Season 11, Week 30 Portfolio: "Fermentation"

FTSEC

Woody had loved the white, two-story house as soon as he’d seen it.  It was perfect.  It was bland, boring, and dull.  It was at the end of a cul-de-sac of similar houses, mostly rentals.  It had lawns, a few low shrubs, no trees, and a wood fence in decent shape.

More importantly, the sight lines were unobstructed.   They could put a sniper on the second floor and see anyone coming for at least a quarter mile.

As Woody pulled up to it now, the only problem with it was the black SUV out front.

“Damnit,” he thought, “how many times have I told them?”

Nothing said law enforcement like a black SUV.  Unless it was the watchvan, which was parked down the street.  It was meagerly disguised as “Smith Bros. Painters” and bristled with antennas.

Woody was driving a gray Honda Civic.  There were at least two more parked out in front of nearby houses.  It attracted no one’s attention, unlike the other two vehicles.

“Next time,” thought Woody, “they should just paint ‘safe house’ on it.”

Woody was Marshal John Woodsman of FTSEC, the Fairy Tale Security branch of the Library of Congress.  It was the smallest operation in the federal law enforcement empire and he was the only employee.  It was funded under “office supplies” for WITSEC, the Witness Security Program in the U.S. Marshals Service.

For this witness, he’d borrowed “real Marshals,” as they called themselves, but he’d hated to do it.  He'd had been given the clowns in the SUV for this operation, and WITSEC had thrown in the watchvan as a good faith gesture.  Recently, relations had been tense.

“They sure as #@%! had better not have blown my safe house,” thought Woody, as his blood pressure reached perilous heights.  “This case is too important.”

Woody was there to check on the security arrangements before the witness was due to arrive later.  He found the deputy marshal asleep on the sofa with the TV on, which was inexcusable.  After waking him up, Woody decided to go it alone without any more “help” from the real marshals, their SUV, or their watchvan.

He drove back to the office to get his own equipment. FTSEC was located in WITSEC’s former confidential operations center, located under Bannister’s Brew Pub.  Bannister’s combined a micro-brewery in back with a sports bar up front.  Woody nodded to the bartender as he went in, and continued through to the back.

The brewery had several large fermentation tanks, along with all the other equipment needed to produce its currently fashionable beer.  The last fermentation tank was an elevator in disguise, which Woody rode down to FTSEC headquarters.

FTSEC HQ was a large underground room, which WITSEC had stripped bare after relocating to its new, modern OPCENT.  Woody had a desk, a lamp, and a filing cabinet nobody wanted.  It was a dark, murky space where everything smelled of beer-- even his laptop.

“No one cares about literary crimes,” he'd thought, when he was transferred from WITSEC because he'd asked for protection for Prince Charming, who had agreed to testify against the Evil Queen in exchange for immunity and witness protection.

“WITSEC doesn’t handle lit crimes,” his boss had said.  “You don’t really fit in here, but the Library of Congress is looking for someone with your background.”

Woody had built FTSEC from the ground up, which didn’t mean much since he was still its only employee.

Prince Charming was now Chuck Johnson, a store clerk in Omaha.  With his help, the Evil Queen had been arrested, but she had escaped on a technicality.

But now all of Woody's energy was on his current case, the biggest one yet.  He had flipped the Wicked Witch of the West, who was now prepared to testify against the Fairytale Witch Consortium for violating the Black Magic Protection Act.

The Wicked Witch had come to Woody.  She had known him in his days as the woodsman who had rescued Little Red Riding Hood from the wolf, and she knew he could be trusted.

“I’m so tired of it all,” she had said, “especially those flying monkeys.  They’re out of control, hunting people down and causing nightmares on their own. They can't get enough of it.”

The Witch wanted immunity and a new identity as far from water as possible, plus a lot of plastic surgery.  In return, she would give Woody everything he needed to bring down the Consortium.

He was scheduled to meet with the Wicked Witch that night at the safe house for the first debriefing.  She would be flying in at midnight, under cover of darkness.

Woody finished gathering up his supplies, and left. He stopped off at the Beef Barn for their SpudSteak dinner, and then drove to the safehouse to get everything ready.

He parked in the garage and took his video equipment out of the trunk. He double-checked it, then set it up in the family room and waited.  At the stroke of midnight, the Witch landed in the backyard, and came inside and parked her broom in the kitchen.  They got right to work.

