Update [2006-3-14 1:23:57 by toxicfur]:Cigarettes have been procured! I found an open gas station one town over. In NCia, all gas stations stay open 24 hours, as do most grocery stores. It's one of the few things I miss. Of course, how often do I go for a drive here at 1:00 am?

I was going to write Revenge, #2 tonight, but I don't think I've got that much creativity left. The type of writing I do is sort of like fan-fic, in a strange way. The story has to be plausible, based on current constraints and cultures, but it also has to be new and exciting and full of character development. But plausible. Mulder can have a hot sex with Krycek, but he can't suddenly become a rapper who wears low-slung jeans and calls Scully "bitch." Reviewers see right through that kind of crap.

(An X-Files rerun is on USA right now. I'd forgotten how intense my crush on Scully was. I just have the memory of that intensity now, sadly. Crushes are fun.)

Earlier, I smoked the last cigarette in my pack on the back porch, the rain splattering onto the my jeans and running down ana's hat and down my neck. It was thundering, and distant lightening reflected off the clouds.

This is what spring is, for me. And summer. In the coastal South, thunderstorms are as regular as tides, though much more interesting. Peacefully invigorating.

Like most kids, though, I was terrified of thunderstorms, before I was socialized into believing that one should never show fear. I was maybe four years old. That would have made my mom 24 and my brother an infant. The storm, with it's howling winds and simultaneous thunder and lightning woke me, and I cried. My mom let me get out of bed and follow her into the den - a rare treat. She held me in her lap in front of our storm door. We sat in my great-grandmother's black wooden rocking chair with the curved back and the gently sloping arms that made perfect matchbox car race tracks.

The young pine trees in our yard were nearly bent double from the wind and the rain and the hail, backlit by the streaks of lightning. My mom sang softly, absently, a bit off-key. I relaxed against her body, warm and safe and sleepy, and stuck my thumb back in my mouth.