring, waiting for the man to speak. I was sweating like crazy, and also waiting to hear my fate. I breathed quickly and began to hypervenalate. I knew that I was going to die, even if I was left in the subway, I’d burn, and there was no telling what kind of doom lay ahead of me. The only thing I could hope for was an unpainful, easy, quick demise. The man cleared his throat, which must have been quite painful with that tight nose, that is , if he could feel pain. “Heave ‘er outta the train!” He shouted, “Castigate ‘er for embarking the wrong trip!” The mob gave a jovial shout and commenced in heading to the emergency door of the car. Please no, I thought Please, let me live. I did nothing to deserve this! But no matter how much I thought it, the horde certainly didn’t hear and wouldn’t sojourn their newfound duty to slay me. The odor of the ongoing blaze was starting to make me lightheaded, as if I had breathed in much of the smoke. Death was near to me, I could tell, and there was certainly no chance that I would make it out of this so called “Dark Train” alive, not ever. In addition, I had am outlandish thought that if I faced death on this train, I’d jiunge the masses of the undead. The flock opened up the door, where it was night outside, and I could see easily that it was not a subway, but just a train going through a very dark part of the world. I tightly shut my eyes. This is the end, I thought. My existence is falling to ruins. The inferno had crept on me steadily, nearer than anything in my life. Everything ends. The crowd was about to toss me. Nothing lasts forever. I began to cry. There is no escape. The blood-covered girl held her kisu to my neck. I’m going to die! Unexpectedly, the train slowed to a stop. The swarm seemed to glance around from place to place from what I couldn’t see, and they had all paused in massacuring me. I looked where they seemed to be looking, which was the door to the engineer’s station. It had previously been dark with no trace of light whatsoever, but now it seemed blindingly bright, as if the sun itself lay behind. The door opened, and out stepped an uncoutable number of people. Well, their silhouettes. One of them, who seemed to be the leader, pulled out a long blade, whiched looked somewhat like a katana, and the others fallowed his movements. “You put her down now,” the leader said, his voice had a familiar ring to it, like I had heard it all the time at some point. His voice was strong, too, as if he was unbothered kwa the flames au the undead. A certain, comfortable warmth. The bloodied woman help her kisu out to the leader of the rival group as a threat. Not that they where bothered kwa it, they all pointed their blades at her. She was outnumbered kwa far, and no one in the undead had weapons except for her. The woman cackled. “You really think wewe can distroy the-” She never got to finish that sentence, because the living had cut her head off in one, mwepesi, teleka movement. Like an army of samurai. I was dropped, the upper part of my back and everything above it over the side of the train, about to fall. And then the fight between the living and the undead began fiercely. I could hear the leader of the living calling to the members of his group, but he nor anybody else didn’t seem to notice that I was about ready to plummet to my dearh au that he was about ready tp be burnt to a deadly crisp. I was going to yell for help knowing that nobody had seen me when I saw the homless man walk right into the conductor’s station. I didn’t get the chance to wonder what he was doing before it happened. The train started to songesha again. And off in the near distance, I could see a tunnel. And if the train kept going, I would hit it. And I would die. I tried to scream again, but I couldn’t. I had breathed in some smoke and it had dried ou my throut, making me unable to speak, let alone scream. Even so much as breathing hurt me now. I tried getting up, but my legs were about as stable as jelly. My arms weren’t of much use, either. I guessed it had to do with my fall, I had hit pretty hard. I needed something to distract me from the pain. For a minute, I listened to the battle of the living and undead. It sounded as though the living were losing, although they had not Lost a member from what I could see, but because the undead were, well, already dead, making it almost impossible to kill them again. But I kept hope in the living. None of them had been killed in this battle, and they had somehow defeated some of the undead, not a lot but some of them were dead once more, so I wanted to think that they would eventualy triumph. But hope was running thin; the moto was about to ingulf