“It all started with Glinda the Good,” the Witch said with a cackle.  “She’s not as good as people think.  Her first gang was those miserable munchkins, but that wasn’t enough for her.  She wanted to get all the evil witches together.  ‘Think of everything we could do’ she said to us, and we went along with it.”

The Witch told him bombshell after bombshell, stopping when it began to get light outside.

“I’ll be back,” she said as she retrieved her broom and headed to the backyard to take off and return to her castle.  “It’s feeding time for those monkeys . . .”

But before she could finish, the automatic sprinklers popped up.  No one had even thought about them, and they hadn't been disabled.  It was too late for Woody to rescue her-- she gave a gut-wrenching shriek and melted right before his eyes.  It was agonizing to watch, and it seemed to take forever.  Finally, nothing was left but a steaming pool of liquid witch.  Woody picked up her hat, cloak, and broom to take back to the office.  He kept them as a reminder that no detail was too small.

Woody had never lost a witness before, and it hit him hard.  He had hours of videotape, but none of it could be used at a trial. Without the Witch, the case was ruined.  The drive back to the brewpub was miserable and long.

While he was working on the extra lost-witness paperwork, a large soap bubble appeared, and out stepped Glinda herself, all sparkles and light.

“Too bad about that snitch,” she said with a smile.

“That’s cold,” replied Woody.  “But I’m not giving up, now that I know who you really are.”

“Me?” she said sweetly.  “I’m Glinda the Good.  You’ll never touch me.”

With a wave of her wand, Glinda disappeared.

“No one’s untouchable,” thought Woody.  “I’m not giving up until I bring her down.”

With that, he turned back to his paperwork.  He knew what they’d think over at WITSEC, but he didn’t care.

“None of them ever flipped a witch,” he thought.  “I did it once, and I can do it again.  I’m FTSEC, and I can kick their lazy asses any time.”

He started to play the Evil Witch’s video.

“At least she was honest about who she was,” thought Woody.  “I owe it to her to see this through.”

The Wicked Witch was right – the Woodsman could be trusted.  A year later, he had Glinda doing a perp walk on the courthouse steps.  She arrived in her bubble, which burst as soon as she saw the crowd and the reporters with their cameras.

The newspapers ate it up: “The Real Wicked Witch” and “Glinda the Goon!” screamed the headlines.  One picture caught her with a particularly ugly snarl on her face.  Another paper printed her mugshot, without her crown or wand, both of which had been confiscated.

It had been a difficult case to put together, but Woody finally had the witnesses who could corroborate the Wicked Witch’s information: the captain of the Wicked Witch’s Guard, the Scarecrow, and Dorothy herself.

“You’ve got no case,” Glinda’s attorney had told Woody before the arrest.  “The Scarecrow didn’t have a brain, the captain of the Guard got a sweetheart deal to lie about my client, and Dorothy’s in Kansas, living a black and white life. She thinks she dreamed everything up.”

But Woody knew better.  He kept the pressure on and after her arrest, Glinda did what all the smart ones do.  She flipped.

Woody interrogated her back at the safe house and she gave up her whole operation, including the Wizard himself.

Glinda wound up as a barista at a Starbucks in Portland, where she can still be found, making Iced Caramel Macchiatos with a subtle wave of her hand.

The scent of Glinda’s perfume would linger on in the safe house for a long time, reminding Woody that no one was out of reach of the law.

With his debt to the Wicked Witch paid, Woody moved on to his next case: hate crimes against fairytale canon for leaving out the dark parts..

He was still a one-man operation, still stuck under the brewery.  But his case against Glinda made him even more determined to pursue literary crimes and keep exposing the seamy underbelly of the fairytale world.

