Take your time

"Excuse me. Can I buy you a drink?"

Angela glared up at the strange man who had come up to her. He didn't look like the usual bar goer looking to pick up chicks, dressed in simple jeans and a dark grey t-shirt. All the same, his intentions were very clear to her. "I don't drink," she spat venomously.

Undeterred, the man sat down next to her. "A bar seems like a bad place to go if you're not someone who drinks," he replied calmly. "Unless of course you're the designated driver, in which case I would think you would be out having fun with your friends, rather than sitting alone at a table off in the corner."

The man's calm demeanor and refusal to take a hint only served to irritate Angela more. She scooted as far away from the man as her seat would let her, backing herself into the wall. Abruptly she realized that if she wanted to run, she had no way of doing so. She was cornered. "What do you want from me?" she demanded, unable to keep the nervousness entirely out of her voice.

The man made no movement to get closer to her after he sat down, but he also didn't take his eyes off of her. "I just want to take some of your time," he said.

Angela blinked and looked at him, confused. "What does that even mean?" she asked.

"This isn't the first time I've seen you in this bar," he began to explain.

"Have you been stalking me, you creep?" Angela accused angrily.

The man shook his head and held his hands up to appease her. "I have not, honestly," he replied. "I don't drink either. My friends know that, so they know they can rely on me to be a designated driver, and frequently ask of me to do so. While they're drinking, I have a habit of letting my eyes wander, and I've seen you several times, sometimes with friends, sometimes over here alone." Angela averted her eyes from the man as he explained himself, not wanting to acknowledge that this was not, in fact, the first time she had been here alone.

"It got me curious," the man continued, "as to why a pretty lady like yourself, who I have not, now that I think about it, seen drinking here, would be doing in a place like this by herself. I've seen you shoot away the drunk assholes who want to get in your pants, so you're not here to get hit on. You don't drink, so you're not here to forget. It's not particularly quiet or peaceful in here. I don't get it."

Angela looked down at her hands and twirled her fingers, unsure of how she wanted to respond. This wasn't the kind of fare she was used to receiving when she was in the bar. Hesitating, she slowly answered him. "I... I don't really know. My friends drag me here sometimes, but I don't drink, and I don't really enjoy it here. But I keep coming back, cause I feel like there must be something that I'm missing. People come here to relax, right? I want to relax, too, but I just don't get it."

The man smiled gently, but just then the bell over the door rang, and he looked up to see a group of ladies entering the bar. He pulled a small piece of paper and a pen out of his pocket, and began writing on it. "Listen. I don't want to impose. I'm not trying to hit on you. I don't want to make you feel like I'm trying to take something from you, or that I'm taking you away from something else. Those are your friends walking in, I recognize them, and they're probably gonna think I'm some creep and chase me away, so I'll go on my way. But take this." The man stood and held out the piece of paper, which Angela slowly took from him. She glanced down at it to see a name and a phone number. She looked back up at him, confused, and he smiled back at her. "I'm not trying to change your mind. I don't have to make you love me. I just want to take your time."

With that, the man left, and was soon replaced by Angela's friends, who gathered around and questioned her about the man who had just been there. Their questions buzzed around her, but she didn't truly hear any of them. She looked down at the paper again, and noticed an address was written on it as well.

"If you want my time," she whispered to herself, standing up from her seat, despite the protests of her friends, "then I'll give it to you." And with that, she followed after him.

Transformation

"Hey mom?" the small boy asked in the middle of the day. His mother tried to hide a sigh. It was never a good sign when her son started asking questions. He consistently lead her down uncomfortable paths of questions she did not want to answer, or could not answer, or should not answer. He had a knack for finding the things he shouldn't find, and frequently left her in awkward positions.

"Yes, Brett?" she replied gently, taking care not to let the fatigue show in her voice. She knew that this was a time in his life when he should be learning, but the amount of 'learning' that he did was beginning to wear her thin. "What is it?"