them. I looked around dispite my stinging eyes and got a look at the leader of the living’s silhouette, and if his profaili was as half as striking as the rest of him was, then he had to be the best looking person ever known to mankind. From the looks of it, he was tall and had the build of a fighter, except he was much zaidi elegantly sized than any guy I’d seen. And he didn’t quite fight like a ruthless warrior, either. His movement, though accurate, had been done with swift, classy strokes. Who is this guy? I thought. I think I know him from somewhere. Yes, his body frame was familiar, and I could almost see what the rest of him looked like in my mind. And I knew that fighting style, but I just couldn’t pull out a memory of who he was and what signifigance he had, that amnesia could be very tricky at times, and something in the back of my mind told me to stay away and that he was not who I thought he was. But I was drawn out of my daze quickly as the moto began to burn at my left leg. My pant leg was burning out of control, and my leg itself was burning like the sun. I tried to songesha my leg, but I just couldn’t, so then I tried to sit up a bit, but I felt like I was strapped down. But I wasn’t even close to giving up hope. I let out a a slight scream, and to my pleasant surprise, I was able to let out zaidi than just a little one. The fighting stopped and a few of the people looked at me. I didn’t look at them, but I looked out if the train car. The tunnel was coming closer and closer, and I would hit it soon if I wasn’t saved in time. And suddenly I heard someone shout “Ut suus! Unus nos erant prex impetro! Is est in incendia! Adepto suus! Nos ero iuguolo si nos operor non!” Was it… Spanish? German? Dutch? Itailian? I didn’t know, and I had zaidi important things to worry about. Like the moto creeping up my leg and getting a little too near my vital organs than I’d like and the tunnel that was going to kill me. And also the new mob of the undead charging at me again. But they just weren’t quick enough. The living were now picking hem up and tossing them into the fire. But that wasn’t enough. The living where outnumbered still, and the undead kept crawling out of the fire. But it was stalling them, which a back part of my mind knew that was what was being intended. And that back part of my mind, took complete control of my body. I stood up, barely, just in time to be saved from the ukuta of the tunnel. I faced everyone else on the train and swooshed my hip to one side, crossing my arms defiantly. I took a step au two forward, moving into the middle of it all, feeling a peculiar power take over me, as if I could do anything, and sang a strange song. “Pro totus illorum quisnam obviam ire mihi, Ego addo terminus vobis, Vos mos nunquam respiro, Vos mos nunquam animadverto lumen, quod via vos offendo vereor nobis, vadum exsisto haud magis!” After I alisema it, I had collapsed upon the floor once again, the back part of my mind drawing back, and right as soon as an machungwa, chungwa haze over took the train, and an explosion much like a bomb errupted, blinding me. I heard screams of pain, defeat, and death. A dramatic ending of my voyage on the so called “Dark Train”, but something told me that I wasn’t about to die, and neather where the living passengers, and that the undead were the only ones dissapearing. And as quickly as it had come, the blinding light had faded away, allowing me to see once more. The first thing a noticed, however, was that I was being held kwa someone, a man. “Ego coniecto Ego have instituo vos , Nex,” he said, and I recognized his voice that of the one who had been leading “Nos must secui pro iam, tamen nos vadum opportunus ocius quam vos reputo,” he let out a small sigh, “Ego teneo vos mos non agnosco meus lacuna, tamen Ego diligo vos. Usquequaque memor ut.” Once again, I wondered what was being said, and what language, but again I had no time to worry. I didn’t need to, actually. That other part of my mind was taking me over again, and I alisema to him, “Ego teneo. Quod Volo vos ut memor, ut Ego diligo vos, quoque. Haud res quis Inquam laxus, Ego diligo vos. Haud res quis Ego operor, Ego diligo vos. Haud res quantus Ego mos denego is, Ego diligo vos. Haud res quantus Ego mos contemno vos, Ego mos diligo vos.” To be honest, I didn’t have a clue what I had said, but he did. “Vos es non tutus etiamnunc,” he said, but this time I knew what the language was that everyone seemed to be speaking. Of all things, it had to be a dead language. Latin. *** I woke up on the floor, sweating, gasping for air, clutching the skin over my heart, my legs aching, eyes stinging, and throat sore, just as they had