*     *     *     *     *     *
If you enjoyed this story, you can vote for it along with many other fine entries https://therealljidol.livejournal.com/1161522.html.
Complete Portfolio
1. Favorite: "The Pirates" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/37750.html
2. Lifeboat: "Bunkers and Blueberry Pie" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/44294.html
3. Fermentation: "FTSEC" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/44034.html
4. Champion (whipchick) "Buddha Nature" https://whipchick.livejournal.com/75957.html [I am so grateful for her willingness to be my champion and for the excellence of her story]
5. Re-Do of "My True North" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/38989.html : "Lost" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/44632.html

Season 11, Week 30 Portfolio: "Lifeboat"

BUNKERS AND BLUEBERRY PIE

Jack was sitting at the counter inside Annie’s Restaurant when the world didn’t end, yet again.  The asteroid had missed, or God had forgiven humanity, or the mystic calculations were off just a little, or whatever the excuse was. Jack was just happy to be eating his second piece of one of the best blueberry pies he’d had in a long time.  It was a good morning.

The most recent for-sure-end-of-the-world event had passed by, and all those doomsday preppers had crawled out of their bunkers and started looking for a new reason for the coming collapse of civilization. 

Jack didn’t mind – the business was always good.  Many of the preppers had bought luxurious Lifeboat bunkers from him for this last would-be Doom Event.  Now he could sell them conversion kits to turn their bunkers into rec rooms or underground man-caves or whatever they wanted, so they wouldn’t look as crazy as they actually were. 

Jack Chatham was the balding, overweight owner of Lifeboat, Inc., and a natural-born salesman.  He was a genius at finding people’s fears, stoking them, and then selling the solution: a Lifeboat luxury bunker. 

Any fool could build a bunker by using a backhoe to bury some old shipping containers for starters.  Jack targeted the high-end social paranoiacs, and built small houses underground with armored, radiation-proof exteriors and loads of room for storing supplies and weapons.  Every comfort was provided so that his customers knew they would be safe in the post-apocalyptic world of their choice.

But the most recent doomsday panic was over, and now it was time for a break.  Blueberry pie was a great place to start.

“How do you get such a flaky crust?” Jack asked Annie.

“I use a little vodka in place of some of the ice water,” she replied.

It was clear she knew her pies.  Jack only knew the eating part.  Annie was in her mid-thirties, and Jack found her attractive in a Betty Crocker kind of way. 

Her restaurant was in Styx River, a tiny hamlet popular for its fishing, hiking, and river-rafting.  The few businesses catered to tourists, so it was pretty empty during the off season, like now.  The restaurant was the only one for miles and it was generally busy, but it was slow at the moment. 

“What brings you here?” Annie asked, brushing her hair back.  She was curious by nature and liked talking to her customers.

“I sell doomsday bunkers,” Jack replied.

He was always reluctant to explain his job because he thought it made him sound fringy when all he did was sell to the fringe.

“Must be a good market,” said Annie.  “Lots of people worry about that stuff around here.”

“I sold some units up in the hills,” said Jack.

“Well, with the River Styx nearby and all those dead wandering around waiting their turn, who can blame them?” said Annie.

Uh, oh, thought Jack. A crazy baker.

“Besides the Styx,” said Annie, “just over the hill there’s the hellmouth in that old mine.  Why we couldn’t get a few angels, I’ll never know.  But still, there it is.”

Jack never liked high-level weirdness unless a sale was near. He'd been thinking about a third helping and more conversation, but decided he'd better order the pie to go instead.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Annie as she made up his order, “but I’m not crazy.”  Her smile made him forget the weirdness but not the pie, which he made sure to take with him.

He wasn't sure he'd be coming back soon, but then again, there was at least one wealthy client in the area who'd be good for a conversion.  Definitely the man-cave type, which was always profitable.  Jack never liked to leave a sale behind, so a return trip might be needed after all.

“That smile and that pie . . .” he thought as he drove away.  It was a pleasant thought, but he had a lot of other work waiting for him at home. 

One of Jack's recent ideas had been to increase business by contributing to internet conspiracy sites about the coming economic collapse or starvation or zombie plague, or any other fear-of-the-day.  That always got the internet buzzing with people seeking ways to save themselves.

When the frenzy peaked, he would know it was time to sell some Lifeboats.  He’d come up with a new design this year, that incorporated remote-control machine guns for increased firepower and safety.

Now that the most recent doomsday scare had dissipated, it was time to begin the next business cycle.

Jack started working the conspiracy sites again to help build new panic, and this time he triggered a new tipping point after only seven weeks.  Sales of his new Lifeboat design were brisk for several months, but then they started to slow.  He thought of Annie.  He was in a stressful business and a little relaxation would be perfect – just what the doctor ordered.

