All our scheming last night for naught! But your injured hand will give us time to refine our plans, and the burn is superficial enough not to delay us for more than a day or two.
Still, I wish your dear papa had not carried on as though it were the Apocalypse. It almost seemed as if he thrust the tea kettle onto your hand on purpose.
I shall write our plan later for us to review. It is my turn to be stealthy and come to your room. Save a flashlight for
Didn’t you and Dr. Morgan give me a start, sitting by my bed, watching and waiting for me to wake up! Yet how happy I was to see you after all these weeks apart.
You told me so much on the way to your house that all I could do was ride the crest of the information wave that flowed from you. I had no chance to respond before we arrived at yours and I, of course, had to sleep again.
And now that I am awake, I find you where you where you should be ~ at your papa’s side (how glad I am to see him too, though I would he were better). I cannot talk to you freely in front of him, so I pretend to write a letter to my cousin, but I shall leave it on the escritoire for you to read while I sit with your father.
How kind it was of Dr. Torres to stay with your papa so you and Dr. Morgan could fetch me. And how fortunate it was that she found the last page of the Legends book. Now that I’ve read the story through and looked at the unexpected map on the back of that fateful final folio, I wish to talk with you more. Will you, tonight, come sneak into my room, as you did when we were children so we could read under the sheets and giggle and whisper, so that we can puzzle over the chart together? Our two heads will be more effective than the one of your
Fog-brained Hannah
P.S. It is a small torture to have you so near, yet be unable to speak freely!
My thoughts have been swirling so that I have been roused from my bed these several nights. I have bundled myself up against the chill of the darkling hours and gone to sit on my balcony to watch the Orionids. With the collar of my jacket turned up, I have watched the falling stars coat the sky with movement, one startling wonder after another, then returned to bed to dream of the woods, the pond, and the sense of dragon.
Last night ~ this early morning really ~ perhaps I dozed while star-gazing, but it seemed to me that there was an outbreak of brilliant meteors and that, in one of those elongated flashes of time, they coalesced into the same semblance of a dragon that the sunset casts upon the pond in my dream. The dragon-stars’ head was pointed toward your house, and all the meteors streamed in that direction so that the dragon seemed to fly.
I must have dreamt it; there was nothing in the morning papers about the occurrence.
I write this before the post has had a chance to bring a note from you, but I wanted to jot it down before the rational light off day could persuade me the vision was mere nonsense springing from the fevered brain of
As you can see, I’m trying to get back to a story. I have a feeling I’m not going to be able to keep COVID-19 out of it altogether. It’s too much on my mind.
I found a panel in a comic that seems to encapsulate this moment:
That’s how I feel, too. (You can peruse the whole comic here.)
I keep reading on-line pieces here and there that are versions of “I didn’t want to talk about the COVID-19 situation, but…” (for example, go over to Mountain of Ink and read Kelli’s post on “Quarantine 2020 Ink Palettes.” Be sure to check out the link to the dreaming octopus, too. It’s amazing). I do want to talk about the coronavirus, but am having a difficult knowing what to say. I’ve been trying to walk some line between taking the pandemic seriously enough and not freaking out, but all the confusion, the almost non-existent testing, the lack of support for those fighting this disease, the lethal carelessness of the president and governors —well, freaking out begins to look like the reasonable response.
I continue to use my camera to mark the days and to remind myself there is still much beauty in the world. The moon has gone from this,
to this,
to this,
and, finally, to this:
There have been sunsets drenched in all kinds of colours:
And after one, long, sleepless night, there was a magnificent sunrise.
It got caught in the reflection and frost on our car’s windows.
In my pjs and coat, I sneaked across the street to the park to watch the sun appear.
The park was full of crows.
You can see one flying low across the field in these two:
The sun tinged the mountains and clouds pink,
made the eastern sky flame,
and stained the tree bark and pine cones russet.
Frost rimed the grass and the soccer field sparkled in the sun.
Spring continues to unfold, just as if there were no corona viruses in the world. The daffodils are rising like the sun and my apple tree begins to put out leaves.
And while most of the blossoms on the peach tree survived,
a few took a hit.
More wintry weather is due this weekend.
I hope you all are staying well and staying at home as much as possible.
More wintry weather is due this weekend.