before. It was just a dream, I thought Just a dream clearing out my stress before school today. I remembered with shock. School. I forced myself up off the ground and over to my closet quickly, glancing past the outfit I had originally planned to wear and straight to an machungwa, chungwa kobe, kasa neck shati and a plain pair of black jeans. Yes, the jeans, if played up right, might have been worthy of a label such as emo, but with an machungwa, chungwa kobe, kasa neck, it could be nothing other than Halloween. Besides, the jeans were comfortable, and I had the strange lust to be comfortable. Possibly because I had hurt myself falling out of kitanda during my nightmare and I wanted every possible inch of my body to feel as if in luxury, but I assumed it was probably that and the fact that I was stressed about going to a new school. I ran a brush through my hair until all the knots where out, but the waves in my hair just would not seem to dissapear, as usual, so I ended up leaving it alone. Unlike Grace, I wasn’t going to spend about seven hours trying to give myself a perm au adding volume au whatever else she did with her hair. I just didn’t see the point. I stared into my full length mirror, something I only did when I needed some assurance from someone who I could accually trust. Yes, a strange person to trust, but I just couldn’t trust my parents to give me the full truth, and certainly not Grace. I sighed at my reflection. “Just tough it out, okay? You’ll be fine. Who knows? There might be some good looking guys- not the kinds Grace pick out, but actual people- and there may be some people like wewe there to make Marafiki with. If wewe don’t have confidence, your fear will show, and wewe won’t be starting off on the right foot,” I told myself, and some strange way, I didn’t quiet feel as though it was me who alisema it, but I knew it was right nonetheless. I had to be confident. I had to pull out all of the class I could. Otherwise, I’d end up like the people I disliked. I straightened my back up, took in a deep breath and then let it out slow, stretched out my pianist fingers, and channeled my inner sophisticated lady. It wasn’t that had, actually, if wewe knew how to do it right. I walked down to the first floor of our new nyumbani and into the car. Right as I got in, I had the feeling that it was not going to be the best siku in my life kwa any means. Chapter 2 I walked into the school feeling almost like a kindergardener on their very first siku of school, but I didn’t onyesha it. I had conjnoured up every bit of elegance I could find, which was a surprising amount, and walked in with my head held high, keeping any and all emotions that could possibly ruin my siku inside. But yet I couldn’t hide the truth from myself; I wasn’t going to know anybody, and being as Halloween obsessed as I was, they were probably going to shun me. But Grace would make about five million new Marafiki to eat lunch with, and I’d be left all alone with no one to talk to. At least at my old school I had some people from science class to talk to, even though they weren’t exactly my “friends”. I walked right into my first saa class, English, Right as soon as the kengele rang. There weren’t that many people in there, probably around twenty, and none of them were staring at me; not what I had anticipated, but a good thing nonetheless. It meant that I might be considered normal there. The teacher, who was Miss Kylin accourding to my schedule, looked up at me from some tests she was grading. Her eyes where silvery and held great wisdom in them, but something about that wisdom made me want to cringe and run away, but almost right after I had seen them, I noticed that she was nothing to fear. She was older, and her face was creased in many directions. She gave me a sweet, denture-filled, old lady smile. She stood up from her chair and faced the class and clapped her hands twice. “Class! Here is the new student I’ve been telling wewe about; Dahlia Lane,” she announced “First things first, Dahlia, we need to find someone to help wewe find your way around school.” She glanced around the classroom quickly before deciding. “Dante, let me see your schedule.” Immediately a boy got up and handed Miss Kylin his schedule and I almost had a moyo attack. It wasn’t because he was ugly au anything. Accually, he was the best looking guy I’d seen sence I could remember. But yet that still wasn’t the reason, either. His hair was the same color as mine; black and machungwa, chungwa and it looked completely natural. And his eyes were as machungwa, chungwa as mine, too. And there was something about him, his aura au something, that reminded me of myself. And not