crows use tools and like to slide down snowy hills. today we saw a goose with a hurt foot who was kept safe by his flock - before taking off, they waited for him to catch up. there are colors only butterflies see. reindeer are matriarchical. cows have best friends and 4 stomachs and like jazz music. i watched a video recently of an octopus making himself a door out of a coconut shell.
i am a little soft, okay. but sometimes i can't talk either. the world is like fractal light to me, and passes through my skin in tendrils. i feel certain small things like a catapult; i skirt around the big things and somehow arrive in crisis without ever realizing i'm in pain.
in 5th grade we read The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time, which is about a young autistic boy. it is how they introduced us to empathy about neurotypes, which was well-timed: around 10 years old was when i started having my life fully ruined by symptoms. people started noticing.
i wonder if birds can tell if another bird is odd. like the phrase odd duck. i have to believe that all odd ducks are still very much loved by the other normal ducks. i have to believe that, or i will cry.
i remember my 5th grade teacher holding the curious incident up, dazzled by the language written by someone who is neurotypical. my teacher said: "sometimes i want to cut open their mind to know exactly how autistics are thinking. it's just so different! they must see the world so strangely!" later, at 22, in my education classes, we were taught to say a person with autism or a person on the spectrum or neurodivergent. i actually personally kind of like person-first language - it implies the other person is trying to protect me from myself. i know they had to teach themselves that pattern of speech, is all, and it shows they're at least trying. and i was a person first, even if i wasn't good at it.
plants learn information. they must encode data somehow, but where would they store it? when you cut open a sapling, you cannot find the how they think - if they "think" at all. they learn, but do not think. i want to paint that process - i think it would be mostly purple and blue.
the book was not about me, it was about a young boy. his life was patterned into a different set of categories. he did not cry about the tag on his shirt. i remember reading it and saying to myself: i am wrong, and broken, but it isn't in this way. something else is wrong with me instead. later, in that same person-first education class, my teacher would bring up the curious incident and mention that it is now widely panned as being inaccurate and stereotypical. she frowned and said we might not know how a person with autism thinks, but it is unlikely to be expressed in that way. this book was written with the best intentions by a special-ed teacher, but there's some debate as to if somebody who was on the spectrum would be even able to write something like this.
we might not understand it, but crows and ravens have developed their own language. this is also true of whales, dolphins, and many other species. i do not know how a crow thinks, but we do know they can problem solve. (is "thinking" equal to "problem solving"? or is "thinking" data processing? data management?) i do not know how my dog thinks, either, but we "talk" all the same - i know what he is asking for, even if he only asks once.
i am not a dolphin or reindeer or a dog in the nighttime, but i am an odd duck. in the ugly duckling, she grows up and comes home and is beautiful and finds her soulmate. all that ugliness she experienced lives in downy feathers inside of her, staining everything a muted grey. she is beautiful eventually, though, so she is loved. they do not want to cut her open to see how she thinks.
a while ago i got into an argument with a classmate about that weird sia music video about autism. my classmate said she thought it was good to raise awareness. i told her they should have just hired someone else to do it. she said it's not fair to an autistic person to expect them to be able to handle that kind of a thing.
today i saw a goose, and he was limping. i want to be loved like a flock loves a wounded creature: the phrase taken under a wing. which is to say i have always known i am not normal. desperate, mewling - i want to be loved beyond words.
loved beyond thinking.
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12. pushing a strand of hair behind their ear
For Annie and Brady please.
I love them soo much. And I adore your writing.
Also I hope you’re doing well and are having a great day :)
hello anon! thank you so much for submitting this prompt!! 🥹 it absolutely took a fairly cute direction in quite the circumstance (we’ll see what that means), so i hope you enjoy!! :) thank you for the love on annie and brady too! 😭 that’s so sweet!! they’re a joy to write so i hope this provides some goodness for them! YOU TOO ANON!!! i hope your day (and now weekend) is going wonderfully! please enjoy!!!
i found you again
(a/n): had a much longer version that this but….did not feel ready for that so, i shortened it up and made it work a bit more with the prompt and i liked how it came out so :) it is shorter than some of my other writings, but i hope to expand on it more in future postings haha! please enjoy!!
Annie slowly slid out of her bunk and moved through the tiny room towards Brady's bunk and got a look at his face, immediately shrinking a bit at the sight of him looking so safe, small and youthful in his sleep, reminding her of that last time they'd found each other side by side, the unknowing between the two of them, one of their last conversations face to face. And now….he was right there.
Annie reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder and gave it a small shake. In almost an instant, he awoke and turned to her in the darkness and immediately reached towards her like he always used to do and grasped her arm. Always reaching.
"Hey, everything okay?" he whispered quietly, his voice a pin-drop in the dark.
"I can't get myself warm." she whispered back, the frustration behind her voice, flogged with a bit more emotion than she was going for and he immediately moved over the best he could in the cot and lifted his blanket up.
