Amehana's Workdesk AKA Teresa Garcia's Workspace

In this I return for a very short comical sojuring into my Selkies' Skins universe. This is set sometimes during the group's early tenure as professors at their alma mater. Is it early in Kirsty's pregnancy? Maybe?
Also posted at my Livejournal, DeviantArt, Tumblr, and Patreon. I need to catch the publishing blog up with the month's push.


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Kirsty stood with her legs apart, hands on her hips, glaring at the portal in front of her. Or more accurately, it was supposed to be a portal. In reality, at least for her, it was more like a black condom stretched over a person sized rounded door frame.

“Ally, Thomas. You guys have got to be joking. WHAT DID YOU THREE DO?” Her fiery braids were starting to frizz with static electricity as she folded her arms, glaring through currently storm-sea-blue eyes.

“Not a thing other than casting it. You saw David pass through just fine.” Thomas widened his brown eyes and smiled. The wind tousled his blond hair.

“Why would we mess with the portal when we want to show you something?” Ally reasoned, patting the air. Her amber eyes held none of the mischief Kirsty might have expected. Ally’s own red hair rested lightly, only moving in the wind and not reacting to any sort of energetic buildup.

David came back through the portal, his black robes contrasting starkly with his ice-blue eyes and the  long white hair he had tied behind him. “Is something wrong? It has been some time and none of you came through. I think I saw Kirsty bounce a few times? Possibly punch something?” He looked his wife over.

Kirsty threw up her hands and adjusted the sealskin hanging from her shoulders she kept disguised as a simple lamb cloak. “I cannot use that,” She pointed accusing at the portal lurking behind him. “It’s rejecting me or something.”

“Odd. It works just fine for me.” David frowned, then took a few steps closer to her. “It’s a rather nice glade with an interesting stone. I can’t read it, though. It looks like what your book is in.”

“She should be able to go through just fine. Let’s see.” Thomas walked through, waited a moment, and then returned to them. “No issues.”

Ally tried next and similarly met with no difficulty.

“Maybe she ought to hold your hand?” Thomas mused. I’m not sure why it would reject her.”

“Rather embarrassing that I appear to be the one out of four institution professors that can’t use this door.” Kirsty grumbled wryly. “I don’t mind trying that, though.”

“We could. I have no reason to not want to hold your hand.” David smiled at Kirsty.

Kirsty blushed and looked down.

“Been a few years and that still happens randomly.” Thomas smirked. “Good thing our students learn quickly that David won’t tolerate any students teasing Professor Blushy.”

Kirsty snorted. “I think you’re forgetting I don’t tolerate it from students either.”

David shook his head, then squeezed her hand. “Let’s go, Kirsty. I like seeing you blush, though.”

Kirsty blushed deeper but attempted to follow him through, only for the both of them to bounce off the membrane. A comical “bloop,” resounded and multicolor ripples flickered over it before smoothing again to darkness. She sighed. “Maybe I’m not supposed to go yet? Or some spirit there has a problem with Mara or The Lady? Maybe something one of The Lady’s fragments did put all her priestesses on a blacklist.”

“Possible. I don’t have to go if you can’t.” David squeezed again.

“Or maybe you could take a rubbing for me.” Kirsty sighed.

“We’ll be away from the grounds. Phones and cameras might work there. We can try to get you some footage.”

“Or perhaps Ally might be able to get any spirits convinced you can be allowed… I’m not sure if any would interact with me.” David mused.

Kirsty kissed his nose. “Go ahead. I want to see, and if you can get a rubbing of those runes, maybe it will be something useful, or even explanatory.”

David nodded. “I’d rather have you with me, though.”

“Me too. Go ahead. Enjoy the fieldwork, maybe you’ll even find something useful to you too, Professor.”

Something in the way she said the title brought color to his pale face. David looked away while Thomas laughed.

“Alright then, we’ll go do some fieldwork for your research.” Thomas slipped through the portal. David followed after one last squeeze.

Kirsty settled herself down to wait, placing a hand on her stomach to settle it while she waited for the others. While she waited, she made an entry in her field journal and chewed a little ginger. The warm sun soothed her into another gentle nap, something that had become puzzlingly common the past few weeks.

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In other news I am at 3/4 through "The Other Workers of Santa Claus" by Alexander Saunders in the current editing pass. Steps remaining will be a final proofread after the typesetting for both print and ebook layout, and the cover art.