only that, but there seemed to be some instant connection between us, evem though I hadn’t talked to him any. Miss Kylin glanced over his schedule and trned to me, extending an arm. “Let me see your schedule, Dahlia,” she said. I handed it to her and she glanced it over quickly, then compared it to Dante’s. She laid down the papers and alisema “Alright, Dante, wewe have all your classes with Dahlia. I expect wewe to help her around the school, okay?” He nodded. “No problem,” he said. His voice filled me with a warmth, but it was an eerie warmth. Great, I thought I’m going to have to spend the siku with a guy who looks like me. So much for being considered normal on my first day. “And Dahlia,” Miss Kylin started “if he gives wewe any trouble, come straight to me and I’ll take care of it, okay?” I nodded. Miss Kylin handed me an English textbook and I took my seat, which was unfortunaltly inayofuata to my new stalker named Dante. I signed my name into the front of my textbook and listened to Miss Kylin talk to the class. “Now, I know wewe children have this new obsession with this ‘texting’ and ‘IM’ craze that I don’t understand,” she alisema “and wewe often don’t capitalize your sentences au use puncuation, so this section, we are going to go over proper puncuation and…” *** sekunde period, which was history, was zaidi boring than English. My teacher, Mr. Thompson, talked in a monotone, and was kusoma everything he alisema out of a book the whole time, making his voice muffled along with boring. It also smelled in that room. It was the old health room, and it smelled as though some of the things dissected in there hadn’t left the room yet. And my new stalker didn’t talk to me until we were on our way to third period. “Is machungwa, chungwa your inayopendelewa color au something?” he asked randomly. I looked at him for a few seconds, which was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done, and wondered why he would ask such a bila mpangilio question. “Well, machungwa, chungwa and black, really. Why do wewe ask?” He shrugged. “You’re just wearing a lot of orange, that’s all.” I just looked at him again and for the first time I noticed he was wearing a black suit with an machungwa, chungwa long-sleeved shati underneath and a pair of machungwa, chungwa gloves. A strange thing for a teenaged boy to wear to school, yes. But it looked really good on him. “Well, wewe have some room to talk,” I alisema sarcasticly, and he laughed like I had made a corny joke. “And wewe have a quick tounge,” he said. “You know it! It won a marathon last week.” He laughed again. “See what I mean?” I shook my head. “Nope. I’m blind.” “No you’re not!” “How would wewe know?” “I’m using your eyes right now.” “Uh huh. Yeah that’s so not defying the laws of science at all.” “I know, right?” “Besides, you’d have to be delusional to see he kind of things I can see,” I alisema even zaidi sarcastaclly than before “I saw a upinde wa mvua clover riding down a stairwayof clouds on a purple uyoga the other day!” He gasped sarcasticlly “You saw that, too? Nobody believed me; they never believe us poor people who are forced to build castles in the sky just so we can have sand for breakfast.” We both laughed. “Yeah, sand from Belgium tastes best. A real luxury item, I hear!” I said, about ready to fall down from laughing. “No it’s the sand from Mercury that tastes the best!” “Do they even have sand on Mercury?” ` “Not in this galaxy, but in the galaxy of Fligerbarb they do!” “Fligerbarb?” He nodded. “Home of those twisty fries!” I laughed. “This conversation doesn’t even make sense anymore!” I looked at his eyes, and he looked at mine, his eyes just overflowing with sparkles of playful micheviousness. “Did it ever?” he asked We both laughed in an agreement that the conversation was pointless, random, and a good way to make a new friend, whish I had a feeling that we both knew that was exactly what we had just done. “Come on,” He alisema “We need to ge to health now. Otherwise Fernando will count me late again.” “Shouldn’t that be Mr. Fernando au something like that?” He shrugged. “He wantsus to call him kwa his first name. Something about equal rights and how most teachers think that they’re superior to students because they’re teachers. I don’t know. Anyway, I think you’ll like him. He’s…original, for lack of a better word. I laughed. “That’s a nice way to talk about your teachers.” “Just stating facts, that’s all.” He turned to a purple door and walked inside. I fallowed him, and my nose was immediately greeted kwa the strong smell of burning insences and candles. I could see all the candles burning, and there were purple tapestries and cloths hanging