A charm of finches.

At the tree Trouble handles the money and the orderly progression from desk to tollkeeper position and deftly deflates outrage and turns away dogs and we wait quiet like until it's over and then it's our time again to watch the birds and let those of us who are so inclined make exited pencil notes about clinal morphology. Which is just a phrase I made up to explain matters, 'clinal morphology' was meant to convey extreme nature geekiness. And I think it does that well. Hell, it might even be right. At the sink this evening I realised, and it felt like the first time, for me, that our childhood had nothing in common with anybody else we know except other people of multiple systems, like us, who also had to do what all of us do well which is read expectations of others quick, quick quickly so as to know what they expect so as to know what to say so as to keep head above water, that my whole fronting experience when not alone (but um, we don't 'front' when we're alone, now do we?) was a constant emergency. Skilled workers we were at it. So good at it! We knew when to smile and nod but it was so much more than that. Facts and figures unknown to me often sprung forth from my lips as an eavesdropping sister smuggled the right answer to me. What gave the game away, what lifted the veil on it and revealed that for whatever reason although we might know the answer we don't understand it was like those moments in movies when the a character realises their husband, lover, wife, best friend has been taken over by a robot/alien/vampire and that is not who they seem and never really went to the High School Formal or otherwise they wouldn't assume that "Frogslegs" had anything to do with France. They would know otherwise. These slip ups of which i have given you an unnecessarily detailed spurious 'example' drew responses from those who observed them that followed without exception the following pattern:

Confusion.
Creaking of cognitive process.
Realisation through a process of elimination..
Implacable Resolve to Never Admit to Having Seen It.

So, that's not so different to what many children have to endure really.
Coz, god forbid be we trying to make ourselves special.
They have a special circle of hell for that.

I'm Lowena. Hi.
I'm a friend of Angelata and I come from Hinchinbrook house.
I'm here for the bereavment. You?

I'm a friend of Heartness and Frond. They wish we were vegetarian. I do too.
But less fervantly than they do. I can be here in this body, and it doesn't torment me the way it torments them. I hope that my arrival here in this body will lead to some shift in the political consensus on the matter at some point. I hope to help find that.
I am a diplomat, it's in the water of Castle. Perhaps that's why Thea drinks wine.

Perhaps I'll see you again.
Lowena

perhaps...

We could write here?

Friday died yesterday.

Grief has woken us up from sleep.
It is good that he is away, working.
We need time without anybody else.