DREAMING DIFFERENT: A Short Story

The Isle of Shadows - Fantasy Faire (SL) 2020

Dreaming Different

by Judith Cullen

© 2020 

A gentle creak as the door opens, finding a light that should not be on, and a small head which should be asleep - her face turned up in surprise. 

"Mommy!"

"Hey there. What are you doing up, little one?"

The bed sighs with the added weight as two dark, curly heads come together. Two pairs of brown eyes, so much alike, gaze at each other with love and concern.

"I had a dream"

"Oh Honey, I'm so sorry."

WHEN IT IS TIME: A Short Story

NOTE: You can now hear me reading this story on MixCloud

When It Is Time

by Caledonia Skytower

© 2020 

In memory of Elizabeth Cullen

Time. Time. I wanted more time.

She cradled in my hands: fragile, imperfect, diminishing.  

Her bubble of being had once encompassed a broad sphere. At some point she became the object of my life, rather than its influence. In the fullness of time she began to shrink, her focus narrowed, her view spare.  

As with such certainties, it's easy to ascribe them to an undefined future: the inevitable that will happen in some comfortably vague tomorrow. I held her as delicately as I could, aware of the looming presence of that inevitability. It was time, and I wanted more of it.

SOMETHING FUN: A Rhyme!

So in the midst of everything out pops this poem, inspired by a childhood rhyming game.A bit of fun and relief thanks to two fairy sprites on the region of Lunafae at Fantasy Faire SL in support of Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society.

Fairy Vari-Ation

by Judith Cullen

© 2020 

I see you Fae-mate

*clap, clap*

Come flit and fly with me

The moon is bright and free

It shines for all of we

Splash down the rain wash

around the pebbled shore

and we'll be fairy friends

for ever more

*clap*

more

*clap, clap*

more, more.

SEEKING COMPANY - A Short Story

NOTE: You can now hear me reading this story on MixCloud

Seeking Company

by Judith Cullen

© 2020 

                   

"Is this seat taken?"

I dropped to the rough wooden planks without waiting for an answer.  I knew better than to believe the voices that mutter in the gloom of 3 am; the wolves that lurk in the dark beyond the edge of your bed, or under it, their panting breath summoning every doubt and fear from the hidden depths inside you. Their province is the pitch where "false" and "true" are hard to distinguish. 

I escaped outside to a land that was gloom itself, which perfectly matched my mood.  At least I'd left the wolves to gnaw and shred the blankets, while I sought what air and light I could. There was precious little of that - a weak moon and a greenish glowing of perpetual pre-dawn. A trio of skeletons sat at the end of a forbidden pier, fishing lines ending empty above the brown muck of the water. One was drinking. I could sympathize.  They seemed like company, albeit undemanding company, frozen in the timeless moments of their demise.

I wasn't expecting a reply. Imagine the surprise when one of them spoke.

ONE MORE RFL STORY: "A Thing with Feathers"

I wrote a total of 16 pieces of poetry and prose for the Fantasy Faire SL's LitFest Writing Challenge this year.  This is the final piece of the seven that were written with a specific dedication, for someone in my life who has had a direct relationship with cancer.  It has been a wonderful, soulful journey.

A Thing with Feathers

by Judith Cullen

© 2017

for Kathryn

"I brought the wine," she said.  She sat down beside me, deftly handling the two glasses and the bottle. The red wine poured elegantly.  Everything my friend Kathryn did was elegant, stylish, done with a certain understated flair that spoke of  intelligence and class.  She's the only woman I have ever seen gracefully maneuver timpani down a hill in two inch heels. She handed me my glass, and we watched the ebb and flow of the gossamer fish in silence.

"Not Butterfly," I said.

"Totally wrong for it," she replied.

"Maybe Menotti's The Last Savage. It would be a stretch," I suggested. "Or Vivaldi's Argippo?"

"Maybe," she sipped her wine thoughtfully.

After a moment she grinned and I knew she had found just the perfect piece, as she always did, "Bizet's The Pearl Fishers."

"Oh yes," I concurred. "Wouldn't THAT be splendid to stage." The gold-trimmed white marble and the translucent aquamarine water were a little high class for Bizet's subject. Yet with opera you can get away with a certain heightened theatricality.  Life, death, passion, revenge, hatred all on a grand scale - that is opera.

"Mind you, I don't think Bizet had this kind of market in mind. Have you seen these shops?  They are fabulous!"

She refilled our glasses, and rose, leaving the bottle nestled under the bench. I followed her, as always a little in awe that someone so stylish should choose to share company with me, Queen of the Rumpled.

We walked from shop to shop, her trademark heels clicked along the bright marble walkway.  My shoes did not.  She had to drag me out of the shop with exquisite Celt and Nordic inspired furnishings, "Hey!  I might need that for something."

"Come along, we are not shopping for scenery."

"What are we shopping for?"

"Arrivals & Departures" Film Released!

It's one thing to feel the satisfaction of you words in a finished composition. It's quite another when it stands up and walks about in front of you.  Even more overwhelming when it takes on a life all its own.  That's what happened to my short story Arrivals & Departures.

The power of it spoke to others, who also felt compelled to explore it creatively. It was a heady experience - like being in one of those transcendental productions where the entire cast loves doing the show so much, and the show is so good, that you truly regret the closing performance.

This was also a great medium for my writing, and I am hoping that more works may fit into this format in the future. If you would like to read the original story, you can find it HERE - the second one on the page. This was before I revised it for the audio recording which lead to the machinima. (i.e. film made "in the machine")

 Arrivals & Departures was released on 22 July, 2018 and is available on YouTube, Vimeo, SLArtist.com and AView.TV.