"Hop in." he whispered, a small smile on his face. Annie immediately sat on the edge and pulled herself into the bunk, wrapped in her own blanket and turned on her side, immediately becoming engulfed in Brady's chest, his bit of warmth and him. He let the rest of the blanket fall around her form and then he immediately wrapped his arm around her, pulling her shivering form to his own side, arm rubbing up and down, a bit of friction on her clothes, from him. Annie snuggled her head into his neck, where it seemed to be the warmest and let out a small sigh of relief at the bit of warmth that was finally entering her body.
"Better?" Brady whispered, warm breath tickling her neck, and she smiled and nestled closer and nodded.
"Much." she whispered, "Thank you." He smiled, and she shifted a bit, cuddling deeper, and then sighed at the immense amount of comfort that she hadn't felt in days, finally encircling her. Slowly, she brought up a hand out of the warmth of the blanket, and brought it to the side of his face, gently brushing her thumb over the bit of stubble on his cheek, the pleasant feel of him just right there, was comforting in it of itself. It was all she needed.
"So," Brady whispered, his voice somewhere next to her ear, "I never asked, after you were captured - what happened?" Annie shifted a bit and sat up, away from the warmth of his neck, and instead staring down at him, her thumb brushing his cheek, head resting on her hand, staring at those twinkling eyes.
"I was out of it for the most part," Annie whispered back, reaching up to brush some of his strands of hair from his face behind his ear, over and over, watching the sleepiness roll into his eyes, "between the knock to my head and the knee, the lack of food and water….I don't remember much aside from well…..the questioning. The staring." She met his gaze, watching quietly as he let his eyes linger over her face.
"What'd they ask you?" he whispered, his voice so low, all she really saw was his moving lips in the bleary darkness.
"Questions about everything. The 100th. About Birdie; newspaper clippings and such. About Buck and Bucky, about the Regensberg mission - my name was in the paper. Asked about home." Annie managed out, her eyes hardly leaving his own, "I didn't tell them anything. I told them my name, my number, my unit. That's it." Brady watched her and slowly brought up his free hand and brushed it against the bottom of her lip, lingering over the few scabs under her chin from the few scuffles with Germans and falls and punches.
"You?" she whispered back.
"The same." he whispered, "Lot of questions about the 100th - Buck especially. A few about you." She stared at him.
"I didn't let on a thing, though," he whispered, "I'd rather die than give away info about any one of us."
For a moment, they just stared at each other in a way that was far more intimate than anything else in the past few days, enough where her heart raced, and she suddenly felt consumed by his ever-present gaze on her own.
"Did they do anything to you?" he whispered, his thumb brushing her cheek again as her hands continued to prod his hair, "I swear to-", he looked at her, "Annie, if they laid a finger-"
"No, they didn't, not like that," she whispered, hand shaking against his face, "just shoves, a few…punches-"
"Punches?" Brady whispered, "Annie I-"
"John." she whispered, louder than she had wanted and quieted herself, shaking her head, "I'm fine, look-" her hand cupped his cheek, "I'm right here." He stared at her so longingly her stomach hurt, that yearning, that want, that desperate, reaching nature lingering between them.
"I know." Brady whispered, his hand grazing her neckline which was layered in blankets and clothing, "Just….if I ever see them doing anything, I'm jumpi-"
"John," Annie whispered, her voice soft as cream, "you don't have to do any of that now. It's just you and me. Right here." She reached out and took one of his hands, placing it on her chest where her heart was, hidden under skin and bone and overcoats. Brady watched her, like some sort of miracle and believed her. He let out a breath and swallowed.
Watching each other in their current circumstances was an art in it of itself - their hesitant, lingering gazes, the touches on one another's faces, the way her eyes evaded his, but always came back, their bodies so close, pressed against one another, but still distant.
Watching Brady now, he looked beyond exhausted, more than he ever did back at Thorpe Abbotts, and the more she continued that same, calming motion of brushing his strands of hair back, sometimes to settle behind his ear and sometimes to not, she watched his eyes grow more tired.
And in a sense, she got the idea it reminded him of when he was a child, when there was no war and his Ma probably tucked him in at night and brushed his hair gently until his eyes closed. And now, he was halfway across the world, in a P.O.W. camp.
"You need rest," she whispered softly, watching as he leaned a bit more into her touch as her fingers graced over his cheek, his eyes fighting to close, fighting the sleep, "it's okay." He watched her through half-open eyes and brought a hand to her neckline and watched her.
"I'm glad I found you again, Annie." he whispered, "I don't know what I'd do if I knew you'd gone down and didn't end up here." Annie stared at him, her world stilling around her and she couldn't help but lean forward and press a soft kiss to his forehead, before pulling back and cupping his cheek.
"Get some rest, okay?" she whispered, "I'll be right here." Brady watched her again and then nodded, that small smile on his face failing to disappear, as his eyes slides shut and his body finally seemed to relax.
You couldn't do that much here, you were always on guard, waiting for the next sound of explosions, or someone in the hallway, yelling, screaming.
Yet, here, he finally seemed to let go of all of that and sleep.
And until his breathing became deep and slow, she sat up, running a hand through his hair and letting him feel at home for once.
Even if that home was nowhere near here.
Even if home was this, right here.
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