“You’ve got to make some changes,” his doctor kept saying, “eat better, get some exercise, get your blood pressure down.  You’re not young anymore.”

Jack always promised to try, and then ate a pizza instead.  A travelling salesman’s diet was awful, but his was worse than most. 

He decided to visit Annie that very night. It was a pretty drive to Styx River and the moon was high when Jack stopped for some gas half an hour away.

“It really is gorgeous,” he thought as stopped for coffee and antacids at the Gas ‘N Sip. 

Sitting in his car, he popped a few of the antacids and washed them down with the battery-acid coffee.  He wasn’t feeling good.

“I need to rest for a bit,” he thought.

He took a brief nap in the parking lot and felt much better when he woke up, better than he had in years.  He was eager for some pie and that smile.

The moon was full when he crested the hill outside of town, and the light gave it a pale blue glow.  There were a lot of people wandering the streets, most of them in the direction of the docks.

“Pretty busy for so late at night,” Jack thought.  “They're probably fishermen.”

He didn’t know anything about fishing, but midnight seemed as good a time to fish as any.

Jack parked his car in Annie’s lot.  He was curious about what everyone was doing, but he wanted some pie first, and to see if she still had that smile for him.

Everything shimmered in the moonlight and Jack found it hard to focus, especially on the people. 

Annie was behind the counter and she flashed him a wide grin.   She was so light and beautiful that Jack couldn’t look at her.

“I knew you’d be back,” she said.  “Welcome to Forever After.”

Jack couldn’t move.  “What the hell?” was all he could say.

“Not necessarily,” said Annie, “but probably so in your case.”

“Am I dead?” asked Jack, as he noticed that his skin seemed to be radiating a blue-white color.

“You had a heart attack back in your car,” said Annie.

Jack always thought he’d probably die on the road, but he'd also thought it would be years before that happened.

“You should have taken better care of yourself,” Annie said.  “You had a weak heart.”

Jack didn’t know what was going on.  He closed his eyes and thought he would faint.

“And you should have been a better person,” said Annie.  “Your work wasn’t kind to your soul.  You fed on people’s fears and then sold them products they didn’t need and couldn’t afford.  You didn’t care what you did to them.”

Jack opened his eyes.  He was starting to feel the pull of the river.

“Who are you?” he finally said.

“I’m a Guide,” said Annie.  “I’ll take you to the river and then you’ll cross over.”

Jack’s light was glowing stronger as his body started to fade.

“Over to where?” he said.

“Not Heaven,” she answered.  “That’s someplace else.  You’ll find out on the other side.  The old mine’s been glowing red lately, so the hellmouth’s open.”

Jack's body started to fade away, leaving only light. “I guess it’s time for me to go,” he said.

Annie went with him to the pier, where many other souls were waiting.  They would be herded onto Charon’s ferry and then carried to the other side of the river. 

“It’s crowded here,” said Jack.  “All these souls – I’m frightened.”

“Don’t be,” said Annie.  “Everyone crosses over.”

Jack could see other Guides, who glowed brighter than the souls.  He wished he could see Annie smile one last time, but all he saw now was the river, the other side, and the ferry.

The boat was full of souls by the time Jack got on.  As they crossed the river, he looked back and he saw Annie disappear, and then the town, until he could only see the approaching shore.

There were new Guides on the other shore to sort everyone.  He saw the hellmouth burning brighter in the distance as minions claimed some of the souls near him and used whips of fire to steer them to eternal torture.  Jack was afraid.  He knew the life he’d lived.

“That’s not for you,” said a Guide.  “You’re going to Purgatory.”

Jack felt relieved.  It wasn’t Heaven, but at least it wasn’t Hell.

“It was a close call,” said the Guide.  “But Annie said anyone who loved blueberry pie that much should not be abandoned to the Pit of Despair.”

Jack turned around, and now he could see Annie there on the far shore again. Her black hair and baker’s apron looked like they always had, and she smiled at him before heading back to her restaurant. 

“Maybe this won’t be too bad after all,” he thought, as he moved off with the other souls headed for Purgatory.  “Maybe they’ll have blueberry pie.”

*     *     *     *     *     *
If you enjoyed this story, you can vote for it along with many other fine entries https://therealljidol.livejournal.com/1161522.html.

