The Return To Innocence

'Reborn' by Laura Sava (anotherwanderer.deviantart.com/)
'Mirabella' by Rachel Anderson (www.silverstars.us/‎)

Two forms of my own story character, Asha Clara Night, my strongest, most individual, most personal fiction character.

These paintings. Completely different images that look almost exactly like incarnations of the same character of my own subconscious creation Women who look almost exactly like the dreamself I am becoming in my dreams and visions.






She was in my dreams last night and many nights before. I haven't decided exactly who she is yet, but in my dreams her name is Asha, meaning "desire, hope, hopeful; life; alive; she who lives." Which says so much, so so much.

She is another dreamself, not a spirit guardian, but much closer to my Self than my other characters (Alicia, Serena, Ananta: my spirit guardian coping mechanisms for epilepsy, memory loss, insomnia, sleep problems, [Alicia], chronic pain and fatigue, depression, anxiety, physical disabilities [Serena], neurology, neurodivergence, autism, total mind-body connection [Ananta].

Asha seems to represent many internal things about my emotions, my heart and mind, my rhyme and reason, my logic, my science, my creativeness and creativity, my power, my energy, my beauty. If she were to reveal herself as a guardian, she would be for emotional states, creative thoughts, desires, loves, patterns, ideas.
Asha is definitely powerful in a way I always wanted to be since childhood: Fae and and Elemental Mage and Neurodivergent and Autistic Witch and Quantum Magic Scientist and Story Crafter and Shape Shifter and Magic Librarian and Magic Keeper.

Asha seems to represent my deep, obsessive, compulsive wish and desire to be one of the psionic-mage superhumans in my stories, to take over for be when I feel failure and self-loathing and terror and panic. I think Asha may in fact be an actual entity, one who communicates outside instead of simply speaking into my visions, dreams, pain flare withdrawings, anxiety attacks.

All I know is that Asha was in every dream last night and throughout the past several sleeps, long detailed intense dreams, and she quoted Kosh. She spoke in a soprano version of my voice that could sing. She was always here She is always here. She has always been here.
I think she was with me since I was a baby. In different forms, in different species, with different names, in different imaginary beings, in different fictional characters. She was made of fire. She used to be a phoenix, a unicorn, a dragon, a star, a nebula. I know Asha. I know Asha in the way I hope to know myself.

The thing is, Asha has a fully active voice when I am completely conscious, aware, awake, functional, and stable. She didn't completely create herself, but she grew and evolved over my lifetime in her own way as a character in my subconscious. She took ideas I worked with and wove them into her personality, behavior, and mentality. My disabilities are hers. She stayed and changed and grew with me like a permanent piece of my spirit. Asha also represents my fluid sexuality - I often visit her in the place she calls home and we make love, representing my desires for love and orientation.

She lives with Alicia in the Wonderland cottage, but she freely moves about my brain more often. She shapeshifts into elemental energies, she moves around my hippocampus and amygdala and temporal lobes and cingulate gyrus and thalamus and auditory cortex and somatosensory cortex and parital lobe and the back of my brain.
She has altered the Wonderland cottage to be something else entirely, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, two office rooms, a large entertainment living room, a large kitchen, a basement. The outside build would contain concrete, cement, hemp and limestone, bamboo, steel. The glass windows are shatterproof. The doors are hemp-lime and timber. That must say something about my mind's inner workings. Especially since the main reason for hemp being illegal is due to its threat to corporate patentable synthetic fibers and wood and paper product industries, while the medicinal drug potential became subject to false claims and fear mongering alarm campaigns until the original industrial potential became buried under the alarmist anti drug campaigns. Part of me probably knows how powerful this is. Medicine from nature itself and the human brain itself is usually denied and seen as worthless.

Asha represents that part of me that firmly supports the controversial balance of traditional pharmaceutical medicine and nontraditional botanical medicine.
Asha is my activism and advocacy. Asha is the fire that moves my belief in the combination of synthetic drugs and organic drugs. Asha is the phoenix in me that rises after every defeat, every failure, every attack, every oppression, every attack and assault on my truths and faiths.

