Febe

COLORS
I feel odd, not like my usual self. Something is different; I cannot put
my finger on it. I think for a few minutes. I look inside myself. I do not
like what I see. I am an empty shell, I just sit here. I occupy space for
others. I close my eyes and just breathe. I breathe for one minute,
two minutes and three minutes. Just maybe, just maybe I am
mistaken. Maybe I am not an empty, rotten cavern. I peek again. I
whisper “Hello?” My own timid voice echoes lightly back. Is that
really my own voice? This is scary. What is going on? Where am I?
A better question would be; WHO THE HELL IS THIS?
There used to be so many colours inside of me. I am colourless. I am
nothing but air and time. Where have all my colours gone? Did I
throw them all out, was it on purpose or by accident? Maybe my
colours were snatched from me, stolen. No colour equals death.
I miss my yellow, purple, red, pink and even my blue. Without my
colours I am no one. I do not really exist. Without colours how can
others see me the way I want and need to be seen? Without colours
I am close to death. Am I dying? Who put the stamp on me that say
EXIT? I would go and find more colours but it is not that easy. No
one just randomly leaves their colours pattering around.
I need the colour yellow. Yellow is my laughter. It reminds me of
sunshine during the summer. I love having the sun bake down on my
skin. Yellow reminds me that there are priceless moments that we
live for. Those snapshots of our lives that make us feel on top of the
world! Yellow makes me smile and grateful for who I am.
I miss purple. This colour brings me hope. What a life to live without
purple! No hope day after day, after day. There would be no point. I
need to cling to purple like a raft that drifts alone in the ocean. Purple
is like my mask. A mask I need in order to face challenges.
Pink provides me with protection. Pink is what protects me from the
ugly slush that is constantly thrown at me. Not just during the winter
months either. There is such an abundance of slush. I am lucky
enough to encounter it quite frequently. The good news is the slush
is free. Just a heads up, frequent use does not accumulate air miles!
My pink is a cape with sequins that sparkle and cloak me when I
need it.
My blue has been stripped away! How dare they? This is my strength
Blue is my mojo and energy. How am I to give to others? I cannot
even breathe without my colour blue. Blue is like water, it quenches
my soul’s thirst.
Tears glide down. I blink several times. This is not a dream. This is
my harsh reality. I look down and inside myself once again. Still,
there are no colours. Inside of me is still horrid black. There are no
colours that dance around. Just a dark cavern, I am pathetic space.
Something is trying to come to light. There is something crucial that I
need to remember. It is important. Without colours, WITHOUT
COLOURS WHAT? Why are colours so important?
Someone gently takes hold of my left hand. They whisper gently into
my left ear “Do not move, just be. I love you today, tomorrow and
always”. NO COLOUR IS.....DEATH.

