We got Jehovah's Witnesses today. I swear to fuckin' god, actual Jehovah's Witnesses. It was absolutely, utterly, bizarre. I mean, I didn't even know they still, like, existed!

Anyway, suckers knock on the door and Matthew goes over and opens it, and they start on their little...speech, or whatever, automatically, and only after they've started do they notice him. And I can hear them, stumbling over themselves trying to....shit, I don't even know.

So I go into the kitchen, and I wrap up some of my chocolate chip cookies in a napkin, and I go over to the door, hand them over with this big, polite smile on my face, and I tell 'em, "Jesus can kiss our asses. Right under our tails." And I slam the door.

Matthew was so pissed, haha.

Matthew's such a fucking weirdo. He was gone for a while today, right? Doing...I dunno what, he wouldn't say. Just went out on his own.

And he comes back hauling a computer. Now, I've got a computer, right? Can't post to LJ unless I've got one, and this laptop's been with me for years now. We don't need another one, not when we can spend the money on other stuff, y'know? Like books. And he doesn't have to ask to use it, he's always allowed, so I was kind of confused.

He starts setting it up, though, and it's not a computer, it's just...everything else. Monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers--and this weird, like, framework thing. And he takes my laptop away from me, carts it over, and slots it on in...and suddenly it's like a regular computer.

So I ask him why, when there wasn't anything wrong with my laptop's screen or anything else, and he kind of looks over his shoulder, wing twitching back out of the way, and he just grins at me. "I like hearing you type on a regular keyboard."

Fucking nuts, man, I tell you.

Finally managed to find an apartment that was the right combination of cheap, unsleazy, and not-in-a-shitty-ass-place. Was fucking hard, man. Like, four decent places in three different towns turned us down because they "didn't think we fit in with the community they wanted to establish, or some shit".

Whatever.

So here we are in Phoenix, Arizona. I like it--nice and warm, lots of thermals for soaring. Easy to fly. The apartment's all right. Small, but nice, and the shower's huge, which is kind of important when you have fifteen-foot-wings to wedge in there with you. Never get to have sex in the shower, and I always did want to try it. Oh well. Sex midair more than makes up for that. His parents are paying for us to rent furniture, mine are paying rent for the place itself. Cush.

I'm gonna try and get a job, I guess. I want Matthew to look into college--community college or maybe one of those online ones or something. Boy's smart. He should do something with himself, instead of following a deadbeat like me around for the rest of our lives.

....Oh shit. That better not be my brownies I smell burning.

So Valentine's Day is coming up, yeah? And usually I don't go in for any of that gushy crap, but we've had sort of a weird time lately, and Matthew's in a...well, not in a great place, so I agreed. His parents and my parents are gonna give us some money, and we're gonna rent an apartment for, like, a year, and give this domesticity thing a try.

...Shut up. It's for Matthew.

I'd much rather be north than south.

At least we get an excuse to hang out in California for a while.

So I didn't know strange angels came in twins. I didn't think it was possible--it's hard enough for ladies to pass us, what with the wings and all, but two? Their mom must have had a C-section, or something, 'cause I can't imagine popping out two.

They were swallow-tailed kites, and holy shit, I've never seen anyone fly they way these guys did. They're not as fast as Matthew is, and I bet I can probably soar better, but damn. These two, like, defy gravity. It was psycho.

Wish they'd stuck around instead of running off as soon as Matthew and I tried to hail them. I'd have liked to know how they did it.

Whatever.

...All right, so I've been thinking about that "settling down" thing. And you know what? I'd be a fuckin' liar if I said it wasn't appealing. Sure, it's fun at first, living hand-to-mouth, never knowing where you'll be in the next few hours, much less the next day or the next week. It's fun eating in diners and restaurants--and laughing at the bizarre reactions you get--sleeping in hotels or on park benches under the stars or curled up under trees.

But that shit gets old fast. Fast fast. Beyond freakin' fast.