Throughout many names, faces, back stories, lives, personalities, and individual growths... she has always been Asha Clara Night. And this is how she asked me to look so I could see that there is beauty deep and shining.

I must find and thank the artists for these images, since I found myself taking these pieces of artwork and subconsciously turning them into incarnations of my own fictional character.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151978626835684&l=17dde55bf4

Asha may well be the character in that second novel after all. It won't be this Asha, my Asha; just a version, a more humanized incarnation I can bring out to show the public. This excites me. She could help me write it, just by living in my mind.

Hmm. Still heavily outlining the second novel.
Clara no longer has a healing factor; she has quantum phasing - aka phase shift, intangibility ghosting, limited Kitty Pryde power. Amber has a more specific type of telepathy, which connects more with quantum consciousness than actual thoughts - aka soul communication, extreme telempathy, spirit communication, highly limited Rachel Grey power; and Amber's telekinesis is far more developed, including limited healing touch and limited emotional healing on others, which can weaken her without shielding or channeling, but still limited Rachel Grey power.
Clara's hypermobility and joint pain symptoms eases during her phase shifts. Amber's cerebral palsy with its comorbid syndromes eases during any major psychokinetic procedure, but once they're finished, the pain hits them twice as hard, leaving them weakened for at least several hours.
I like that enough to work with it. *nod* But I need advice, opinions, and consultations to make sure I'm Doing It Right. For example, since Clara has mild Asperger's, I have to wonder how her perceptions are affected by her powers.

Also! Thoughts on surnames. Since Clara has full Indian heritage on her father's side, her surname will be probably Atma (and her mother has Siberian and Swedish heritage). Since Amber has full Greek heritage on her father's side, her surname will probably be Spiro ( and her mother has Norwegian and Hungarian heritage). "Soul" and "Spirit" as meanings seem to work for me. I'm not sure if I want them hyphenated or separate.

At the start of the story, they've been legally married for just under one year and are in their late twenties, share a birthday one year apart, and have family members with disabilities and superpowers Amber is on SSDI but is works part-time at Clara's office, which is (for now) Transdimensional Exploration Association Research. Clara and Amber are among the very few paranormals who can open and enter the interdimensional portals without harm. I'm going to be focusing on one or two alternative worlds, perhaps a Fae dimension and an astral plane.

Many thoughts. Many Worlds Theory, indeed.

And now my brain is screaming "Oh for Apollo's sake, woman, stop writing, eat something, take your shower, bring the trash can in, and feed the fish."
I inherited it from my father. When he's sculpting stone or painting, my mother has to physically go to him and insist that he stop working and eat. And he'll look up with glazed eyes and say "Huh?" And she'll say, "John, you've been working for six hours. You need to eat." "Oh. Okay!" And immediately after digesting, he might read a book for a bit and then go back to work for another six hours.

So much staring at a laptop. So much typing with two or three fingers, which are now vibrating. Also, I need eye drops. Augh but LOL?

You know, sometimes you write something so bizarre and wild that you need to copy-paste it just to see how people would react...

"...it was like OH NO THE BIKER VELOCIRAPTORS OF THE APOCALYPSE WILL BE UPON ME IN THREE WEEKS AND THE WORLD WILL END UNLESS I FINISH THIS MANUSCRIPT IN THREE WEEKS AND I SEE PEOPLE COVERED IN FISH COMING FOR ME AND I'M SCARED.
But I feel better. It might just be the Klonopin, but I feel better."
And later, "PEOPLE COVERED IN FISH? WHY NOT ZOIDBERG?"

Long story. Long story short, I have a debut book that needs finishing and then editing. Also, I am on painkillers, muscle relaxers, anxiety relievers, and supplements, and also possibly too many cat kisses. I think those in particular can lead to strange behavior.
Good night.

