Keita and Amber

This is a scene from an unpublished prequel of Keita's Wings. Keita has been summoned by her mother, queen of the Sprites, to learn more about a queen's job. 

Keita always paused when she entered the courtyard. Rows of silver flowers grew against the dark green hedges, and mosses of all shades covering the ground. Keita’s eye was drawn to her mother, who sat in an ornate wooden throne at the front of the room. With long blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and a sparkling silver dress, she stood out like a beacon in the dark green room.

Rushing footsteps interrupted. Keita looked up as a bony Lectran woman ran into the courtyard. “Amber! How good to see you!” she gushed.

Keita rolled her eyes at the woman’s exuberance, but her mother didn’t seem to mind. “Hello, Poppy. How are you today?”

As the woman and her mother gabbed on, Keita forced her face into an interested expression and stopped listening. She hardly noticed as the woman left and another took her place. From that moment on, the courtyard was never empty. As soon as one person left, another took their place. Some just wanted to talk, some asked questions, and a few brought disagreements for the queen to solve. Keita’s mother talked and joked with them, and none seemed to leave unhappy.

Finally a group of Mer girls left, and the courtyard was quiet again. Keita looked at her mother. “So queens talk to people all day?”

Her mother grinned. “It’s a hard job, but someone’s got to do it.”

The Sick Camp

The Sick Camp: The Spectra United (Keita's Wings book 2) sneak peek 

Posted by Christie V Powell on August 8, 2016 at 12:25 PM

The smell hit her first, rank with decay and death. A man with no foot sprawled across the ground in front of them, changing his own bandages. Two children were lying a few feet away, wrapped in blankets, their faces covered in red marks. Keita scanned the camp for a sign of a well person—surely someone was taking care of these people. She saw no one.

“Keita, wait.”

She hadn’t realized she’d moved until she heard Brian’s warning. She bit her lip. He was right—if she healed these people, they’d join the other camp, and stories about inhuman healers would spread like wildfire. Humans couldn't know about Spectra, she knew that, but how could she just stand here when she had the power to heal them?

Amala charged into the crowd, searching for her father. Across the camp, a boy staggered in, pulling a cart. He stopped, dropped the crosspiece, and helped a frail old man out of the cart. Next he lifted out a small child, and another… how many people fit in there?

The older boy looked up. “Did you come back to help?”

Keita couldn’t speak.

“Some people come help. But they get sick too. I’ve lasted longer than most. That’s my dad. My mom caught the fever, and then my brothers, and my sister’s got it…”

The little girl in his arms was listless, her face red under the dirt. Her eyes were open, though, and when her brother stopped talking she focused on Keita, as though the girl knew she could make a difference. How could Keita not help?

Suddenly Brian whipped the pack off of his back and began digging through it. He pulled out the ragged toy Lucy had given to Keita. “You see this?” he asked.

The girl and her brother nodded.

“Well, this ball is magic. If you touch it, the magic can make you better.”

Keita stared. “What are you talking about?”

Better to have them believing in magic toys than people, right? he asked silently.

Oh. Right.

She held the ball out to the girl. “Try it.” Weak fingers stretched out, and as they brushed the worn fabric they bumped Keita’s hand.

The suppressed power burst from her. The boy cried out and leapt back. His sister dropped from his arms. She yelped, but it was a strong cry. Then, her eyes full of wonder, she climbed to her feet. Her face was not so red, and her gaunt cheeks had filled in. Her brother stood. “It works,” he breathed.

Before Keita could blink twice she was surrounded. The people pushed and shoved and clung to each other, and her energy jumped from contact to contact. The camp was no longer silent. It rang with shouts and cries and laughter.

The sun was sinking. Keita had not realized how long she had been working. The last drop of sunlight disappeared and she sank to her knees. “Thank you,” she told Brian. “I think… I will be happy later. Right now a rest might be nice.” And she dropped.

Grief

 I don't know how you feel.

I have no words that will fix everything

but I can tell you how I feel.

Grief is a hole ripped out of your heart

and if you place your eye to the hole

you see yourself

staked to the center of an empty universe.