If you enjoy this machinima, please share it!

WAITING FOR A FRIEND - Another 2018 RFL Short Story

Marcus and I began our theater admin careers together back in 1993, and he was my friend. He was someone who was beloved, creative, and inspired so many people.  He was diagnosed in the fall of 2010 and gone by the end of March 2011.  And I miss him, a whole lot.

I think marc would have liked Fantasy Faire. It would have appealed to both the theater artist in him, as well as the clergyman.  So it was not hard to imagine being immersed in a blue land, and having his carroty head (as it was when we first met) pop up and be ready to truth talk.  Enjoy.

The Weeping Land

by Judith Cullen

© 2018

In Memory of Marcus Walker

I found myself in an azure land; as blue as my heart felt, filled with trees that mimicked my tears.  My footfalls felt empty, echoing on the stone path till I stopped, stood still, afraid the emptiness was more than I could endure.

There was a rustling in a bower of ferns to my right and an impish head popped up, bright ginger hair anomalous in this weeping land. 

"Aristophanes!" it shouted merrily.

"Gesundheit!" I replied and sniffed loudly, by long-practiced reflex. I had not done that in years, and there had only ever been one person I had shared that joke with.

"Marcus!  Is that you?" I looked to the bower of ferns. The fronds waved at me, mockingly empty.  I stood blinking at where I thought I had seen that bright, beloved head appear.  I couldn't be.  Marc was gone.  He'd been gone for a while.

HONORING A Friend of a Lifetime

This story from this year's Fantasy Faire SL benefiting Relay for Life, was written for someone I have known for a long time.  I cannot, in all honesty, say that our lives have run parallel, Kim's and mine.  It's more like two satellites in adjacent universes.

Our parents were friends, as kids, and we often played together.  We were aware of each other growing up, and then our trajectories separated.  I think I have actually seen Kim in-person once in the last 35 years.

Re-connecting with her through social media in the recent years, I have since learned a lot of things about her life that I did not know; some were things that happened when we were small.  And even though she and I have never been "tight", I found myself feeling for her as one does for someone who has been a constant part of the tapestry of your consciousness for as long as you can remember.

This is for her, with love.  ~ jdc

Take That!

by Judith Cullen

© 2018

for Kim

Her hand emerged from the nearly vertical cavern, and I reached for it immediately, helping her.  That bright head popped right up, the natural blonde of her childhood still visible among the gray.  Her skin, always Nordic-fair, was a little worn with living but still shone with vitality and energy.  She was in her element.

"Isn't Ardessa terrific?  I reminds me of home."

"Do you get a lot of Asian dragons and Elvin architecture in the Tieton suburbs, Kim?" I replied, unable to resist teasing someone I had known since early childhood - someone I could not remember not knowing. She glowed in the sunlight.

HONORING GRAMPA: The Steward of Tiny Town

Another of my RFL stories from this year's Fantasy Faire SL.  My paternal grandfather was sick most of my early childhood and passed away when I was four.  The combination of smoking and working in mills and industrial environments as a "saw-file" in the days before OSHA safety standards added up to rapidly advancing lung cancer in his 60s.  

But he was an incredibly talented and clever man, who was an insatiable reader. and perpetual tinkerer.  Many is the time I wished I could speak with him, talk about the beauty of natural materials and the wonderful functionality of engineering forms.  But that's the great thing about fiction, isn't it?  And Kayle Mazerath's "Tiny Town" would have been a great place to have that conversation.

The Steward of Tiny Town

by Judith Cullen

© 2018

In memory of Al Bell, my Grandfather

Impossibly bright. There's no other way to describe it.  I thought I had seen this sort of exuberant rainbow before, but I was wrong.  This town had a vivacity about it, a constant happy industry. It's brightness was irresistible.  Wootberries squishing under tiny gleeful feet.  The jubilant hum and clank of the great waffle press, and the buoyant splashes of color everywhere.

I pressed my hands to my cheeks. What was this new sensation?  I was smiling - smiling so wide and so fully that my face hurt.  The essential energy of Tiny Town was infectious, and I knew at that very moment that it was something from which I never wanted to recover.

NOT IDLE! Noooo, no no!

Recently I wrote 9 pieces, a mix of poems and stories, for Fantasy Faire in Second Life - To Benefit Relay For Life. The pieces were part of a writing challenge where the invitation was offered to visit the 15 created realms of the Faire and allow these creative environments to inspire.

In addition. I took on the added challenge of making a small list of people from my own life that had "battled the Unweaver" as we say in Faire parlance: cancer survivors, and those not as fortunate. It was hard to keep the list short, frankly.

This piece was written in memory of Rev Eugene F Kester, who passed just in the last year. A man of grace and spirit, who was unendingly supportive of me and my work.

The piece is a haiku cycle.

Image by Aoife Lorefield

Weep Not for the Day

by Judith Cullen

© 2018

In memory of Gene

Motes of life floating

swaying, drifting, dissolving

in a ring of fae.

Cell by cell vanish

peeling away the layers

what will then remain?

Land diminishing

magic wafting on the breeze

first gone, then it's lost.

My head on my knees

weeping its quiet passing

exquisite, tragic.

A voice from the past

So deep, yet gently speaking

a wise shade returns.

"Seek not the ebbing,

paths naturally cycling,

mere glimpse of the whole.

"Weep not the waning,

for surely the wheel shall turn

creation returns.

"This moment will not

linger, forever static

but shall breathe anew.

"Come to the water

embrace what little remains,

hold it inside you.

"You are the vessel,

connecting all that has been

with that which shall be.

"Love is the power,