Water Witch
by Elizabeth Creith
Hazel held a forked willow stick out in front of her by the ends. Ten-year-old Molly
trailed her aunt across the field, their steps swishing in yellowing knee-high grass. The
stick quivered, then twisted like a cat, reaching for the ground.
"This is for show, mind," Hazel said. "Folk like to see something happening, something
to tell them you've done it. But you don't need the stick, understand?"
Molly nodded, looking up into Aunt Hazel's face. Wisps of fair hair escaped from
Hazel's braid and caught the light of the full harvest moon in the darkening sky. If
Molly stood in just the right place, she could make the moon into a halo around her
aunt's head.
The moonlight was dazzling-bright, bright enough to cast shadows. When Molly
shaded her eyes, she could see her aunt smiling, her one crooked front tooth and the
sweet, clear blue eyes. Molly's mama had those eyes, too, but Molly's eyes and hair
were brown, like her father's.
"What really happens," Hazel said, "happens inside you. You got to feel the earth.
She's got warm places and wet places, soft and hard places. You can feel the water in
her, feel it in yourself. Your feet feel damp and cool, even in your shoes, and then you
know you've got the right place. The wetter your feet feel, the closer the water."
Molly nodded again. Hazel led her away a few paces in the field.
"Close your eyes," she said, and spun the child around. She steadied Molly with a
hand on her shoulder. "Take hold. Lightly, now. That's right." She set the ends of the
stick in Molly's hands. "Now open your eyes, but don't look too hard at anything. Just
walk forward and feel the earth."
But wherever she walked, however hard she tried, nothing happened. If Aunt Hazel
took the stick, it bent almost to breaking to reach the ground, but in Molly's hands it
was dead as her mama's broom.
"Never mind." Aunt Hazel kissed Molly's cheek and smoothed her sleek brown hair.
"We'll try again another day. There's always a water witch in this family."
But they never tried again. Two days later Aunt Hazel cut herself canning. The wound
sickened and the poison spread up her arm in red streaks. Nothing helped her. She
died at the dark of the moon when life goes out of things and death comes easy. They
buried her in the family graveyard, on the rise at the back of the farm, where her
grandparents and parents lay, and her brother who died a baby.
Molly took the forked willow, drying though it was, and walked in the field every day,
trying to find the spot where Hazel had held the fresh-cut willow while it arched and
twisted towards water. She knew it was foolish. A real water-witch didn't need a stick,
and no stick would help if you weren't one.
When the full moon rose again, Molly climbed up to the graveyard in the evening. The
air was blue and chill with fall. Leaves made a bright rustling carpet for the little
graveyard. Molly laid the stick down on Aunt Hazel's grave.
"I couldn't do it," she said, "I tried and tried. I'm sorry, Aunt Hazel! I'm sorry we don't
have a water witch in the family now." She cried as hard for her failure as she had for
her aunt's death.
When her tears were gone, she turned and started down the hill. The moon floated
before her, and she wondered where she would have to stand to make it into a halo
for herself.
When she was halfway back to the house, with most of a field to go, the wind came
up, a little breeze that brushed over her cheek and crept through her hair to the back
of her neck. She shivered and began to hurry back to the warmth of the house.
Then, just for a moment, the breeze was a warm breath.
"Aunt Hazel?" Molly said. Foolishly, she felt as though her aunt was standing behind
her, smiling down at her. She paused, longing to turn, afraid it wouldn't be true.
Then she felt the smallest touch of cold on her left foot, through the woollen sock. The
cold spread rapidly across her sole, over her toes.
Bending, she quickly undid the laces of her shoe and pulled it off.
Her sock sagged away from her foot, dripping cold, clear water.

The Unicorn
(A Tale of Hranda)
by Steve Lockley
The Unicorn was tucked away in the back streets of Hranda, out of sight of
casual prying eyes and attracted the drinkers that other inns would not
entertain; thieves and cut throats, beggars and vagabonds. And yet there
was rarely any trouble for the landlord Piotr Garim, an incomer who had
bought the run down business many years before. He was a big man, well
over six feet tall and barrel chested, his once blond hair now running to grey.
But it was not due to him that there was never any trouble inThe Unicorn. All
the men who drank there knew that they would never be allowed into The
Black Cow or The Welcome Arms or any of the other inns scattered around
the city and at the first sign of anything getting out of hand, the trouble
makers would be ejected by their fellow drinkers. It was a situation that
suited Garim well as despite his own appearance he detested violence.
People came to Hranda for many reasons; some were looking to make a
better life for themselves or their families, others to get away from their past.
Garim fell into the second category and although he had left his former life
behind he could not forget it. The arrival of a heavy cloaked stranger late in
the evening threatened to change matters if he did not take any action.
The stranger was still sitting beside the fire when the last of the regular
customers left. Garim took the man's empty beer mug to add it the rest and
waiting for him to rise. The man showed no inclination to move though and
Garim felt his heartbeat increase, fearing the confrontation that he knew
would follow.
“It's been quite a while,” said the man.
“Sorry?” Garim said, trying to act as if he had no idea of who the man was,
though he knew that the act was destined to fail.
“Piotr Garim,” the man laughed. “I thought you would at least have changed
your name.
“You must have the wrong Piotr Garim,” Garim replied. Avoiding eye contact.
“I don't think so,” the man in the cloak said. “There are not many men who
cheat the hangman in Kaarlsgrad.”
There was nothing he could say other than try to deny it all, but that would
be useless. He recognised the man as Alex Turgov just as well as the man
identified him. “What do you want.”
“To be sure that the secret is kept buried.”
“It is already.”
“I'm not sure that I can believe that,” Turgov said, pulling the knife from his
belt and rising to his feet. “Did you think that you would be able to escape
forever by hiding away in a place like this?”
Garim backed away, fearing that perhaps his time had come when a
commotion grew behind heralded by the sound of heavy boots. Two large
figures rushed from behind the bar sending two mugs crashing to the
flagstone floor, shattering on impact and firing shards of pottery across the
room. A chair was broken a table overturned but in moments Alex Turgov
was lying on the floor with his knife sunk deep into his own chest.
Turgov slumped into the nearest chair as his two saviour righted the table
and gathered the remains of splintered furniture.
“Sorry,” one of the men said, more concerned about the damage done than
the fact that there was now a corpse on the inn floor.
“Looks like we were right to be a little concerned for your welfare,” one of the
men said. “When our friend in the cloak didn't come out straight away we
decided to go around the back and make sure you were alright.
“Thank you,” Garim said, feeling the words were inadequate.
The other man knelt down and pulled the hood from the man's face to reveal
the ugly rope burn scar around his neck. The only man to cheat the
hangman, and the hangman the only one left to identify him.
“Never seen him before,” said Garim and he knew that at last he could start
to forget.