Bobbing in the bay she could see Sifan and Vapran refugee ships, only able to harbor at docks or further out due to preparatory labor from an offshoot race, the Marelings. They restored the entry of the sleeping former capital.
The Lunar Temple at the gates of the ancestral palace enfolded her welcomingly. The hole she’d fallen into as a child was still there, and so too her father’s impromptu rope. Those braids had weathered the trine surprisingly well. On the other hand… Drenchen hair was famous for its durability. She touched her own braids, blazing Sifan red fragmented stories said came to them via a child born of the Rose Sun and San, the Hidden Moon. Perhaps one day she’d find more details of the fosterling that had birthed the gelfling who became the original Sifan Maudra.
Her tail swished and flared its fins as her thoughts wandered. Sometimes, to her embarrassment, it seemed to have a mind of its own. This time it brushed Alarii’s. Merfid still didn’t quite grok how they’d gained these adaptations. His had come while he obtained the seed from Oszah-Staba, the Wellspring Tree. Hers began growing after she’d fallen into something she suspected now was the Pool of Tears in Mithra on her way to enlist aid from the Firelings, calling on ancient treaties she’d only learned of through luck.
“All-Maudra?”
She looked at Alarii, the gentle Mystic’s smile she often teased him about rarely truly left his face. It was there now, but the soft concern in his eyes melted her before she could needle him. “It did it on it’s own.”
“Right.” He said, waiting for her real thoughts. His muski, Aaru, chirped her version of, “Right,” after him.
She smiled. Aaru did so love to be part of any conversation. “Thinking, that’s all.”
He hummed softly.
Her Drenchen archer often made her laugh without trying. She was glad that things were no longer as awkward between them as when she first laid eyes on him in that tavern in Duppington and Knew he was the one. She never called him her Apeknot to his face, far too embarrassing, but he was far stronger than his scrawny and now bowed physical frame led observers to believe. She loved that about him, his steadiness. His quiet presence made her feel full and blossom in fiery, windy, fluttery ways she’d probably never fully understand.
“I think I should wake the city. There are gelflings to live here again. No longer sleeping.” She mused, following the same pull that had led her to him, to the seeds, her true self and her appointed destiny. She laid a hand over the tree shaped birthmark on her arm just below where the cuff of the last maudra of the Lost Island, regained from its keeper in one of the royal families of Mithra, rode her upper arm to remind her of all the history lost to those ancient wars that had shaped the Sifa into what the urskeks and later the skeksis had found them as. Maybe, after the Darkening the the Replanting were dealt with Mother Aughra might see fit to help her try to reclaim what ghosts the Lost Countries had left behind.
“You keep calling them that.” Alarii said, looking around for the spirits of urVa and skekMal, the remnants of the urskek that had joined them on their journey. He sighed. Who knew where they were off to at the moment? He didn’t. They, like others, came and went.
“Because they do.” Merfid smiled and leaned on the walking stick her grandfather had carved her long ago, graven with ancient Sifan and Drenchen symbols meant to help her in her growth. “They have a very different feel than the main cities we’ve met around the Great Trees?”
“I suppose...” He said carefully. He may have bonded with her but he’d probably never ever fully understand the paths of her mind. “Sifa stuff?”
She laughed at the shared joke. “Sifa stuff.” She said warmly. Merfid touched the Stonewood emblem on her clothes. Ending up as the Stonewood Maudra by vote after their deeds in the Deep Forest and then All-Maudra after being attacked by what she considered a rogue swarm of lunamoths with the remnant of the Living Crown after landing in Ha’rar qualified. Anything unexplainable or strange their little group collectively labelled “Sifa Stuff,” thanks to him.
“Are you doing something that might make me concerned?” Alarii asked.
“Maybe...” She looked down at the worn stone in the center of a dais. “This looks a bit performative...” Merfid looked around again, finding herself where she’d consider center stage. “I feel like more than coronations happened in this particular spot. I can probably be seen by anyone down at the foot of the road by the docks even though we’re waaaaay up here, up the rise.”
“Probably.” He frowned slightly, then sighed. “Uh?”
Merfid’s eyes had taken on the green-blue glow he’d gotten used to observing whenever Thra took hold of her. She unsheathed the small dagger she wore on one of her belts next to San’s Blade. She tilted her head slightly as she listened and watched. As she became lost in whatever vision she was being shown his hands itched. A familiar urge to go touch the indentation in the platform tugged his hands, but something inside the still locked gates of the palace tugged harder. He’d wait, he could only use that gift once a day, and they still had yet to investigate the thing here that was to help urVa and skekMal. For now she was safe.
“Oh, that’s how it works. That’s some weird spiritual technology.” Merfid cut her left palm deftly and mashed her hand into the hand-shaped indent before he could do anything.
Aaru squawked. Alarii reached for her. “Merfid! What are you doing!?”
“Connecting Past, Present, and Future.” She said nonchalantly as the blue vliyaya streamed out through the city in swirls. Crystals, tucked away in strategic places through the city began to light in sequence while the water flowing through the channels that provided its running water filled, flowed, and took on life.
“You cut yourself. Why?” She rarely annoyed him, but he was very definitely unhappy she’d intentionally hurt herself.
She flicked her wings then stood after she was certain it was done. “I heal.” She smiled at him, trying to hide the fact that her hand stung. The line of blood in the indent was rapidly disappearing. “What it does with my blood… is none of my business.”
“All Maudra!” He took her hand, looking it over. “Don’t do that again.” With a frustrated sigh he began cleaning her up.
“Sorry, Dear.”
“You’re going to do it again somewhere, aren’t you?”
“Probably.” She said mildly.
Alarii grumbled. Aaru reprimanded Merfid loudly. He couldn’t help his irritation leaking through their bond with either.
Alarii eyed her after finishing. He couldn’t smile, not right now, but he did stroke an uninjured part of her callused and scarred hand in reply.This is the version of Wake the City that I submitted for Flash Fiction Month. The longer story is only available to my mate and to Patrons on Patreon. This is only A version of what might happen for these scene. Merfid's well aware she's operating within possible timelines and sometimes forsees different versions of events.