Complete Portfolio
1. Favorite: "The Pirates" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/37750.html
2. Lifeboat: "Bunkers and Blueberry Pie" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/44294.html
3. Fermentation: "FTSEC" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/44034.html
4. Champion (whipchick) "Buddha Nature" https://whipchick.livejournal.com/75957.html [I am so grateful for her willingness to be my champion and for the excellence of her story]
5. Re-Do of "My True North" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/38989.html : "Lost" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/44632.html

Season 11, Week 30, Portfolio, "Lost "

Re-do story for "My True North":  "Lost in Love" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/38989.html

LOST

Clark Ericson didn’t know in what direction he was walking, but he had to admit it was his own fault.  The newspapers had made that clear, and so had the letter of dismissal from the university.  If you destabilize true magnetic north, even by accident, then in all decency, you ought to accept the blame.  Still, Clark didn’t like being a pariah, nor did he like getting lost every time he left his house.

He had told an angry world that the effect might be temporary, but that was a small consolation.  Airplanes were grounded, ships had to steer by the stars, and birds migrated to the wrong places.  North and South Dakota fought over which was which, and everybody was lost.

Worst of all, his family hated him.  But his immediate problem was food.

“You screwed things up,” his wife had said, “so you find the store!”

If he couldn’t locate a grocery store, he knew he would be banished to his little lab in the garage.

So here he was, hoping for the best and desperately wanting not to be recognized.  Even though the weather was hot, Clark wore his son’s sweatshirt and pulled the hood down to hide his face.  A pair of dark glasses helped.

His disguise created its own problems, of course, by making it hard for him to see where he was going.

“I don’t suppose it matters,” he thought when he left home, towing his kids’ old wagon to carry the groceries.

It was going to be a long walk.  The nearest grocery store was three miles away and he couldn’t drive.  His experiment had affected the electronics in the car, and now it wouldn’t start.

“I wish I hadn’t crossed those wires,” he thought.  “I’m a physicist, not an electrical engineer.”

It was an innocent mistake, the kind people make every day, but which usually didn't result in earth-changing consequences.  Magnetic true north had always moved a little bit over time, and no one had really cared.  But Clark had caused it to start moving thousands of miles a day and in random directions.

“They said it couldn’t be done,” he thought as he turned another corner.  “I wish I’d listened.”

All he had wanted to do was find proof of gravity particles, which were missing from the Standard Model of particle physics.  This had flummoxed everyone from Einstein on down.

“I should never have gone to the fair,” he thought, as he found a gas station he might never need again.

Clark had ridden the Starship Gravitron at the Grant County Fair.  It was circular, and it spun so rapidly it had pinned the riders up against its walls at incredible speed.  He had almost passed out, but that state of semi-consciousness had freed his mind and the idea for a gravity particle generator had popped into his head.

It was a simple add-on to the campus’s particle accelerator, just a few more magnets really.  He'd called it the Gravitron in honor of the amusement ride.  The particle physicists had all thought it was ludicrous, but Clark had worn them down.  No one had ever imagined it could have such dangerous effects.

And it hadn't, at first. Not until Clark had crossed the red wires with the green wires leading from the magnets.

“It was such a small error,” he thought sadly, as he came across a game store.  “Oh, hey—the kids will like that."

The chances of finding the store again later were small, but still, maybe then they wouldn’t hate him so much.

“Those sparks were probably a warning,” he thought as he trudged along.  “Maybe I shouldn’t have turned the particle accelerator on.”

He rounded another corner when – hallelujah! – there it was: Lucky Groceries.  His family wouldn’t starve and he wouldn’t be living in the garage . . . yet.

He finished the shopping quickly, and then encountered his next problem: he still had to find his way home.  Clark stood in the parking lot with his wagon and closed his eyes, trying to remember what he’d passed on the way there.  The first step was the dry cleaner’s, which he could see up at the next corner.

And so, slowly and tortuously, with several wrong turns, he made his way back home.  One of his errors led him to a pizza parlor, so he bought an extra-large combination see-what-a-great-dad-I-am pizza for his family before continuing his journey.

He felt so relieved when he finally opened the door to his house.

“I’m back,” he said, “and I brought . . . .”

