1. "The place is here, and it is in between"

I wake up with sand in my mouth and surf in my ears, confusion like a church-bell in my mind. There is a sharp prick on my cheek, and I'm pretty sure it is the jagged edge of a shell recently shattered by tide and rocks. I'm also pretty sure that if I could see myself, there would be a red trace, and maybe a drying bead of maroon trailing the jagged shell. The surf is roaring to me, and I think it is only a short matter of time before its arms reach up far enough to caress. Tide’s coming in. I have to get up. And how any ordinary person, lying face down in the sand will get up, is to bend his arms, plant his palms in the sand and push himself up. Which exactly what I do.

Only it is my elbows that plant themselves into the sand. Any schooling boy will tell you, “Pressure equal Force multiplied by Area”. When force remains constant and the area shrinks say, from a palm to an elbow stub, pressure can be exceedingly high. So it is the pressures of a hundred grains of sharp coral, shells and quartz that make up this beach that eat into my elbows, sending pricks of pain streaking up to my shoulders. I yelp, and tumble back down, prone. In my confusion, I try again, to the same yelp and results. I don’t get smart; I don’t turn around to sit up. Instead, it is with a graceless struggle, with my aching body curling upwards like a caterpillar, buttocks in the air, and my forehead pressed against the sand like a fulcrum, that I manage to get myself to a kneeling position. By this time, both forehead and knees join in the yelping chorus of pain. Definitely a funny-moment if I ever saw one, three stooges style. But I am not able to see myself, not yet anyway, and the insults by the grains of sand issue into my forehead, elbows and knees. I do not see it funny in any way. I also do not see my arms.

All I have are stumps, just below the elbow, scabbed over, blood-dried and ugly. A weird kind of pain, a dull yet keening ache, reaches my mind
[My hands hurt! They itch! Scratch it! Oh lord it hurts like a thousand bee stings please scratch the itch make it stop]
lying about arms that are no longer there. I raise my two stumps and moan, and then fall sideways onto the sand again. My brain tells me that my arms
[hurt! the sand is getting into the lacerations]
feel the sand but there really is nothing there at all.

It has gotten slightly darker when I come to, and the very next wave laps into my face, plunging stinging salt into my nose and eyes, waking me up immediately. The wave also wet my stubs, and its scabs howl in pain. The next moment I am sitting up and making turtle tracks, my rump pushing sand further up the beach until I pass the tide-line.

I survey my terrain. The tide has covered a large portion of the slab like beach, and a hearty spray-mist obscured the sun and horizon. To my right and left the now-narrow beach runs for a few miles in each direction before ending in rocky outcrops. I must be in a cove of sorts, enveloped by a verdant vegetant nightmare. It is only then that I notice that it is considerably darker, and that there are pillars, encrusted with barnacles, rising on both sides. I look right up and see the dry ceiling of ancient but strong wood, the floor of some not-so-small stilted house. Scrawled right above me is a word, REHAB. Where the hell am I?

I sit myself steady and count to a hundred, willing the pain and confusion to go away. By sixty I felt better, and by eighty I feel good enough to stop and think about engaging the world again. Find your bearings, find out how you ended up here, and see how to get back to -

My eyes fly open and it all comes clear to me, why I am here, how I got here.

I am here because there is no other choice (for the other way lies madness). I am here, because there is no ‘how to get back’. I am here, because I cannot go back to
[there]
the world I came from and the life I have lived so happily. I am here because I have lost something so dear and important in my life that I have lost mine two limbs, they too precious and dear to me. I am here because it is in this solitude of a prison, for I have no reason to believe otherwise, far off the edge of the world, which I stand any chance of being able to live again. As the woody ceiling so rightly tells me, I am here for REHAB. I will hate this place, and yet have the only measure of comfort enough for me to go on and live. Then again, there is always the great big drink and its monsters that lie underneath its waves. But I am not here to die, I am here to REHAB.

My home is here, now.

I start crying. For my loss. For the world that has moved on, and left me behind. I cry, because I know that there are other worlds than those, but this place is here, it is mine, and it is in between.

hang in there (LIEK A BOSS)

Gosh. i never knew something so silly could be so popular. And to think i put in so little effort into it. In any case here is the
WIDESCREEN VERSION


and ORIGINAL VERSION

Ann Nomalie and the Ig traverse the caverns

CEC RIG shirt with battle damage...

Light Prancer

Light Prancer, fastest grid-pony on and off the grid:

Avatar Sequels

Ridley Scott will be directing Avatar 2: The Sky People Strike Back. In which Weaver's Na'Vi body is retrieved and rigged with a virus program. Eywa is then infected by the biological trojan and transforms into Enya, whose lilting strains drives the whole of Pandora into bloodlust, a Zerg-like hive community.

Things soon run out of control in Avatar 3: Rise of the Dark Na’Vi. Earth is destroyed by the Dark Na'Vi horde. The last humans escape aboard the Elysium, details documented in PANDORUM. As a last ditch effort, An android Sully is created to terminate the real Sully-of-Jarhead-Clan. He succeeds, but is captured by the Na’Vi and falls in love with Sully/Neytiri’s daughter. Together, they must find away to stop the crazed Enya-mind and purge the virus from Pandora before everything is destroyed.

Don’t miss also Pandora Earth, the spinoff series. Duke Nukem leads the final pocket of human resistance on Earth against the Dark Na’Vi onslaught. Aided by the surviving original Na’Vi, their mission is to destroy the Thought-trees that function as control nodes for the Dark Na’Vi. They prove to be so successful that Enya reanimates Miles and sends him to Earth to terminate Nukem as a priority. Don’t miss the showdown between Nukem on a Powerloader and Mile’s biologically augmented RDA AMP mech!

Ann Nomalie: The Price for Normalcy

Why not. Why not start it? I have a story. Stories. I have a character. A whole host of them. I have the tablet. I have the power to draw. Damnit. I'm going to start my own story.

Go Ann!