When life becomes normal it is still a minefield

of innocent words,

innocent moments

that trigger an ambush from your emotions.

They pull off scabs and leave wounds

raw, open, bleeding like brand new.

Which emotions? Good or bad?

I can't tell. I'm too busy

trying to wipe my nose unnoticed.

I used to think of Hope as a bright flame

that warms your soul and drives away the shadows.

Sometimes that is true,

but even when not, hope is a bulldog's teeth

that cling to Truth and do not let go.

In each ambush I feel storms rage

and I know I could be crushed,

torn apart by their fury,

but my teeth are still set

and I cannot be blown away.

The Legend of Aiyana

Posted by Christie V Powell on July 13, 2016 at 10:25 PM

This is a legend told in Spritelands to warn young Sprites of the dangers of humans. It is referenced in The Spectra United (Keita's Wings book 2).

Once upon a time, a young Sprite girl called Aiyana lived with her family on the coast of what is now Lectranis. She was a natural healer, and her parents did everything to get her the very best trainers. However, her training was halted when her parents died in a winter storm. A neighboring Lectran family took her in, and though they were not cruel they did not love her. Though Sprites do not usually eat, she was required to find food for her new family.

 

One day Aiyana spied a dark shape out at sea. She had not heard of the humans, who had arrived on a similar vessel years earlier and built a small settlement further north. This ship had blown off course and landed far from the others. Aiyana watched the strange, Spectra-like creatures land, but because her village insisted that the humans be left alone, she did not approach. Still, she often stopped on her daily forages by the sea to look at them.

 

Aiyana soon discovered that the humans were doing poorly. Ill equipped for surviving alone, many caught diseases and perished. When winter approached, Aiyana knew they would not survive. She abandoned the laws of her village and offered her assistance to the humans. The humans were amazed as she healed them, one by one. She taught them to feed themselves by gathering food from the sea, as she had done for her Lectran family. The human colony survived, and in gratitude gave their settlement their version of her name, Hanan. Eventually Aiyana moved in with them, using a small abandoned cabin as her own.

 

The news of Hanan's magical healer spread. Many sick people visited, and she healed them all. Even today, the poor and ill are treated well in Hanan, now a bustling human city. But one group of men saw opportunity while others saw healing. They laid in wait, deciding to catch the young Sprite and take her overseas, perhaps collecting money for her healing in the land over the water. They tangled her in immense nets and threw her into a cage with mesh bars so tiny that she could not escape. She called for help, but her human friends, those neighbors she trusted and healed, served and protected, would not hear. Her captors took her aboard a ship and she was never seen again.

 

After her abduction, and many other attacks, the Sprites abandoned humans completely, disappearing into their forests with strict rules to avoid all human contact. The other clans followed, until today when few humans know that Spectra exist. But take caution, for their cages and their ships are still ready.

Wordplay: The Two Stages of Writing (And Why They Are Fun)

 A friend of mine told me that she had considered asking me to talk to her second graders about writing, but decided against it because I write for teenagers.  I actually wrote my first story in second grade. I still have a copy of it (and enough memory that I can read between the lines to know what I meant to say). Since then I have been thinking about what I would share with younger kids. I've written a post already about why I write stories, including to communicate and to practice writing skills. I think younger children would also benefit from the habit, so I decided that I would share that writing stories fun, and how to do it.

Playing on Paper

Writing is done in two stages. Most people have a favorite, but both of them can be fun. The first stage is called drafting, otherwise known as playing on paper. Watch kids play. They take a few toys or objects that catch their eye, assign them characters, and then make them react to each other in different ways. They don't stop to wonder what comes next. They're endlessly adaptable, easily throwing in some new idea or character and seeing what it does to the story. I can still remember the first time I switched from pretend play to daydreaming: just playing inside my head without the toys to illustrate (I believe it involved some kind of Robin Hood adventure). Perhaps you still daydream. The same patterns apply: you take some interesting characters, some interesting ideas of things that might happen to them, and you throw them together and see what happens.

