Very very soon now, in a matter of days, we make our move to another world outside the suffocatingly safe cocoon of Home and Mother, to the dark Unknown of Someplace-Else. Will we, after all, take these broken wings and learn to fly? Or will it be another failed experiment in the Laboratory of Life?

Goddesses fly. Life’s a trip.

My parents are freaking out over it though. The house tends to revolve around me, and NOW who will be the chauffeur-caterer-household drudge-fluttery faerie flower princess? And Dad finally realizes he’s getting on in life, and that sixty-six is sixty-six whether or not you have cute little kids (who aren’t so little anymore anyway), and Mother must deal with the onset of empty-nest syndrome and turning forty the same year. My sister has to learn to dance through the house in tiaras, to sense silent parental mood changes and be cute accordingly, to make their lives at once a fun playground and darkest hell. Good luck to the little gimpy grrl. Maybe if she proves deficient they’ll trade her in for a chinchilla that I can dress up in little hats with ribbons.

I will gather a Spluttish following in my new flowerpot, dance around in the wind getting tangled, and spend an afternoon brushing myself back out to be shiny and full. Youma will tremble, and sane people will run fast before they catch whatever I have, before I cut myself on them and bleed into their open mouths.

I will come home at Thanksgiving thinner and paler with still-longer hair, dressed even stranger than I am now, and they’ll hate it. And I’ll run around town in the Bitchmobile with Splut regained, throwing glass flowers and chunks of cheese, and I’ll love it.