"Is this supposed to happen?" Brett entered the kitchen where his mom had been cooking, his arm held out in front of him, several small blue marks on his arm. His mother at first assumed that they were splotches of paint he had stained himself with while playing with his toys, but upon closer inspection they had more depth and texture to them than paint. "They won't come off," Brett continued, "and I'm not really sure where they came from. They were just there when I looked down at the end of my cartoon."

His mother's brow furrowed and she knelt down beside him, examining the splotches more closely. They were smooth, rounded features, and as she ran her finger over them, they were cold and hard. "Were you doing anything while you were watching tv?" she asked, gently rubbing her fingers against the strange dots, feeling no give as she might something he had accidentally glued to himself. Brett shook his head. "No reading or playing games?"

Brett shook his head again. "I was just thinking about what it would be like to live inside the tv," he explained. "Dragon Tales was on, and I was thinking about how cool it would be to be a dragon, and when the show was over, these were on my arm."

His mother frowned and grabbed a towel, dampening it and rubbing at his arm, to no avail. Whatever the dots were, they simply did not want to be removed. She had only been half paying attention to what her son had been saying, but as she pondered what the things might be, his words slowly dawned on her. "You were thinking about being a dragon?" she asked, unsure that she wanted to hear his answer.

"Yeah."

"Well, honey..." She couldn't believe the words were about to escape from her mouth. She wanted to stop herself, she searched for any answer that made more sense, and as stupid as it seemed, she couldn't think of anything else it might be. She didn't want to imagine it was possible. But it was hard to ignore the smooth, hard scales in front of her. "I think you might be on your way."

Swearing fealty

Caval approached the princess after the funeral and bowed deeply before her. "My deepest condolences about your father," he said. "As the head of the guard, I regret that I was not better able to protect him. I offer you my deepest apologies."

The princess looked down at the knight, her face drawn and composed, long since trained to hide her emotions in public. Gently, she laid her hand upon the knight's shoulder. "It was not your fault that my father fell in battle," she assured him. "It is the way that he wanted to go, in a blaze of glory. He brought his own end upon himself."

Caval stood up straight and nodded in solemn agreement. "You are wise beyond your years, your highness. Moving forward, I pray that that wiseness carries on in your decisions. In the current conditions of the kingdom, you will have to take on great responsibilities. I wish to offer you my services as you may need them going forward."

Instantly, the princess' composure fell, and the gentle smile that had graced her face was replaced with a bitter glare. "Is that so?" she asked venomously. "And what, pray tell, are you to gain by offering me your services?"

Caval blinked, surprised by the sudden bitterness. "Excuse me?" he asked, confusion clear in his voice. "I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean."

The princess rolled her eyes. "I have already been approached three times today by men offering me their 'services' in hopes of gaining the wealth and power of the royal family. I am not interested in marriage, Sir Caval. As the head guard, your services should already be mine. So why are you now offering them to me?"

Caval stood upright, looking down at the princess. "I am not your guard, your highness," he stated flatly. "I was your father's, and I vowed to him that I would protect him and his family. Seeing as he is no longer with us, I merely wish to renew that vow with you. If, however, my services are no longer desired among the royal family, I am sure that I can find others who would be appreciative of them."

The princess looked up into the knight's eyes, challenging his statement, but found him unwilling. Slowly her face softened. "You will swear yourself to me?"

Caval kneeled down before the princess, in plain view of the other members of royalty and the guard who had remained in the vicinity. "I will swear myself to you, Princess Fleur, your family, and your wellbeing. I will do all that is within my power to protect you, and aid you as is fit of my position. If you are desiring of my advice, my company, or my strength, I will swear to always be available to you."

Fleur smiled gently and placed her hand once more on Caval's shoulder. "Thank you, Sir Caval," she said. "It is good to know that there are still some honest men in this kingdom."

Snow storm

The fireplace roared to life as he dropped the match into the carefully stacked wood. The snow outside fell heavy, and its cold seeped through the walls, penetrating the house and dropping its temperature far past levels of comfort. The central heating of the building had broken a few days prior, but fortunately he had been able to collect more than enough firewood before the storm blew in. He had anticipated needing to keep himself warm until the snow had passed and he could get the heating repaired. He had not, however, anticipated having to heat for two.

