Spirit of Author
I don’t think I will enter this contest. I really don’t think I’m very creative. It’s not that I don’t want to push back the bleak. I do. But how do you push a cloud of fog? I mean, all I really do is write.
Well, maybe that’s not true. I used to be pretty good with clay, but now I don’t have any access to supplies or tools, so that’s gone.
I tried carving wood. I like the walking stick I made, but I’m lucky to have kept all my fingers.
I’ve built islands on paper, castles in the sky, geography that would be such fun to walk, run, climb, swim, and dogsled through. I’ve drawn backdrops so complex that their architecture tells its own story, and I don’t want characters to talk over it.
I’ve taken pictures that tell stories far more intriguing than anything I ever wrote. I’ve painted pictures that have no meaning at all.
I’ve sung my own songs. I’ve danced my own dances. I’ve laughed and cried and grinned and sighed over my own kind of rhymes.
I’ve walked along my own foggy roads, and I’ve knitted wisps of clouds into bridges into the unknown, and gone exploring. I’ve stolen bits of the world out of the fog and churned them into stories, written but not shared.
And in the writing I found my soul, and it’s full of these hazy treasures. There live the people of the fog—heroes and villains, pirates and prophets and people who work in deep space. Some of them are only visiting, and others were born in the dim corners of my creative spirit. They speak languages I invent and talk about things I’ve learned—things like the mysteries in multiverse theory, and the simplicity in a shadow. They’ve found joy in the face of anguish and pain while celebrating. They’ve flown on a boat’s wings and brought the wind home. They’ve battled my bleak, bottled it, and broken the bottle so I can fight it too.
So what if my life is the only one made less bleak by anything I’ve done? I still count, and I matter, if only to me.
My name is Liz, Danzier, maid of mist. I’m the girl who spins bridges out of fog and dances across them to visit places both safe and unknown. I have a scar on my forehead where I sledded into a rock. I have blue eyes so light-sensitive I can barely see in broad daylight. My knees give out and I give in; I ebb and flow like waves on the shore. And I’m still climbing my mountain.
I think I will enter after all.