Clawbinder
by Marlena Frank
Her large leather boots crunched down onto the gritty earth. Saira could
taste blood in her mouth from where the beast had slammed her into one of
the rocky cliffs earlier. She held her breath, and lifted her eyes skyward,
pushing her blonde hair aside and shielding her eyes from the glaring sun
above. For a moment she saw nothing, but then the dark shape appeared
over the rocky outcrop. The giant bird’s wingspan easily blocked out the sun
as it flew through the clear blue sky.
She let out her breath slowly, fighting off the cold terror in her chest and
gritting her teeth in determination. She had thought she’d lost the fearsome
creature known as Rajani, but as she watched its giant form tip in the sky
she knew it was coming back around. For her. Saira moved quickly down the
rocks, tiny pebbles skittering away from her feet. She could do this; it was
what she’d been trained to do: fend off the Giant Ones such as Rajani. But in
training they’d only been a fraction of her size and not nearly as clever. A
single blast from the Power Crest would frighten the little ones off easily, but
not the mighty Rajani. Saira doubted that even three blasts would prevent
her from being torn asunder by the bird’s giant claws.
Her left hand was shaking, clutching the large ruby of her amulet as she
scaled down the cliffs. It was absorbing the energy well, but it had to be
stronger if she had any hope of scaring Rajani away and she was running
out of time. In front of her the giant shadow swept across the canyons and
Saira heard herself whimpering with every breath. Rajani was moving closer,
her wings slicing through the air above.
Just as the shadow came within meters, Saira leapt over what she thought
was a stony crag. As she flew over it, she realized with drowning despair
that the crag was actually a gully. There were many strewn across this
desolate place, but she hadn’t seen any as large as this one. Her brown
eyes went wide as she started to fall into a dark pit far away from the
sunlight above.
She pulled her left hand away from her chest and flexed the fingers out
before her. “Carpo!” she cried, her shrill voice bouncing off the cavernous
walls. Then a dark ruby light erupted from her palm and black hungry tendrils
flung out into the walls all around her, securing themselves into the rocks.
Her body was suddenly pulled to a halt and she blinked in shock as she
realized what had happened. Her heart was still pumping madly in her chest,
but the Power Crest had saved her. She started laughing to herself amid
giddy gasps for air. What might have been her doom, the pit base, was far
beyond the long reach of the sun; there was no telling how long she would
have fallen before slamming to her death. The sides were craggy and the
soil dark, meaning it had been here for some time. She looked back to the
tendrils of the Power Crest, still gripping firm into the rock. They were strong
but she wasn’t sure how long they would last. Then the light within the tunnel
was darkened, and she looked up already knowing what she’d find. Beyond
the gaping opening she saw Rajani’s huge form moving back and forth in
front of the entrance.
“It is I be laughin’ now, child!” Her deep voice flittered down on a breeze as
her orange eyes narrowed. “You sure be a fool for comin’ here – into my
very home!” Rajani lifted her beak to the skies and let out a horrid screech to
the winds. She pulled her massive body up and flapped her wings down at
the cavern. Saira was bombarded with a wind so powerful that the tendrils
were stretched taut against it. She looked helplessly to the anchors within
the walls, but they held firm. She only hoped they would stay.
Finally Rajani relinquished her assault and crouched low. She poked her
long beak slightly into the crag’s entrance. “I be stayin’ here all night, child.
Just for you. And next when you plannin’ to escape, I’ll be waitin’ right here!”
She cawed into the blue sky, her eyes wide with glee and excitement. Saira
could feel her own hot tears pouring down her cheeks before she knew she
was crying.
“Please Rajani,” Saira’s voice sounded small and meek compared to her
tormentor’s. “Great ruler of the skies – please, I meant no harm!”
“No harm! You takin’ Rajani for a fool?” She preened at a few stubborn
breast feathers. “I do not believe in such lies. ‘Specially not from a scrawny
child come to steal my precious babies!”
Saira shook her head. The Giant One was right. She had attempted to steal
an egg. One of the precious few that Rajani would create all year. But she
had to think of something to tell her. Eventually the tendrils of the Power
Crest would give out and she’d fall to the bottom of the gaping pit.

