There I was sitting. I usually sat like that, on the edge or the corner or the raised railing of a walkway, always with my knees up and my feet down and attempting to get my back straight. I didn't always sit, mind you, I liked to stand. I liked walking and liked looking up more so than I did looking down or ahead which often meant that I was walking into things or people or in strange circular patterns which was all well and good for me because - even as I was sitting there - I really didn't give a damn. I'd made it back to the marketplace, where we'd all come in from eating the best and quite possibly last burgers of our lives, and while I tried to settle my stomach over the mental indigestion I considered all the if's and and's and why's; I was consistently coming to wild and far fetched conclusions.
been to the inn, to the tea shop and to the home, what should I don know that I'm living this? I thought while I rubbed at my legs. I never considered how amazed I would be at the fact that here I could get cold or could itch or could become tired or could become confused and not knowing. It was always something far from my mind when I was at home in front of my laptop in boxers and sipping some tea. So I was thinking and I was smiling to myself now, but I still wasn't going anywhere and I still was making any sense to myself. It could have been the ADD, the years of fast paced nonstop thought that bounced from one subject to another with seemingly no relation aside from something like color and letters. I'd gone from thinking I was tired to thinking about sitting to sitting and thinking about standing and wondering what time it was and then how birds mechanically maintain flight and then why I couldn't fly and whether I'd ever be able to and after I had burped a couple of times I was now on the topic of what I was going to do with myself now that I was really stuck here. Wyatt and Morgan and Monica had gone off to do their own things, to live their own little adventures and I was certain, so certain that they were having them. In spite of me being the most adventurous - well, the most spontaneous, I was sitting on a curb with a folded roller derby flier in my hand thinking about how awkward it was to have had to actually speak to the girl who had given it to me. I choked, really, trying to maintain a presence that I didn't know was so difficult to up hold. It was, again, as I thought, easier in front of a laptop screen. Randomly, though, I was thankful to not be freezing, I'd managed to knick a little tan thermal and nifty Earth Day shirt in various browns from a window and they went well with my faded jeans and flip flops; if I was lost and confused I at least looked damn good.
But who am I looking good for? Does it really matter? Aren't all of the people here just figments of some one elses imagination in which case when I'm not interacting with them, they don't exist and then I don't exist when I'm not interacting with them as well.. I pinched myself. I was real, and if I didn't exist, I now had a fake throbbing red mark on my arm. Sighing, I rolled back to a new position, hands behind me on my palms and legs spread most unlady-like apart, which I could do, because I wasn't lady, so I laughed at the thought. There I was, living the life and times of no one special, but there was something different about doing this, here. Because I could change that, I could become some one special, some one that other ... well, people, looked up to or forward to seeing that were wow'd by my presence and wanted my time. So I was sitting there and I was smiling, still looking fantastic. Note, there was bit of a curve to my frohawk and I was willing to kill to fix it.

I found myself curbside when the sun rose today. I'd spent all my time thinking about one person and all of money purchasing the used guitar and its rough case that was my bedfellow. It didn't bother me, no, better to join the dust of the world than to rise above it, it's going to happen sooner or later so why not get used to the fact? It kept me pleasant and it kept me humble to a tolerable degree and, most importantly, it kept me sane despite my outrageous fear of death. I couldn't get two ideas out of my head despite my degree of effort, I'd gone so far as to dig my nails into my scalp before sleeping hoping the thoughts my just spill out onto the ground. There was this girl, this astoundingly pretty girl who was the center of my metaphysic debate. Her name was Kaz and she was a main component of the feeling I labeled awesome and I'd spent a whole day with her as good company and now, in just a few short days, I was dying from a Romeo complex. I would storm any poorly lit window in a heavily guarded garden just to hear her talk to herself - I would then swiftly kick Shakespeare for his terrible situation and the fact that I don't like climbing nor do I like sneaking. My attention deficit beside, I was sitting up now like a monkey at an exhibit, with terrible posture and unkempt appearance and awful breath. I stretched out and yawned and immediately wished I hadn't. I needed a bathroom and water to bring about a cure for the common gross that was morning breath. I was, though, sitting at the edge of the cobblestone way in the market place. I snorted out and looked up. The world was blurry and dark while I squinted. Everything bled in to everything else and my face was hurting from keeping my cheeks high and eyes down. I looked down and open them. The sun was not energizing in my state of just awake. But thinking of Kaz, it made my smile even though I