“Pizza!” yelled his son, who ran into the kitchen and grabbed it with all the gratitude of a feral child who hadn’t eaten in ten minutes, and then ran off with it.  Clark thought he heard a growl.

“You were gone nearly three hours,” his wife said.  “The ice cream’s melted.”

There was no kindness in her voice.  Their invisible daughter stayed in her bedroom.

“There’s no forgiveness here,” thought Clark, on his way to do penance in the garage, intent on staying out of everyone’s way for a while.  He checked his email on his phone and the world was still mad at him.  He had never felt lower.

Clark headed for the cot, to settle in for a pity session followed by a nap.  He got neither.  Instead, he got an idea.  Sitting on top of the cot was a box of old, failed inventions.  And the one on top was his attempt at a flux capacitor for time travel, inspired by “Back to the Future.”  It hadn’t worked, of course, but it had been fun.

At the heart of a flux capacitor was a nuclear quantum-stream reverser.  And that was what gave him his idea for how to repair magnetic north.

All he had to do was induce a negative charge into the quantum tube in his Gravitron device and hook it back up to the particle accelerator.

“. . . and uncross the wires,” he said to the dog, who really didn’t care since there were no kibbles in sight.

To do all this, Clark would need access to his old lab and some time with the particle accelerator.

This required permission from the head of his former department, Prof. Sophia Agnelli.  A phone call resulted in a stream of emphatic profanity, followed by “never again.”  Her reply to his follow-up text message was even shorter: “restraining order.”

But Clark knew he was right.  He still had his keys for the university, which the security guards had failed to collect when they'd escorted him off the campus.  He just needed to wait until no one would be near the particle accelerator, which, on a Friday, would be unusually early.

He spent several hours diagramming his idea and checking the math before leaving for the 11:30 p.m. bus to the university.  It took him only 45 minutes to find the bus stop.

“Hey,” said the bus driver after he opened the door, “aren’t you that #@%! who . . . .”

“No,” said Clark, who pulled his hoodie lower and hurried to the rear of the bus.

Since the new passenger was either a mad scientist or a middle-aged wanna-be-thug, the driver didn't stop him.

“They don’t pay me enough to deal with this crap,” muttered the driver, and left Clark alone.

By the time Clark found his office, it was 2:00 a.m. and he knew he had to hurry.  He opened the Gravitron, fixed the wiring, and induced a negative charge in the quantum tube, then carted it over to the particle accelerator and attached it.

After waiting for the accelerator to reach full power, Clark re-routed the particles through the Gravitron. It hummed briefly before throwing off the dreaded electric sparks and dying in a small, unexpected explosion.

All the power on the campus went out, leaving Clark more in the dark than usual. But there was one important change.  He wasn’t lost anymore, and he ran.

Once he got back to his garage, he found a compass.  It pointed to the old north again now, and it stayed there.

“I did it!” he yelled at the dog, who still didn’t care, not even when Clark broke into the approximation of a victory dance.

The world was grateful and everything returned to normal.  Birds knew where to migrate, ships could navigate, and North and South Dakota found something else to quarrel about.

Unfortunately, the police also found it easy to locate Clark’s house, so they could arrest him for trespassing.  While he was in jail, the university served him with a bill for the damage he had caused, which only added to his misery.  But after his wife bailed him out, and he finally got home, he saw a blanket and a pillow on the sofa.

Gradually, life returned to normal again.  The university forgave Clark for trespassing and for the destruction from the explosion in exchange for the Gravitron, which had significant potential for gravity research -- if properly wired.

His family life also returned to normal, because Clark, for all his faults, was a good husband and father, and he had only almost destroyed the world just that one time.

The dog, whose main interests were still shaped like beef-flavored rocks, never noticed or cared either way.


*     *     *     *     *     *
If you enjoyed this story, you can vote for it along with many other fine entries https://therealljidol.livejournal.com/1161522.html.
Complete Portfolio
1. Favorite: "The Pirates" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/37750.html
2. Lifeboat: "Bunkers and Blueberry Pie" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/44294.html
3. Fermentation: "FTSEC" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/44034.html
4. Champion (whipchick) "Buddha Nature" https://whipchick.livejournal.com/75957.html [I am so grateful for her willingness to be my champion and for the excellence of her story]
5. Re-Do of "My True North" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/38989.html : "Lost" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/44632.html