Eve's Diary
SATURDAY -- I am almost a whole day old, now. I arrived
yesterday. That is as it seems to me. And it must be so, for if
there was a day-before-yesterday I was not there when it
happened, or I should remember it. It could be, of course, that it
did happen, and that I was not noticing. Very well; I will be very
watchful now, and if any day-before-yesterdays happen I will
make a note of it. It will be best to start right and not let the
record get confused, for some instinct tells me that these details
are going to be important to the historian some day. For I feel like
an experiment, I feel exactly like an experiment; it would be
impossible for a person to feel more like an experiment than I do,
and so I am coming to feel convinced that that is what I AM -- an
experiment; just an experiment, and nothing more.
Then if I am an experiment, am I the whole of it? No, I think
not; I think the rest of it is part of it. I am the main part of it, but I
think the rest of it has its share in the matter. Is my position
assured, or do I have to watch it and take care of it? The latter,
perhaps. Some instinct tells me that eternal vigilance is the price
of supremacy. [That is a good phrase, I think, for one so young.]
Everything looks better today than it did yesterday. In the rush
of finishing up yesterday, the mountains were left in a ragged
condition, and some of the plains were so cluttered with rubbish
and remnants that the aspects were quite distressing. Noble and
beautiful works of art should not be subjected to haste; and this
majestic new world is indeed a most noble and beautiful work. And
certainly marvelously near to being perfect, notwithstanding the
shortness of the time. There are too many stars in some places
and not enough in others, but that can be remedied presently, no
doubt. The moon got loose last night, and slid down and fell out of
the scheme-a very great loss; it breaks my heart to think of it.
There isn't another thing among the ornaments and decorations
that is comparable to it for beauty and finish. It should have been
fastened better. If we can only get it back again --
The Blue House
I'm leaving the court house, now. There are people all around,
lights flashing, things like that. It's strange. With everything that's
happened in the last few weeks, all I can think about is how
newspaper cameras still have flashes that could blind you from a
hundred yards. That's all I can think of, along with thinking about
how that's all I can think of. I feel a bit light-headed, like I'm
drunk. There's someone behind me, pushing me through the
crowd and down the cement steps. I can barely keep my balance.
Somewhere, way in the back of my mind, I'm aware of the fact
that the mob around me is shouting questions. They're not all
directed at me, but some are. There are lawyers behind me,
pushing, pushing. I can hear their voices, droning on with 'No
comment, no comment.' Jim's voice isn't among them, but that's
not surprising. Part of his job is to deal with the mob on days like
this. I wonder what he's saying.
I wonder if he's telling them that he thinks I'm a bad person for
what I've done. I doubt he is.
I wonder if he's thinking it.
Down ahead is a car. It's a nicer car than anything I could ever
afford, but that's where I'm headed.
There are police keeping the crowd away from the car, letting
us get to it. Every now and then the roar of the scene leaks
through the cotton that seems to be stuffed deep into my ears,
and it's overwhelming. But then I'm shoved forward again, tipped
off balance, and I'm underwater once more.
I look up, past the car, and I see people. The people gathered
behind the car are the real ones. Not reporters or lawyers or
police, but normal people, without a job to do here, or a
professional agenda to carry out. Jim had told me about them,
these people who gather outside courts to see scenes like this. He
had talked about them as though they were rodents or insects;
pests. But I understand them, a bit. Their faces are mixed, one big
blur of approval, disapproval, sympathy and malice. Some think
I'm a bad person, some think I'm a wonderful person. Some don't
care, they just want to see me walk out. That's fine, I suppose.