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 The minions have been hard at work behind the scenes to rewrite the game from the ground up. There are numerous changes more than can be listed and some stuff is probably broken or has been forgotten. If you find anything raise a help ticket by clicking "Help" in the menu, or messaging me here! Dragon fangs are on a two for one sale to celebrate the relaunch.

Mystic Tea by Rea Nolan Martin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I greatly enjoyed this book. To me this is a three main-pronged braided storyline. We follow a “Mother Superior” of a convent who is also the current caretaker of her mentor, the previous Mother Superior, who in turn had served directly under and was mentored by the founder of their Order. Then we also follow the growth stories of two young women who are of vastly different background being called (unknowingly by them) to fill the roles of those two women. One of these women had never before considered becoming a nun and only went to the convent because while she was in jail getting sober she received a divine angelic calling/revelation. This young woman also happened to be an unknowing seer, having chalked everything up to drug induced hallucinations her entire life. The other woman was a twin that had absorbed her sister in utero, but grew up with the spirit of her sister stuck to her. Then we come to a fourth plot, the growth of the order itself. There is also a fifth plot, the growth of the individual aged remaining handful of nuns.

As a person whose skeleton has shown evidence of having absorbed a twin, I can relate with that character, although I did not become the religious zealot of a nun she was at the point of meeting the character. I was granted a firm support network whereas she was not. I also found myself identifying with our current on-paper Mother Superior, being a biological mother and a matriarch for my tiny branch of my main family. With similar responsibilities it is an extremely easy thing to do. And yet I also found myself identifying with our untaught seer, since I also would speak to rivers, although it was more often trees where I grew up, and found myself experiencing an interest amount of luck.


I found this to be a liberating tale. I rode the highs and lows of the characters and grumbled at them when they dug their heels on things that they needed to come to grips with. I loved the amount of simple life magic, the angels being a real thing, the transcendence (literal) within the tale. I think this would actually be very deserving a tale to be taken into high school senior English classes for reading and discussion. The religious tone, despite being such an obvious part of the story, also clearly separates the religious from the spiritual… a discussion that needs to be had with young men and women at the point in time that they are figuring themselves out and getting ready to set off on their own foray into adulthood and what it means to be human.



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Princess of Ice by Nadia Scrieva

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Although I adore stories about sea creatures I was not as in the mood for a mermaid story as I originally thought I was when I picked up the book. I am glad that I stuck with it despite my quandaries about what sort of story I actually wanted to read because I found it fitting better and better. This is not your usual mermaid tale or tail. These mermaids are like you and me, they just have a second set of lungs meant for the water. There have been stories about suck folk before, able to breathe both water and air (see some of the selkie tales in folklore). Unlike most of the folklore, these seafolk are not shapeshifters.