on the walls, and the windows were covered kwa thick purple curtains that let in no light whatsoever. The only light in the entire room was coming from those candles, which let off enough light to write, but only enough so I could just barely see Dante in front of me, but somehow they let off enough light to be able to see the purple tapestries and curtains. “Uh, Dante,” I said, “are wewe sure we’re in the right classroom?” He chuckled. “I told wewe that Fernando is original.” He took his kiti, kiti cha and pointed to the one inayofuata to him. “Your last name is Lane, right? You’re going to sit right there. “Oh,” I alisema “Are we sitting in alphabetical order or…?” “We are,” he replied “Didn’t I tell wewe that my last name is Lake?” “Oh that makes sense now. I guess I should have known that our last names are close together, considering wewe sit kwa me in every class we’ve had so far.” “And all the ones to go later, too.” “Oh, yeah, I guess you’re right. I guess that’s the reason Miss Kylin chose wewe too look after me, huh?” He nodded, but something wasn’t quite right. He seemed gloomy now, like mentioning the fact that Miss Kylin had chosen him to take care of me had bothered him somehow. From what little I could see of his eyes in the weird lighting, they had been glazed over with almost-tears, as if he were going to cry, but was determined not to. Maybe he’s bipolor, I thought, but that didn’t seem even slightly likely. Even though I had just met him, I felt like I had known him forever, and the possibility of bipolor disorder seemed unlikely for him. “Now,” he said, his voice cracking a bit, as if he were holding back tears about to fall, but he bounced back quickly as he alisema “Fernando is not going to make a big deal about wewe being a new student like our awali teachers. Saving wewe from further embarasment, yes, but wewe wont know what we've been studying.” “Then tell me what you’ve been studying!” He had opened his mouth to answer me when the kengele rang, and Fernando burst into the room and alisema “Okay! We are going to have a chemsha bongo today over what we’ve been going through!” My moyo sank and I gave a quiet sigh. “Dante,” I whispered urgently. God, I loved his name “what were wewe studying?” He leaned across the isle way between our desks, smoothly avoiding any candles. “The human brain.” I leaned back in my chair and relaxed all of my muscles and gave a sigh of relief. “Well that’s easy enough.” Dante looked at me as if I were crazy, then his face showed zaidi of a understanding, comprehending look. “So wewe studied it at your old school before wewe came here, right?” I shook my head. “No, I just know the human brain, that’s all.” Dante looked as though he were about to say something, and maybe hold himself from crying again, but Fernando was going on. “Now,” he alisema “as wewe all know, I am going to play some muziki to help wewe focus, but this time, I want some input from wewe guys. Any requests?” There were shouts of names of rappers, pop singers, rock bands, boy bands, and quite a few of them I knew, but only because of Grace. And from the sounds of it, the class didn’t have a very good taste in muziki at all. “Okay okay, let me rephrase that. Any requests for something that I accually have?” The class quiet, but Dante, seeming to again have Lost any signs of tears au sadness, piped in “Play D. Rusle like wewe did last week.” My moyo skipped a beat with pure excitement. “You know about them? wewe know about them?” I asked him with a pleasently surprised ring in my voice. “Duh. Anyone with a brain that hasn’t been rotted away kwa rap muziki knows them. In fact, they’re my inayopendelewa band right now. au group, accually.” “Mine too! The song Within these ruins is-” I was cut off kwa Fernando tapping something on a nearby dawati to scilence me. “Well, since everyone but Dante and Dahlia picked crap that, as Dante just explained, rots your brain, we are, in fact, going to D. Rusle. And since Dahlia seems to like Within these ruins, which is very understandable, that’s what I’m going to play.” I giggled with excitement and gave Dante a high-five with the class groaned and Fernando passed out the test. My first thoughts about today had been completely wrong, and now I only wondered if Grace’s siku was as good as mine so far. *** On our way to lunch, which was after third period, Dante and I were still in good moods. Maybe the inscence that Fernando had been burning was accually a drug, and we had gotten higher than kites off of it. But that wasn’t likely. Not likely at all. “Oh, Dahlia, sit with me at lunch,” Dante alisema in a bright and cheery voice “I want to introduce wewe to my friends. You’ll