I am reading too much in a vain effort to make the words come back. Reading of burning girls and betrayal, and boys who watch through window panes as everybody dies. The March’s History for a dash of comfort, milk in tea, although it grows a little safe for me to be truthful. I’ve long wished to be a Jo, up all night with inky fingers, but I’m afraid I shall always be Amy, full of little vanities, pining after French satin ribbon and a perfect nose.

November means early mornings and trying to draw out just three more words to line up a thousand, and none of them worth the paper they’re written on. Cups of tea gone black and cold, and writing on trains until there is a steady avalanche of dialogue slipping off the page. All of this, solely to prove to myself that I am not so small and weak willed, after all.

“I don’t believe in coincidence.” Rose said “it’s messy and meaningless, a cosmic excuse for anything too difficult to explain.” She bit the blade of grass in half, savouring the bittergreen flavour.
“Then what do you call it,” asked the red haired boy “if it isn’t just an accident?” He liked the way the sun fringed her eyelashes, which were unusually pale and long. If he could he wanted to keep this conversation going forever, just the two of them on the bridge, but the sun would set eventually.
“Magic!” she whispered, with a frightening intensity. “I believe in Magic, and Fate and golden apples and Hades and unicorns in the glen.” She looked at him, waiting for a response. He didn’t laugh, instead he tossed his leaf in to the stream and watched it drift lazily beneath them and out of sight.

The little girl grew a bit taller and they sent her to a new school. It was then she realised that being invisible was something that was hard to stop. Each day she faded a little more in to the wallpaper until her hands became transparent, her feet translucent, and even she could no longer see herself. Once, when she looked in the mirror she saw nothing at all, just the bare green wall behind her. Now as girls are wont to do, when they grow a bit taller, she fell in love. The problem was that by now she was so invisible she could not get his attention. She tried everything, she wrote letters, drew pictures, sang songs, and he could see all of these but he could not see her, she was too good at being invisible and she didn’t know how to stop.

Eventually, she lost him, and her little heart hurt so bad that she ran away. She ran away from everyone and everything and she cut off her long long hair. She learned to write stories, her story, a thousand times over, recorded on paper, in print, that it might never be forgotten or fade away. She threw out her clothes and changed her name and carved herself a new identity and after a while, bit by bit, she began to be seen again. Not just seen, but noticed. They told her she was interesting, they told her she was clever, they told her she was beautiful and she didn’t believe them for a moment but she was so happy to be visible again that it didn’t matter what she looked like.

From then on she wore different clothes and said different things and played her own games and ate her own lunch and sometimes she got told off and bullied, but even that was worth it. One day, years later, she met him again. He called out her name, her new name, from the other side of a crowded room. She did not see him, or hear him at first and when she did she simply smiled and walked away.

She has style. Of course I love Lavender too and we can’t forget Miss Honey (except if I was her I would have stayed in the pretty little cottage with the honeysuckle.)

I’m sorry I have been away so long. Work has been swallowing up my hours like a tigershark. I miss taking photos, but I am still writing. I’m writing a story about a boy, I hope I will finish this one.

It is four sleeps until my birthday.