Since they are like us, and as it is acknowledged that there is a common root in the story between the sea and land folk, they have the same sort of problems we do; abusive fathers, nation wars, espionage, people not believing the truth when they are first told the truth, and many others. You are given the sense of well-developed nations moving behind the scenes and the complex (and often unknown) interconnection of the land nations with the water nations.

I was thrilled to see such a wonderful explanation of the Bermuda, Dragon Sea, and Alaskan Triangles given. The author actually made me fist pump at such an EXCELLENT use of modern and ancient folklore. We even meet the Ningyo people, who are a favorite subject of story research of mine, with their connection to the undersea dragons. Sadly, no dragons are mentioned, but an extinct species makes a living cameo!

The characters are also well done. I could feel the layers of Trevain Murphy (I usually think of Trevain as a surname, so that got my attention) and empathized with him. In many ways, that character was far more like me than I was comfortable with. I also had not expected what his ancestry was revealed to be when first meeting him at the beginning of the book. I loved the complexity of the female lead (Aazuria) balancing secrecy, her regal role, her role as a sister, and her role as a lover. Both of these characters did a ton of growing in this first book. I also particularly loved the metaphor for life that was done with the bonsai scene. Fantastic work. I look forward to reading through the next book of the series.



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Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N. Holmberg

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I have been a fan of this author for a while now, stumbling on her work via other stories about magic in the world. This book, even though magic is certainly involved in the normal life of people, is in a very different sort of world. Here, the magic is slowly waning as the families possessing magic in their blood slowly wane in power over the generations. Spells for such things as travel and communication methods understandably become even more treasured.

Magic in general is highly treasured and cultivated in this world. Magic users selectively breed trying to keep magic alive.

In a world like this sometimes buildings gain magic of their own. A building can be enspelled, or it can absorb from those living within its walls. Sometimes, a house becomes possessed by the ghost of a magic user. Here is where problems enter for the group that seeks to preserve such historic buildings. Sometimes non-magical people obtain those houses and want to be rid of the magic.

Our main character inherits an enchanted, or possibly haunted, house. He is warned about it but discounts it as superstition. Merrit moves into his new property rather promptly as the apartment he was renting will not have the lease renewed. After the house decides to trap him is where he meets with Hulda, our female lead who is VERY reminiscent of Mary Poppins in the way that all good housekeepers can be. Our house, our third main character, then sets out to do what ghosts are known for… being annoying… as annoying as a boy in the tweens acting out wanting attention. Of course, just like tweens and houses, a little love and attention go a long way.

No story is complete without something for the main characters to pitch themselves against. We meet our villain fairly early on. What I like best about this villain is that the author writes him in such a way that we can understand how he became what he is, his struggles, and his desires. He is a very human character who inspires pity just as much as he inspires horror.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book. It is meaty, and yet it is also something that can be enjoyed on days when one wants a light reading fare. I look forward to picking up the other books in this series.



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The House Witch by Delemhach

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I picked this up because I needed a light and whimsical book. I think this is perfect for those who grew up reading books by Patricia Wrede and Jessica Day George but are now old enough to crack a dirty pun without being hissed at by an adult. I think it's fine for teens, young adults, and older folk... but do be aware if you disapprove of such puns for your teen... Honestly, they hear far worse in the school yard and crack worse during sleepovers. There isn't a lot of it in here, but it's there. I cracked up at the part about waiting for the 8-year-old to "drink properly."

The main character is a male witch (THANK YOU to the author for that, from a witch) trying to find a place in the world for himself. I like him because he's within my dating range bracket (if I were on the market), he's witty, he's easily annoyed by people's nonsense, and he keeps his to a minimum... albeit a bit thick in the romance arena. The female lead has her own agenda, and at first, they do NOT hit it off, but they grow on each other while he tries to hide his true self from an entire castle. Quite the challenge for a cook.

This has themes of acceptance, love for oneself as well as others, fairness, and growing into one's inner power. I LOVE the fact he's in his 30's I'm still maturing and not quite there yet. There's plenty to enjoy for those 14ish and up. Just... watch out for that "son of a mage," which is now my new favorite curse.



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