like them. They’re your style.” “Well if they’re like you, then I definitely will.” He chuckled a bit. “I guess they are. I never really would have classified them like that, but I suppose that’s because I’m just not observant enough to notice that, au at least with them,” he shrugged his shoulders. “Aww, come on, Dante. You’re observant and wewe know it. Admit it!” a voice sounded from behind us and we both urned around. There stood a tall, skinny blonde girl dressed in fancy clothes. She stood elegantly, and I imediately knew that she had to be one of Dante’s Marafiki kwa the tone of her voice, and I also had a feeling that we would get along well. Dante made a growling sound in his throut. “Cassandra, don’t scare me like that!” Cassandra was laughing now. Between giggles, she asked “Who is the beatiful girl wewe picked up now?” “Oh, this is Dahlia Lane. Didn’t wewe see her in-oh yeah, wewe skipped your first two classes today, didn’t you?” She nodded. “Of course. I hate Tuesday mornings,” she shrugged “So what’s the deal? Is Dahlia your long-lost-sister au something? wewe two look alike.” “Well, wewe know, we look alike, Cassandra, and we aren’t related.” A boy that looked like Cassandra came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. They were obviously dating. “Oh, Cyrus you’re so crazy sometimes.” Cassandra said, and Cyrus gave her a quick kiss. “Where’s Athena and Azriel?” Dante asked. Cyrus scoffed. “Who knows? Probably at the table. Maybe talking to Theresa about... wewe know. Who knows what they’re doing?” he let out a sigh of annoyance, but he was glanding to the side, looking at something. “Uh oh. Dante, wewe might want to run now.” Dante went stiff. “Please don’t tell me. Please don’t.” Cyrus held back laughter, and to the left of us, someone shouted “Hey! Dante Wante! Guess who?” Dante groaned in displeasure and buried his face in his hands. “Oh that’s just lovely. Man, I thought today was going to be a good day!” “I’m confused!” I chimed in. Cassandra and Cyrus were laughing as a girl when light-brown hair ran up and clung on to Dante’s side, burying her head into it. “I missed wewe so much over the weekend!” she exlaimed. Dante made let out another groan and pushed the brown haired girl away. “Go away, Theresa. Just leave me alone,” he said. “Awwwwwwwwwwwww I thought we were eating lunch together today!” She shouted. I wondered if she was always this loud? “What in the world gave wewe that idea?” he said, and without waiting for an answer, he stormed off into the cafeteria. Everybod but Theresa fallowed him inside. I caught up to him and tapped on his shoulder. “What was that about?” I asked. Dante just glared ahead and sat down at a meza, jedwali with two people, a boy and a girl with flame red hair and moss green eyes, who I guessed where Athena and Azriel. They were giggling, and I guessed that they knew what had happened outside. Cassandra came up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. “Theresa has a bit of a crush on Dante, and thinks that they’re dating,” She giggled for a sekunde “This one time, she came running up to him and tried toa kiss him! He shoved her off and she just walked up beside him and tried to hold his hand. He smaked her right across the cheek!” Everyone, including Dante, was laughing at what Cassandra had just told me, reliving the memory, I guessed. We were all seated now, and to my surprise, I felt comfortable sitting there, like I belonged. I probably did, much zaidi so than I would with any other group of people. Athena and Azriel were dressed differently than most other people. Athena had her hair shoulder-length pigtails I tight, doll-like curls. She was softly pale, as if her face were painted. She was wearing a military-styled black dress, but that was only the juu half; the neck went all the way up with small shoulder pads, along with the kikale, kale fashioned military buttons. But the knee-length skirt, upindo of the dress poofed out like a dome with grey lace trimming. There was a grey-laced bow in the back I could tell. Her long sleves poofed out with lacy ends. She wore high-heeled boots that stopped just under her knees. She looked like a hand-painted victorian doll. Azriel was pale and victorian-styled as well, except he was zaidi like a prince than a doll. His outfit was so dark that wewe could barely see the stripes in his clothes, and his ujumla, jumla look was undiscribeable. “Hey, Dahlia,” Athena said. I didn’t know how she knew my name, but I soon recognized her face from my English class. “Is it okay if I call wewe Dolly? Since it kinda sorta sounds like Dahlia, that is.” The thought of being called Dolly was amusing to me