The first stage of writing, drafting, is to put those kind of stories down on paper. Play with it! You can start with characters (you and your friends, your cats, your favorite toys, even your favorite tv characters if you want), or you can start with the plot (that just means the things that happen to the characters, like 'they go to the zoo' or 'somebody is going to be captured and need rescued'). You may not know where you're going, or you may have an ending in mind, or you might have a list of things you want to cover. All of those are fine. Don't worry about spelling right now. Don't worry about grammar or word choice or all those rules you learn at school. At this stage, the only rule is to have fun with it!

In Control

If you are writing just for yourself, you might stop after drafting, and that's okay. In fact, if you love your story enough you may never end and just keep going as long as you can. Some people don't like the second stage, which is called editing, but I do. If you want other people to read what you've written and understand what you mean, if you want to make your story the best it can be, if you want to turn it in to a teacher or publish it into a book, you're going to have to edit.

Editing might be my favorite. When you're drafting, you write down everything as it comes to you. The story itself is in charge. When you edit, however, you are in complete control. This is a great feeling, because no one truly feels in control in life. You''re working by your parents' rules, or the school's rules, or society's rules, or the bank or the country's rules (yes, even grown-ups feel this way). Editing is when you work by your own rules.

Of course, if you are writing this story for a certain reader, you will have to pay attention to their rules too, but I don't like to think of it as following their rules. I've studied grammar and read lots of books about writing, and when something makes sense I adopt it as my own. Now it's not the book's rule, or grammar's rule. It's my rule, and I get to enforce it.

Different people do editing in different ways. If you are writing a story by hand, your first edit will be either copying it into a computer or copying it into a new notebook. You'll probably make changes as you go, deciding that some things could be phrased better to make more sense. That's great! The more times you go over it, the better it will be!

So, writing is fun! You get to play and imagine, be in control, make new friends, express yourself, and unlike play and daydreaming, you'll be able to go back to it whenever you want and enjoy the story all over again! Keep practicing, keep learning, keep reading others' stories. If you keep working at it you may become an author. Or you may decide not to, but those writing skills will be helpful in your life. At the very least, you can look back at the things you wrote when you were younger and be able to understand and remember how things were. And I think that's well worth the effort.

Lectran Pox Defeated

 

Posted by Christie V Powell on April 9, 2016 at 5:20 PM

This "newspaper article" describes some of the backstory from Keita's Wings book 2, The Spectra United.

8 August 209

Queen Taima arose from her bed and greeted the public this morning for the first time in several months. Tears streaked her scarred cheeks as she expressed her appreciation for the concern and well-wishes of her people. Earlier that day, the first healers from Spritelands had arrived, but they came too late for many of us.

Amber Sage, niece of our good king Antony, married the Sprite prince and heir Drake Sage three years ago. When Prince Leon and his wife, Valerie, caught the dreaded pox, they sent messengers to her, begging for help.

“We came as soon as we heard the news,” said Sprite healer Merle Arden. “I brought my entire family and we intend to stay as long as we are needed.”

But Arden and the twenty other Sprite healers came too late. Leon, his wife Valerie, and his twin sister Luna join the list of those killed by the disease. King Quentin appeared in his second official ceremony as king for their funeral. His wife and baby daughter Viviana survived, though scarred. Hundreds of others did not.

 

Just People

 People 

Think of people. 

Think of people you’ve heard of.  

Celebrities, actors and authors, 

The religious and the rich, 

The politicians you admire 

And those you think are Satan’s spawn. 

Think of history, 

Of kings and generals, 

Of people tagged so neatly 

With labels of good or bad. 

Think of people you know, 

The crowds clogging your way, 

The bearded man with the cardboard sign, 

The woman who suffers, 

Who you see and think, ‘She must be so strong; 

I could never do that.’ 

I’m starting to learn that people are people. 

We feel, we think, we love, we dream, 

We make friends and we make enemies. 

We make choices, doing what we can with what we are given. 

Really, is there so much difference between you and I? 

We’re all people. 

Just people.