Alisha’s Journal 9/18

Miles’ Song Book 9/18

Jen’s Journal 9/19

I sat next to Junior in first period and he told me about his place on the school baseball team. I was kind of interested in Sherman’s March, but I guess I learned something interesting none the less. Apparently, the Bloody Bill baseball players are the Ringo Stars of our school’s athletic elite. He says that he tried out for the football team two years in a row (he missed this year’s for obvious reasons) and batting balls around was his last choice in extracurriculars, but his dad wants him to have a chance at snagging a scholarship. Though it sounds like they’re pretty well off, his folks own their own business.

And for the record Sherman’s March was a campaign led by a union general to break the supply lines of the confederacy of dunces in the civil war by leading an army of freed slaves to the Atlantic ocean burning down agriculture and twisting train tracks along the way until the slave owning southern forces had no supplies or rations to survive on and were forced to surrender to the Union ending the war of Slavery in America. For their sacrifice the ex-slaves were promised 40 acres of seized land each and a strong, young mule to plough them (plough the 40 acres, not the ex-slaves). When the surrender was official the north gave the land back to the southern (now forced to be ex) slave owners and the mules were a lie from the start.

Otherwise, I sat with Lisa at lunch, got my work done - it was a good day.

Okay, so I met up with Junior, Vadi and Miles behind the band portable after school. I told my mom that I joined the chess club and that I’d get a ride home with one of the other kids. She didn’t like the idea of her grip on me waning, but she ultimately gave in (I might actually have to join if she wants me to put it on my college resume.) I was going to ask the others if they found something as incredible as I did when they open their chests, but when I saw the metal hawk hanging off of Vadi’s arm all my inquiries had already been answered.

“You make that in metal shop?” Maybe I was a little passive aggressive in my questioning, but I was pretty ticked off that she would instantly bring along what we found for everyone in the world to see before we could even have a conversation about it. I wanted to bring Ensheera to school with me, too, but I didn’t.

“As far as anyone knows I did.” Was the answer she gave me with a big, dumb, toothy grin slapped across her face.

“Do you even take metal shop?!” There might have been a slight furor growing in my throat as I asked the question because things got awkward for a moment. She said:

“As far as anyone knows I do.” As her grin lowered into a wince.

“And no one in the whole school has a clue what your schedule is?” This was the final comment of our brief confrontation and lead to a long, silent stare off that pervaded for what felt like hours until Miles offered a description of what had been delivered to him through his box.

He calls the curious feline Zin (He says it’s the name of the main character in an electro-rock opera he’s writing which I over looked at the moment but is really freakin’ cool.) and the creature’s a kitten looking thing with a spotted, indigo coat. What makes the Bard’s pet unique is that the furry fella’s head is encased in what Miles described as a platinum helmet with pointed, metal ears aloft its dome. When trying to remove the cat’s covering he found that it was inseparable from its cranium like a turtle’s shell and behind the blackness of its visor not even its eyes could be made out – if it has any.

And speaking of turtles, his brother’s little gift wasn’t all that different. Miles described it as a reptilian/humanoid toddler with a hard cap on its head and a shield, like a literal turtle shell with segments and everything, fused to its left arm. Tommy named it Arto after a dog “Artie” that a neighbor of theirs had when they briefly lived on a reservation (It sounds like their folks are utterly against owning any pets of their own.) Supposedly, the infantile amphibian’s been crying all weekend and as a dodge Miles suggested to his parents that the people in the townhouse next door had just procreated. Tommy convinced their mom to let him stay home sick while she and their step dad were at work today so he could watch the two new members of their family which by Miles’ testimony was a tough shell to crack. Pun intended.

We then addressed Vadi’s beastly partner who seems to be able to come on and offline at her command. It can talk, but all it did was start listing off math equations. Vadi says she’s trying to teach it how to say its own name, Erron-Tu(Apparently the name of an old Egyptian queen or something which is admittedly pretty badass). If she can actually get the job done it’ll be humanity’s first two-way communication with anything non-human ever, screw talking to dolphins.

Alisha, who I guess is insisting on going by Dusty now, got a kitten like Miles did (It seems Raika has a thing for cats) and Vadi says it’s the “sweetest bean” she’s ever seen. It’s got tan fur with esoteric, violet markings all over its body and around its neck a mane of crimson flower petals. Ali- Dusty’s been referring to the creature as Dandilai, though her elder sis disagrees that it’s a “her” based on what she’s got between her legs – I don’t think it’s my place to chime in on that one. Otherwise, the feline is well mannered unless Vadi tries to pick it up at which point it goes claws out, fangs brandished Tasmanian Devil on the over-achiever, this I can relate to.

After the rundown of the past couple days, I told the group that I wanted to explore the Mausoleum some more and that its draw would guide me whether they wanted to join or not. For some reason I was surprised to find out we were all pretty much on the same page. The only outlier was, unsurprisingly, Junior who insisted:

“No, nah, that’s it. I’m done, this is dumb. Screw this. Screw you guys. This sucks. I’m not going back there. Magic is dumb. Spirits are dumb. Nu-uh, nah.” To this we asserted quite forcefully and emasculatingly that he was going to be there when we go on Friday afternoon and swiftly he acquiesced. So it’s been decided, Friday’s gonna be a big day for all of us. I wonder what I’m gonna tell my mom.