She sat in front of the fire and smiled up at him in thanks before gently scooting closer to the flames. She had come to visit him by surprise just before the storm blew in. Neither of them had expected the snow to come today, however, as the weather forecast had clearly detailed that it would come the following day.

He went to another room and grabbed the only clean blanket he had and brought it back to the fireplace. "Sorry," he explained, "this is all I have right now that we can use to help us keep warm."

She smiled back at him. "Don't worry about it," she replied. "I don't mind sharing. It'll help us keep warmer, after all."

He sat down next to her and draped the blanket over both of their shoulders. It wasn't the biggest blanket in the world, forcing them to sit shoulder to shoulder so that it could fit around them both. They sat in silence for a time, watching the fire crackle, trying their best not to shiver as the room slowly warmed up, or at least the small area where they were sitting.

"I'm sorry you had to get stuck here with me," he said after a time. "I know that you had other plans that you wanted to get done, but it looks like you're gonna be stuck here with me for a while."

She shook her head. "You don't have to apologize to me. It's not like you can control the weather and made the storm blow in early. Neither of us could have known that this would happen, and it's better to be stuck here than out on the road alone or something like that."

He nodded in agreement. "That's true. You could have been a lot worse off. Still. I wasn't exactly prepared to have you here during the storm. I was only planning on one person. I may not have enough supplies."

She frowned but nodded in return. "I suppose that's true. We'll just have to be careful with the supplies that we have."

He sighed and rubbed the back of his head. "This didn't exactly turn out to be the best day."

She smiled up at him and gently pushed more against him. "I don't know," she replied. "It could have been a whole lot worse than getting stuck with you."

Fighting

Brandon flexed his hand after wrapping it up with his hand tape, making sure that he hadn't accidentally limited his finger mobility. It had been a long time since he had, but he still routinely checked, just to make sure. He got up and lifted his punching bag, hooking it up to its spot on the ceiling. Once it was free hanging, he patted it down, cleaning the dust off of it and making sure that there were no tears or other unseemly problems.

Satisfied that everything was as it should be, Brandon stepped back and cracked his neck and knuckles, bouncing on his toes and warming himself up. A quick jab lead into two, and then three, until he was throwing long combos of mixed punches into the bag, the dull thumps of taped skin on thick leather reverberating throughout the room. Brandon moved slowly in circles around the bag, coming at it from varying angles, trying to change up his approach with every string, so as to keep himself fresh and not relying too much on any one pattern.

"Hey, Brandon?" a voice came from the door. Brandon didn't respond, continuing to move around the bag and punch away. "Why do you always train on a punching bag like that?" the voice continued. "You're not a fighter. You don't go to tournaments or anything like that. So what's the point?"

Brandon slammed the last punch in his combo into the bag, then grabbed it to stop its swinging. He looked to the door to see his sister, Anna, leaning against the door frame, watching him. Her face clearly displayed her confusion and disapproval. "What's wrong with wanting to be prepared?" he asked her. "You know how in the movies, there's always that moment where the guy has to protect the people around him and uses the skills he's trained his whole life to do it? If and when that moment comes for me, I want to be ready."

"That moment's not gonna come, Brandon," his sister said bitterly. "Moments like those are only ever seen in movies for a reason, bro. They don't happen in real life."

"You can say that all you want, Anna, but the fact remains that I would rather be prepared for something that won't happen, then unprepared and have it come up." Brandon stepped away from the bag and picked up his water bottle and took a long swig of water from it. "Besides," he continued, "it feels good to go in and fight the bag. Gets rid of tension. Keeps me in shape."

"You'd be better off with that if you had a real partner, you know."

"I know. But unless you want to get some gear on and fight me, I'm gonna stick with the bag." Brandon looked at his sister for a moment, challenging her to accept his proposition with his eyes. After a while, she simply shrugged in response.

"I wouldn't be able to keep up in a fight with you," she said.

"That's the goal."

