THAT DAY

Busy! I photograph a tower of dancing centaurs made of cut-up Barbies: the Cendancers. Frustrating--shots look bluish, the whites overexposed. Gotta redo with better light.

My friend Mark calls. I tell him my obscene, comic dream last night: Aicorn's Banana. Because why not? Then Patagia calls with a weird poem of a pear who becomes a durian and gets a durian boyfriend and they both become pears. I don't tell her Aicorn's Banana. Though she probably deserves it.

Hmmm. My soft sculpture The Mertiger has silk lips that just don't seem full enough. I pick them out and re-sew with new silk over foam rubber. Not perfect but better. As I sew, listen to Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones. Stacia sounds adorable and I want to marry her.

Rest from sewing--sore fingers. Read Juliet Marillier's Tower of Thorns. Grim. Don't wanna marry ANY of THESE people.

Art tugs at me. My raw clay statue of a Sphinx in Heat looks a bit stiff. Cut her in two at the waist, remove a wedge, and rejoin--her torso's shorter, curvier. Fix broken arm too. And shorten an overlong hind leg; that paw is still cracked, loose. Cover all with acrylic--two preliminary layers to bond the poor cracked thing. Fear the mends are still weak. Dare not turn her over yet to work on the belly...

Bedtime. What do my dreams think of this art-obsessed day? Can I sustain this?

THAT NIGHT

I'm a steampunky explorer wandering through alternate worlds. Come to one that recently changed drastically. It was a wish-powered civilization. Skinny hooknosed humanoids with wild black hair--let's call them the Corvi--relied on benevolent fey who needed to grant wishes in exchange for sips of Corvi life-energy. Dangers of course, both to sipping and wishing, but they'd worked out a pretty good symbiosis--until, recently, a single disgruntled extremist decided the fey were evil and found a stupid or self-hating fey who complied with his monstrous wish...

He sent all the fey, even the wish-granter, into a pocket universe! They can't even go elsewhere and not come back--can't do full-strength magic for themselves. Stuck on a world without Corvi! And without wishes, the Corvi world's as crippled as ours would be, suddenly deprived of oil. Shortages all over.

I enter the fey world. Find them delightful, sexier than the Corvi or most humans... and it's not their exotic looks (though it doesn't hurt!) It's because they're LIKE me. Hadn't realized I may have a similar wish-granting nature... and the need to exercise it. Non-magical people may not be my kin OR my enemies OR aliens to ignore. They may be my SYMBIOTES.

And date fey girls.. So sexy. Bodies, auras... and on top of that they understand.

So I decide to be the meddler I am--a dream-shaman, after all. I wish the door back open.

Most of the fae return to their homeworld and restore the symbiosis--to nearly everyone's relief. A few separatists stay on their new world, in the pocket universe.

But a few bold ones may wander... like me. With luck, that short-skirted fey girl with the wideset eyes will wander with me...

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Symbiotic fae: Tower of Thorns and Enchanted Glass, though very different, do share a grim view of fey. In contrast to Ben Tripp's The Accidental Highwayman in which the fey/human relationship is symbiotic, or, with love and trust, can be.
• Pressure to grant wishes: in Tower of Thorns, poor Blackthorn's cursed to help anyone who asks, no matter what. Scary!
• Wish-based world: echoes the dream Wish-Rationed Earth (a year ago, but still haunting me)
• ACTION: I'm visiting the artist/poet Catshall tomorrow. Be a wish-granting fey for her... and see what happens.

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