Holy Gaia's Eyes, you guys, I finally figured out how to move the novel along more quickly. I finally wrote that one sentence - just one sentence - that broke through that blank wall of "Well, fuck, now what happens?" that many writers struggle with.
And now I'm several paragraphs past that. This is the first time I've managed to do that since summer. This is such an insanely massive personal breakthrough that I want to celebrate. But we already have cake and ice cream, so I'll just mark the day and I'll just keep on writing until fatigue begs me to stop.

And to think, all it took was for me to make the antagonist notice the main female protagonist's purple tourmaline engagement ring, which should have helped psychically protect her but didn't, because they're all powerful psychics there and can do what they want. Now to make her fiance suffer that broken neck a little more.

Seriously, though, I want to hug myself and cry a little.

Funny thing? I am in a violent amount of pain today, so severe that I really cannot to much other than type and type and pour my frustration and mood out into documents. Well, then.

To writing! *whiskey shot*

Part One: (and also this story is mostly stream of consciousness and probably will not make sense...)
"In an alien dimension, a thousand years in the future, I lived near a palace. My name was Annalira Lotus Rose Fox. My two middle names came about because after my birth, our ponds and gardens grew multi-colored lotus flowers and multi-colored wild roses when it should have been impossible.
My family was full of shapeshifters; the favored creatures were foxes and cats, falcons and owls, and so the family names reflected all of that. My parents were Foxes, and I should have been as well. I was the odd one out because I couldn't change shape, but parts of me could change in other, weird ways. My eyes changed between coffee and honey and periwinkle, my hair changed between dark chestnut and golden auburn and raven black, my skin changed between snow white and warm ivory and light bronze. Usually none of these color shifts matched and there were always bizarre shifts and combinations. I always wore cosmetics because I saw too many problems, always wanting to conceal blemishes and brighten colors. I became very skilled at mixing oils, creams, and skin potions for my siblings and cousins and friends, because I needed to for myself. I looked very young even as I approached adulthood, and one of my best friends decided that I would never look old. I laughed nervously every time she said that. She thought I was the most beautiful woman she knew, and I let her think that because beauty is always subjective. Her brother hinted that she was in love with me. One day I will tell her that I always knew and that I love her too. One day, I will learn telekinesis from her, because that is her biggest talent, and that day might be our first date. I will probably marry a man one day but I will probably marry her too.
I was the smallest and shortest one in my entire family. They nicknamed me Little Bright Fox, and said that while my voice was soft it carried for miles. My aura was giant, they said. When I played with magic, I could make my energies visible in a way nobody else could. Those energies were extremely shiny and multicolored, which was uncommon.
I didn't have any specific talent the way most people in my country had. I had several small skills that I often blundered through. I was a born storyteller and artist, a psychic sensitive and an empath in many ways. My parents sheltered me too much. My birth was upsetting and I nearly died several times. An Owl uncle and a Cat aunt both said that I was too close to the Veil Beyond and to other realms, that entities beyond the veil could sense me as much as I could sense them. I grew up with physical and neurological pains that the best medicine couldn't heal, neither technology nor sorcery. My family made sure I had the best they could offer, but the Owls and the Cats kept predicting hard and intense life roads for me. They gave me medicines for the brain seizures and the mental imbalances, for the muscle spasms, the body fatigues, the nerve damages. I would be lame and weak, delicate and fragile for the rest of my life, but the Falcons predicted that on the inside I would become steel and diamond, supernova and volcano.
When one of my Falcon cousins discovered that I was able to cross dimensions without suffering the usual side effects, she was unable to keep it a secret, and the royal family asked me to work for them. After reviewing my medical disabilities, they set up a special financial and benefits account for me so I would be protected during my interdimensional travels. Walking into the Between never damaged me in any way; the Queen and the royal doctors assumed it was because I had been born partially gripping the Veil Beyond in my psychic hands. All of my Walks in the Between actually felt good, energizing and electrifying in powerful ways. It was how I discovered some of my stronger hidden talents. By the time I had finished an unheard of dozen Walks in the Between without any negative effects, my name had spread across the country, for both good and ill..."