partly because she looked zaidi like a doll than I did. “Okay, sure. Why not?” For no apparent reason, everyone at our meza, jedwali errupted with laughter. It wasn’t clear to me what was so funny, but I laughed with them; I had a feeling that there wasn’t a reason for the explosion of laughter except that was just the way they were, and I had a feeling that every lunch period from now on was going to be a good one. Averelle was the first to end the laughter. “What did she do to wewe this time?” He asked, obviously talking about Theresa. Dante rolled his eyes. “She ran up and clung to my side and alisema we were going to eat together todday. Again.” He sighed, but the rest of us were laughing. I liked Dante’s friens, and kwa the looks of it, they didn’t mind me do much, either. In fact, it felt like a good possibility that we’d all become best friends. Cassandra looked around the cafeteria, then smiled mischoviously at Dante. “You’ve got a bit of a problem coming your way, Dante. Time to think of a plan. Fast!” Dante slamed his head into the meza, jedwali a few times and groaned. Then he looked at me with a very strange, mischivous grin, like the one Cassandra gave him. “Dahlia, wewe are going to pretend to be my girlfriend now and any other time Theresa comes around!” “What?” I half yelled “What are wewe thinking? Where’s my say in this?” Dante was laughing now. “Just go along with it!” he alisema in between laughs. He put my hand in his, making it look as realistic as possible. I even felt like I was his girlfriend, we played it so well. I was uncomfortable with it, however, and was about ready to object and pull away from him when Theresa ran up and wrapped her arms around his neck, rubbing her face into his hair. “Come on, Dante!” She yelled “Come sit with me outside! We can have a cute little picnic and-” she noticed that Dante and I were holding hands “What is this?” she yelled, letting go of Dante’s neck and stepping back. I noticed that everybody but us at that meza, jedwali was holding back roaring laughter, and I was sure that once Theresa would storm off, it would rush out louder than a frieght train. Dante also looked like he was going to burst out in hysterics as he alisema “Oh, this is Dahlia. She’s my girlfriend.” Now I was about to crack up; that emphasis he put on “She’s my girlfriend” was amazing. But Theresa was absolutely furious. “But Dante! Your mine!” she looked close to fake-crying now. Dante slapped her across the cheek with his free hand “I have no idea what makes wewe think that, but I’m not. I’m Dahlia’s.” He turned to face me and caressed my cheek, still looking as if he were about to explode. He turned back to face Theresa. Her face was hystarical; her mouth was wide open, she was glaring from me to Dante, and her eyes were brimming with fake-tears. She tried slapping Dante, but he reacted quickly, almost too quickly, and stopped her. “I can’t believe you!” she screamed. Dante rolled his eyes and said, “You’re an idiot, Theresa. Go away.” Theresa opened her mouth even wider and she stormed off, screaming dramaticly, fake crying out the cafeteria. We waited until she was completely out of earshot to start laughing, and we sat there for several dakika just laughing at the whole situation, and even when we were finished, I still felt like I was still laughing, at it felt good. Satisfying, even. We all sat there in silent laughter for a few moments, and I suddenly realized that Dante was still holding my hand and showed no signs if letting go any time soon, and he didn’t seem to be aware that he was doing it, but yet looked completely natural doing it, and that he wasn’t aware of it because he wasn’t thinking about it because he had done it for so long. “Er, Dante,” I alisema “Why are wewe still holding my hand? Theresa left a while ago.” He drew his hand back and turned his face around to where I couldn’t see it, but I saw how bright pink his face becamewith embarassment, and I knew immidately that I shouldn’t have busted him. After several several moments, Dante turned back to me, his eyes screaming the depression that I had seen earlier, but deeper and zaidi sorrowful than before. “Uh, sorry about that. I guess I forgot what I was doing.” His eyes screamed to me, telling me he had spoken the truth. The rest of lunch went kwa nicely after that, and Theresa didn’t come back, which they all thought was odd, but we all agreed that it was because Theresa thought I was Dante’s girlfriend, then Dante playfully tried to kiss me, and I playfully pushed him away, and then we fake-flirted all through the rest of lunch. It was a complete riot. I never would have guessed it was this great having friends.

