Mix-Master

Dani DeSilva had a great memory and an even grander facility for possibilities. She loved piecing images, faces, bits of conversation, a line from the novel she was savoring. Pinning. Loosely held together not permanent. The winds were particularly attentive to this one's broad application of spinning webs. Her artful way of seeing through the lens of her grandmother's camera left plenty of room for what they added were the dreams often missed, or forgotten. But really it was the woman who was the Mix-Master and this was her season. The winds and the weather were still warm for late October. Both had watched and listened as Dani applied the potential to the rich only great-grandson of sugar barons. She didn't have that information, yet. What she did have was the sense of something not yet right.

"Every thing is sacrified, at some point," The wind was not being rhetorical, but as the stand of maples released their leaves into a tumble and glide of orange and gold it was a shiver that reckoned the truth of the comment.

"Easy for him to say. Always on the move, no idea what a rooted life entails." There was no malice in the maple's observation. Rooted was what she knew and life on this planet had given her many memories. Wind played a part in those memories. They brought news. They tickled the tips of limbs, danced often with the limbs of the old ones, cautioned them with the gossip. The book of tree-skins the rich boy carried would stir things in him. The young woman had flipped a switch. The winds and the weather would keep talking about things. And when the trees talked it was an invitation that beckoned to those schooled in hearing. The maples behind D-Square were part of a city block that still lived with old maples along the sloping bank the climbed to the streets behind it. So the invitations were more frequently heard and accepted as quality conversations. A long-standing pact among the resident humans made it an All-Species Friendly Neighborhood. In fact, Maple Head was the global heart for ASFN a grassroots movement with its beginnings nearly as old as the photographer.

The city was not her first choice for home, but it worked well as a conduit of foot traffic for her business spurred by the funky mix -- tough and savvy small businesses -- that hung in there in spite of the odds against them. The International District, once simply China Town was home to Pho and Kim Pop as well as the famously infamous Golden Dragon Restaurant. Famous for its duck and infamous for the hell's kitchen law that still ruled the Black Market. Dani liked the fit she had in her neighborhood. Languages flavored her everyday, and because of it the people who sought her out came with many stories some long and consistent, others fractured like broken glass. But most were a still forming, or melting from one old to new or new to old. Tonight the only story Dani wanted was the one that began with her sister's palm. Family and a favorite meal from small kid time was  comforting. The thing going on with Mr. Sweet was more than a little disturbing, but she had no wish to ease the feeling. She felt the tentacles of creative tension knotting just behind her piko. Birthing pains baby. Her grandmother was always talking to her, and Tutu was never wrong. Dani instinctively rubbed her belly. The simple and complex connections between the concrete on one side and the worlds just above the Earth's atmosphere were lay lines Dani saw and heard as clearly, if not more so, than directions on the back of a cake mix or a message on her phone. Noticing the star in Olivia's palm surprised her. Was that the birthing pain her grandmother was pointing at?