Well, surfing on Otherkin and reading prezzey‘s entries on her own SF writing has put me in a writing mood. This is what little I wrote today. Its title:

Austin
Volume 1

I met him on the day I decided to become a vegetarian. He was tall and slender with dark, rock star hair and dark, brooding eyes — the type your mother warns you about but every woman falls for, including your mother. If he was a Ken doll, he would come with a motorcycle and Led Zeppelin records.

He was in the produce section of Whole Foods, looking over the cantaloupes. Every woman in the produce section, including me, was looking him over, and we were all thinking the same thing: “He’s looking at cantaloupes? He must be married.” Since I’m shy, I wouldn’t have said two words to him even if he had been as single as a lesbian in East Texas. That didn’t stop me from looking though.

Just then, he looked up and our eyes met for that awkward split-second before I quickly turned away towards the leek. Leek? Yuch. What am I? Welsh? But there I was, studying the leek as if I would ever consider buying such a lame soup vegetable.

“Hello? Perhaps you could help me.” It was him — dark, mystery man. “I don’t know how to tell a good leek from a bad leek.” His voice was deep and gentle, like a quietly flowing river in a dark jungle.

“Well…” I fumbled for words. “Leek is really only used in soups or by the Welsh, so it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“I was going to make roasted vegetables.”

Cantaloupe and roasted vegetables? He’s gay. I should have known. This is Austin after all. You either have to be a queen or know a queen just to be allowed inside the city limits. I would have to somehow get the word out to the other women in the produce section.

He picked up a slender, longish leek, surveying it. “It’s girth you want,” I said, “not length.” I smiled and moved off toward the organic baby spinach.

He put down the inadequate leek and followed me. “I know you,” he said in a quiet, secretive tone as he tried to keep his shopping cart from bumping into my backside.

I turned around. “You know me?” Suddenly dark, mystery man was becoming dark, scary, stalker man.

“Yes. Your aura gives you away.”

Oh! He’s a New Ager. Suddenly the leek made sense. “I see,” I said politely. “What exactly is my aura telling you?”

He leaned forward over his shopping cart and whispered, “You’re Otherkin.” He said these words with weight, his eyes jumping with delight.

I hated to disappoint him. I really did. Besides his sheer beauty, he just seemed so happy to find me. Unfortunately, I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. “I’m what?”

“Otherkin,” he insisted, as if repeating the word would be a definition of it. “Angels, elves, faeries, vampires — they’re real.”

“Oh no,” I replied, “the vampires are just computer programmers slinking out in the middle of the night to grab some Vietnamese noodles and a caffeinated soda before crawling back to their computers. That’s a common mistake made here in Austin.”

He pulled his wallet from his back pocket. Opening it, he pulled a business card from it and handed it to me. “This is my company, Earth Walkers. Contact me if you want to talk.”

I looked at the business card. There was no address or phone number, just an email and a website address. “You run the business out of your house?” I asked.

“Yes… well… it’s really only a website. Right now, at least.”

I opened my own wallet and handed him my business card. “This is my business, Web Dreams.” There is a direct corelation between how long one has lived in Austin and how many businesses and/or domain names one owns.

“Email me,” he said with meaning. And then he turned his cart around and headed off toward the soy candles.

—————–

That was a lot of fun to write! I haven’t written in so long. Well, that’s all for now, kids. I’ll post more as I write it.