Temple in the Stars – Part 9

I started seriously writing and pursuing my dream of being an author somewhere around mid July of this year.  During that time, quite a few things have happened.  I’ve gone through some extreme doubts about my ability to keep my current job, been asked to go back to driving three hours a day, dealt with my wife starting a new school district entirely and having to handle some rather pointed reminders of the fact that I’m not the best steward when it comes to home ownership.  Suffice to say, it’s been extremely trying to keep my head above water on writing with everything else that has been going on.

I’ve had a lot of experience to this point.  Adding up all the words I’ve written just on this blog and my books, not including extra words which I write daily for my job or my own personal communications, I’ve cleared over a hundred thousand.  That’s well beyond anything I ever thought I could do, and to me is an extraordinary accomplishment.  It’s not been easy, and it’s taken me a long time to find out how best to cater to my own writing ability and eliminating distractions which keep me from being able to devote my whole attention to writing.  Currently, the fashion in which I have found I focus best involves my leather couch, my favorite blanket, and Pandora One through ear covering headphones.  With that setup, I tend to enter some state of writing zen,losing myself in the words as they flow from my imagination.

I refuse to quit on myself, and more importantly I refuse to quit on my dreams.  I love writing, it’s something that I can truly excel at, given enough time and training.  It’s important that we find something that we are good at as our vocation.  Writing has made me incredibly frustrated at times, has made me question my life and my decisions to date, and made me despair that I would never reach the heights of my heroes.  Yet throughout it all, it has not stopped being something that I have felt is outside of my reach.  I’ve never stood at the keyboard and fought a quite voice within telling me I could never do this.  The only voice I’ve had to silence is the one telling me I will be no good.  That may be true, it may not, but I will never let my quality suffer for lack of trying.  I am Justin Wallace, and I am an author.  Nothing will ever be able to take that from me, not even Death.

Without further introspection…

Temple in the Stars – Part 9

Ashley lay among the grass, blades swaying in a gentle breeze, and slowly collected herself.  She hadn’t broken anything by some miracle of soft earth and extraordinary luck, but she had also blacked out for an unknown amount of time.  Everything hurt, and she couldn’t help a soft moan from escaping her lips each time she tested a limb to see if it would cooperate.  Everything responded to her requests, but she didn’t think she would be up to anything as taxing as sitting up for a little while yet.  She slowly felt down to her belt where Everett’s pad rested, and was not altogether surprised to feel the severe cracks and twisting that had happened upon her landing.  Everett would be alright, since he backed himself up continually to each of the bases his pad rested on.  Still, he was not going to be happy at having to break in a new ‘house’ when she finally got a replacement for the damaged interface pad.  He always complained that it felt too tight and smelled funky.  Always was an odd duck, my Everett Ashley thought with the first ghost of a smile since she had awoken from her frightful plummet.

Looking upwards, and upwards, and upwards, she guessed that she had to have fallen almost 50 feet.  Maybe more.  How could I have survived the landing? Ashley thought with no small amount of curiosity mixed with alarm.  Gravity felt… well, it felt normal.  Exactly as it should feel.  Galactic Standard normal.  That didn’t make any sense at all.  Let alone the breathable atmosphere, which smelled clean and fresh, not as it should in an enclosed space like this.  How did this ecosystem survive?  She couldn’t see any other animals.  How did the plants obtain enough carbon dioxide to survive?  Shouldn’t the atmosphere be pure oxygen and completely useless to her?  All of these thoughts and more piled up in her suddenly overactive mind, causing her to have a massive tension headache.  Closing her eyes, Ashley focused on her breathing, concentrating on moving air in and out as she left her mind relax.

As she lay there gently meditating, she began to smell other things below the fresh and earthy scent of the air.  The mixture of dried sweat and grease that her dad always seemed to have, no matter how many showers he took.  That smell always made her feel loved, as her father was never miserly with hugs when he was home, always willing to drop whatever he was doing to show his army of children affection.  Layered beneath the hints of the smell of her father, were other scents of home and family.  Scents she missed so very badly.  The smell of her mothers favorite rosewater, something she added to every single steam-shower.  The smell of sweaty adolescents wrestling in front of / on / over / around / behind her.  A cloud which never seemed to leave her five younger brothers, who moved in a pack like a prepubescent bunch of hoodlums.  How could I smell these things, each one so distinct, yet smell them at the same time?  Clearly, Ashley had hit her head harder than she had hoped.  It had been an awfully long fall…