A good book

I've been thinking a lot lately about why it is that I enjoy books. I mean, obviously I do, or I wouldn't want to write them, and I've liked them for as long as I can remember. I've also had the innate ability to, pun intended, judge a book by its cover. I look at things, and I know whether or not I'm going to like them based solely on first impressions. Am I wrong sometimes? Sure. But probably a lot less than you would think.

There are some things that obviously will make me more likely to pick up a book. Being in a genre that I like, being written by an author I'm familiar with, having sword and/or dragons. I'm a simple man. But there's just something that I can see in the titles and covers of books that makes me know whether or not it's going to be something I want to read. Something about the way it catches my eye. And a lot of the time, when other people try to recommend me books, it doesn't work out to well. Not to say that it never does, cause it certainly has and I'm always glad to be proven wrong on that kind of thing, but it just doesn't happen that often.

There are things about the contents of a story I know that I like, though. The one I talk about most often is character development. If a character starts off in one way, and by the end of the story they have gone through a logical and observable evolution into something greater, than it could be about practically anything and I would love it. There's just something magical to me about watching someone grow. I would imagine that anyone who has ever played the role of a teacher or parent can sympathize with me on that one.

Another one I talk about a little less often is hope. You can write the darkest story on earth and I will read it if there is hope to it. That sounds really vague, and it's kind of hard to explain. So let me go through it backwards and see if that helps.

I don't like Game of Thrones. I hate it, in fact. Weird for the medieval guy, I know, but I have my reasons. That book is the penultimate story of no hope. Characters die left and right, and if they're not dying, they're losing everything that they hold dear to them. I managed to read the entirety of the first book, and by the end, there was only one character of easily a dozen who had any hope to her life, and that was only after everything else had been stripped away from her. I didn't want to be in that world. I didn't want to experience a story where you're better off dead than alive, because then you wouldn't have to deal with all the bullshit that was going on in the rest of the story.

Those are probably the two biggest things for me. I mean, obviously I want it to be well written, and to make sense, but development and hope are the building blocks upon which you apply good writing technique if you want me to like your story.

Not that you probably do. It's your story, why the hell should you care what I think?

Happy endings

"I wish people talked more about happy endings."

Melissa looked at her boyfriend, biting sarcasm in her eyes. "Are you kidding me?" she asked him. "You know just as well as I do that if people did that, you would just be jealous that their lives are better than yours."

"That's not true," Mark responded. "You always hear people talking about how shitty everything is, and how terrible life is, and how there's no point in doing anything that you want to do because it will never be appreciated. Can you imagine how many people must be put down by that kind of talk on a daily basis? But if people talked about the people who make it and make a difference in the world, we could inspire an entire generation of people to go out there and make the world a better place."

Melissa blinked, surprised at the depth and sophistication to which Mark was going. He had never been a particularly deep person. "What got you thinking about this?" she asked.

Mark scratched his head, trying to think of just where the thought had come from. "I'm not really sure," he explained. "I guess it's just something that's been festering in my head for a while. I remember being a kid, and having people tell me to put aside my hobbies and make more time for the things that would supposedly really matter further down the line in life. They made me feel like the things I wanted to do weren't worth doing. But then sometimes I would see people more experienced doing the things that I liked doing, and they looked happier than the people trying to tell me to stop. So I stopped listening to those people."

"Sure, but how do you know all people are going to be like that? There are people out there, after all, who will do something just to prove to other people that they can. Some people look at the bad things in life and make a positive change because of that."

Mark nodded, thinking about that. "I guess you're right," he said. "So maybe there needs to be some kind of mix. But I still think that we don't talk about the happy endings enough. They come up in stories and movies all the time, but hardly anyone ever talks about them in real life. It's like those are things that are reserved solely for fairy tales, but that's not really the case."

"Yeah, I see where you're coming from. So why don't you do something about it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why don't you make a difference? Make your own happy ending, and spread your story. Make people hear about it. Be the person who makes happy endings the more popular thing to talk about."

Mark smiled and chuckled. "Alright," he said. "But you have to help me."

Melissa smiled back at him. "I suppose I can do that. But what do I get out of it?"

Mark chuckled some more. "Your own happy ending."