was mess and alone. She was something else. People like her existed where I came from, I'm certain, the fact that she's here proved that - and it caused a problem. As much as I went out and bought the old guitar that I hadn't had the money for just so that I could have the opportunity to impress her, I was struggling to believe that on any serious level I could not hold a relationship with any one in this place. It was a serious consideration under the pretense that I, Jordan, once sat in front of an outdated Dell laptop and played a handful of people, sometimes more than one at a time, in the very setting of chat rooms and forums in which I was sure that I was now browsing in person. So then, did I appear as text to people on the other side? Could I get to know both halves of a person here, who they were and who they really were? Was I truly interacting with people or was it just a mere action of electronics and these people could just as soon vanish, be deleted, suddenly change... it was a very difficult set of questions to face. The fact was that I was in a place that I know should not exist, should not harbor the very people who used it, yet, here I was, a little cold, hungry and dirty on the street side, and confused and lonely with a guitar that technically existed cause I had technically purchased it. I smacked my lips and stood, the ground was murder without shoes or flip flops, but I'd manage... I kept managing. I managed right into the nearest open door a smiling face. It was a shame though, after using their restroom and helping prepare a breakfast for myself and the head of house I nicked a pocket watch and some cash from their counter top. My justification was in the fact that there was a higher source that provided for these people, they all had some where to turn to, some way to turn off when they became uncomfortable or confused. Not me, I was wandering with a bruised left arm and heavy head and an old guitar.

I sat in front of the piano on the bench, it's what you were supposed to do when you decided to play the piano. I never really played before now, before I came to this place. I didn't much in way of extraordinary and while I was considering that fact I fought the breaking sunrise of a grin over my darkened face. I'd come from some else's restroom with surprise on both parties, of course their party being the more righteous in the way of beating the crap out of me until I found the exit. I couldn't help but laugh when it was happening, it was like an adventure. On of those escapes from reality I'd written about, I'd dreamed about, hell, I'd even closed my eyes before and tried be here. So why was it so strange, then, to sit here by the piano - in a stranger's house - and do the ordinary? I couldn't do the other thing that was so intuitive before this. Before the night was full of new stars and before my mind full of new customs or my face covered in bruises; even when my fingers hit the ivory and black I was strange and out of character. I couldn't be Jordan who I was when I was in the practice rooms at the community college. I was Jordan Will, now, the unsung champion of losers and bad luck and I had to face foes and worry about things like death and battles. Dawn broke on my lips and even though I'd not practiced the piece I was playing now it was nearly flawless and the flaws I did slip up on only made the music rich and questioned Chopin's mastery over the instrument. I wondered what would happen now, if some one came home to a scrawny, slightly more tan boy sitting in their common room playing their poorly tuned piano. I laughed out loud, it would certainly be better than the next time crossed paths with that pompous Anubis fellow or had to deal with Dante or even was around Kaz. I stopped smiling and played an F sharp, of which there were not any in the right hand part of Chopin's Prelude in E minor, at least not a that moment. I'd pretty much given up on the gorgeous blond with the icicle stare who could freeze your woes and worries and light the warmth of glee with just a smile and all the pretty words in the world that I could write wouldn't be worth much of anything because I doubted, at this moment, that we would be much more than moving apart. At least one thing was familiar to a younger me, to a me who lived in eight square feet on the corner of Davie and Fourth by the beach, there was something I couldn't forget if I ever went back or lived here the rest of my days. I breathed and swallowed by my heart back the best I could and let the arms of a stranger's home embrace me. The music fit the moment and the sun went down and as the last golden line of light drew its warmth away from my jaw I followed it over tree and mountain top; I didn't know there were mountains in Rhydin. Maybe I thought I am like the sun. I will go down but still come up tomorrow and the world will see the better. I laughed. Sure, that's right, I'm the sun now. I sighed and felt the hint of time tugging at my inner urgency and I decided to no longer wait in the window of the common room of a person's home who did know me. finding the front door was easy and when I'd opened it and stepped out side I was immediate longing for the familiarity that was behind me, I didn't know where I was. But I knew where I was going and I wiped the doubt from nose and ran a hand to assure the proper placing of my frohawk and dusted off the acid washed jeans the man of the house probably would be missing and straightened my black and white striped shirt and I smiled. I was going this way, where ever it should lead me.