FOOL! I really dislike Mother’s Day. Also, Father’s siku and Valentine’s Day. But, let’s just stick with Mother’s siku for now. I dislike the fact that people need to be told to honor their Mother on this one special day. It’s a great money making siku for the gift shops and card companies. Mother’s siku is a hard siku for many to endure. I almost think there are zaidi people who are upset than are delighted with the holiday. Think about it. It’s a reminder for those whose mothers have passed away that she’s not with them any longer. Losing a mother is a hard thing to get over and mwaka after mwaka it can be hard to be reminded that yours in no longer here. It’s also a reminder to those who aren’t able to be a mother. How hard is it siku after siku not having that child to hold and seeing people all around them having what they long to have. Then to add insult to injury there is a holiday to rub it in. To see the commercials and crave to have a child is unbearable. It’s just one zaidi way to reinforce their lack. Then, there are the mothers who have Lost a child. Some before they were even able to hold in their arms. Their hopes and dreams are washed away with their tears. Single moms and mothers with inconsiderate mates can feel left out when all the other moms are receiving flowers and gifts and they are left empty handed. Personally, as a young mother I always felt pressured and didn’t think I measured up when comparing myself to all the accolades thrown around on that holiday. TV, radio, newspaper ads bombard us with the perfect “mother scenario”. Ever see a Mother’s siku commercial portraying a mother who Lost it and is yelling at their children? A mother who couldn’t get the birthday cake frosted without it looking like a lump of clay? A mother in sweat pants, no makeup, dried chakula on her shoulder and hair sticking out on one side? Nothing less than perfect is portrayed. With all the advertising now days it is nigh to impossible to get away from reminders. Here’s the deal. Daily, we should onyesha appreciation to our mothers – to each other in general. Flowers, cards, gifts, encouraging words au a hug around the neck on any aliyopewa siku are zaidi treasured than the ones delivered when the calendars prompts. Yes, I will honor my Mother and my daughters-in-law this Sunday. But, all mwaka long I kuoga them with gifts and words of upendo and appreciation. Go ahead, jiunge the masses on Mother’s siku but for crying out loud, don’t think you’re done for a year. We never know what tomorrow will bring. Make sure wewe appreciate what’s right in front of wewe each day.

Dammit, how do wewe write that fast?

(OOC: it's copy-and-paste...)

FOOL!

My legend began several years ago, in the August of my youth. au perhaps it was October, au November, perhaps even January! au April and May, but I must say that October sounds about right. Although January is the perfect time of mwaka to start a legend. No, no it WAS October, and a fabulous October it was indeed! I was fighting in the American Revolution with George Clooney as my meister.It was a very glorious summer, and all of the babes were rubbing my golden hilt. I was quite the dhahabu old boy in youth, and quite the ruffian, but still refined. Things have changed since then, and although I am still refined, I am not the bad boy I was once, although I can still pose quite the threat among the youth of today! It reminds me of the days when I used to baby sit King Henry VIII in his childhood long before he was a king. As amazing as I am, I protected that boy from everything, from Wanyonya damu to ghosts to his Aunt Charlotte's kubeba hugs. She had a beard, that Charlotte... They say that a woman with a beard is a man, but what of a man with no beard? Does that make him a woman? Ah, the maswali of the world. And the moral of this story is, never eat waffles after the 8th of August.

yes I did and it was quite interesting... I dare myself to read every maoni people will make about my majibu no matter how long it is ;D