Eating Vinegar
Sadie glanced down at her feet. The windblown dust from the Loess
Plateau, along with a layer of local coal dust, had settled on her shoes. She
watched as her husband leaned to the side of the busy road and hopped off
his bicycle. The green leaves of a bunch of leeks poked out of a plastic bag
that hung from his handlebars. In greeting, Sadie held up a complementary
bottle of black vinegar.
"Ni hao," he said.
With her free hand, Sadie put her arm around Heng's waist and felt him
stiffen. She pulled her arm away, remembering that she was in Western
China, where a husband and wife must keep at least a foot apart while
walking out in public.
"How was your day?" he asked.
"Terrible."
"You must try to get along with Ma."
"I do try. I really do. But your mother hates me."
"How many students did you tutor today?"
"Only about five, but it felt like a hundred."
"The students are poor, and yet their parents pay you very well."
"Yes, I know. But they use free chat to criticize me."
"You could do with a little self-criticism."
"What do you mean?"
"You have to constrain yourself. You're not in the U.S. any more."
"But, Heng, the students hassle me. They ask me if all American wives
have lovers and if grown kids refuse to care for their old parents."
"It's true in America that old people are put in institutions or
abandoned. Didn't you tell me about Granny dumping?"
"Yes, but that's no excuse for them to mock me. They point out how big
I am. They stare at my feet and then they giggle."
The Lady Or The Tiger?
In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose
ideas, though somewhat polished and sharpened by the
progressiveness of distant Latin neighbors, were still large, florid,
and untrammeled, as became the half of him which was barbaric.
He was a man of exuberant fancy, and, withal, of an authority so
irresistible that, at his will, he turned his varied fancies into facts.
He was greatly given to self-communing, and, when he and
himself agreed upon anything, the thing was done. When every
member of his domestic and political systems moved smoothly in
its appointed course, his nature was bland and genial; but,
whenever there was a little hitch, and some of his orbs got out of
their orbits, he was blander and more genial still, for nothing
pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight and crush
down uneven places.
Among the borrowed notions by which his barbarism had
become semified was that of the public arena, in which, by
exhibitions of manly and beastly valor, the minds of his subjects
were refined and cultured.
But even here the exuberant and barbaric fancy asserted itself.
The arena of the king was built, not to give the people an
opportunity of hearing the rhapsodies of dying gladiators, nor to
enable them to view the inevitable conclusion of a conflict between
religious opinions and hungry jaws, but for purposes far better
adapted to widen and develop the mental energies of the people.
This vast amphitheater, with its encircling galleries, its mysterious
vaults, and its unseen passages, was an agent of poetic justice, in
which crime was punished, or virtue rewarded, by the decrees of
an impartial and incorruptible chance.
When a subject was accused of a crime of sufficient importance
to interest the king, public notice was given that on an appointed
day the fate of the accused person would be decided in the king's
arena, a structure which well deserved its name, for, although its
form and plan were borrowed from afar, its purpose emanated
solely from the brain of this man, who, every barleycorn a king,
knew no tradition to which he owed more allegiance than pleased
his fancy, and who ingrafted on every adopted form of human
thought and action the rich growth of his barbaric idealism.

Ili-ili Tulog Anay - Visayan
Folk song
(p or piano, meaning "soft")
Ili-ili tulog anay,
Wala diri imong nanay.
Kadto tienda bakal papay.
Ili-ili tulog anay.
—English rough
translation—
Sleep for a while.
Your mother is not here.
Went to the market to buy
bread.
Sleep for a while.
SI FILEMON-ILONGGO LYRICS
Si Filemon, Si Filemon
namasol sa karagatan
Nakadakop, Nakadakop, sang
isda nga tambasakan,
Guinbaligya, guinbaligya sa
tindahan nga guba
Ang iya nakuha, ang iya
nakuha guin bakal sang tuba.

Manang Biday
Ilocano Folk Song
Manang Biday, ilukat mo man
’Ta bintana ikalumbabam
Ta kitaem ’toy kinayawan
Ay, matayakon no dinak kaasian
Siasinnoka nga aglabaslabas
Ditoy hardinko pagay-ayamak
Ammom ngarud a balasangak
Sabong ni lirio, di pay nagukrad
Denggem, ading, ta bilinenka
Ta inkanto ’diay sadi daya
Agalakanto’t bunga’t mangga
Ken lansones pay, adu a kita
No nababa, imo gaw-aten
No nangato, dika sukdalen
No naregreg, dika piduten
Ngem labaslabasamto met laeng
Daytoy paniok no maregregko
Ti makapidut isublinanto
Ta nagmarka iti naganko
Nabordaan pay ti sinanpuso
Alaem dayta kutsilio
Ta abriem ’toy barukongko
Tapno maipapasmo ti guram
Kaniak ken sentimiento.

Tuba (Pandanggo Visayan)
Tempo: Allegretto
Condansoy, inum tuba Laloy.
Dili co moinom, tuba pait aslom
Condansoy, inum tuba Laloy.
Dili co moinom, tuba pait aslom
Condansoy Ang tuba sa
baybay Patente moangay,
Talacsan nga diutay Ponoang
malaway
Condansoy Ang tuba sa
baybay Patente moangay,
Talacsan nga diutay Ponoang
malaway.
TYPES
OF
CLOUDS

TYPES
OF
Weather
TYPES
OF
Weather
TYPES

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MRS. LYN F. NAVARRO
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SUBMITTED BY:
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SUBMITTED BY:
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