I'd love to have a home, a place to come to roost every day, without fail. I'd love to be able to own more than two sets of clothes at a time. I'd love to be able to begin accumulating possessions, to own things and stuff and crap. I don't have any crap right now. I have the bare necessities, and nothing more.

I'd love to, like, start watching TV. On a regular schedule, with shows I make time for and everything. I'd love to have a pantry and a refrigerator full of food, to be able to see if any of the camp tricks I've learned work with real cuisine. I'd like to sit down and bake again--I haven't baked in years.

Yes, I bake. Shut up.

But how the hell can we afford to do that? I sure don't have any marketable skills, and what's Matthew gonna do? Work as a stockboy? Get another go-nowhere dish-boy job? It's not like he's had any chance to grow into the potential I know he has! The whole "leaving home at the tender age of seventeen to follow little fuck-up me" kind of fucking derailed all that.

So yeah. Maybe I think finding some cozy little apartment somewhere and settling down isn't such a great idea. Maybe I have a damn good reason for it too.

Matthew mentioned casually the other day that he thinks maybe we should consider settling down together somewhere.

I almost punched his lights out.

Holy crap, what an interesting couple of months I've had--and I mean interesting both in the legitimate way, and in the euphemism-for-fucking-terrible way.

So Matthew and I wound our way up through the coastal states, taking our time and seeing what sights there are to see. (There weren't many.) We ended up at his parents' house just in time for Mother's Day. Oh joy. Believe me when I tell you that this was not a pleasant experience.

Matthew's mom is a total bitch. She's one of the mothers who wants to smother her baby boy, keep at home and cater to him until he's old enough to fend for himself--which, in Mommy-dearest's eyes, is never. In Mrs. Anderson, this instinct was exaggerated by the fact that her son was born with wings, and mutated from a desire to protect him into a desire to overprotect him into humanity.

Yeah, you read that sentence right. Where my parents only wanted to pretend I didn't exist, his mother was determined to squash every bit of him that was avian, so that he was nothing more than a teenage boy who happened to have wings. (When I met him, he didn't even know how to fly. Seventeen years old, with a functional set of wings, and the boy had never been airborne. A disgrace, I tell ya.) Of course, the first thing I did when I met him was set about remedying this. Taught the sucker to fly, showed him what it was like to stop being a human and start being a strange angel. He was the one who took it one step further.

Did I force him to follow me? No. Did I shove a gun between his wings and tell him I'd shoot him unless he came with me on my journey? No. But according to his mom, I did.

So we ended up back and Maryland, and it wasn't pretty. She did everything short of physically throwing me out of the house to get me to stay in a motel while we there, and she kept finding excuses to delay our departure--Father's Day, some aunt's birthday, Flag Day, the anniversary of a grandmother's death--and the whole time it was "Let me make you dinner, Matthew," and "Here, I'm doing a load, I'll take care of that laundry for you."

Passive aggressive bitch.

We're outta there, now, and still heading north, to take in the sights before the weather turns cold enough to throw us down south again. I'd like to see Canada.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Fifth Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	High
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

Apparently, I have lived a "cruel, hateful, and vindictive" life. Who knew?

(Still in Florida. May be taking off for Georgia soon.)

I'm still alive, just so you know. Nothing interesting at all has happened to me...and I went birdwatching twice.

Matthew dragged me to a movie last night. We don't go, usually, since we're often not in one place long enough to spend the time, but this one he really wanted to see. Why, I don't understand, but hey, if seeing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles makes him happy, then I'm willing to give it a shot.

No comment on the flick. I was never into the franchise as a kid--I had enough fantasy in my daily diet. Coupla good scenes, though, so I wasn't completely bored.

I swear, Matthew's such a little boy sometimes...but it seems like he's not the only one, so I won't complain. Too much.

There’s this little convenience store, about a three minute flight away from the motel we’re staying in right now. Matthew had appropriated my laptop, and I didn’t have anything else to do (it doesn’t matter what part of the country you’re in, daytime TV’s the pits), so I decided to hop over there and pick up some fuel.

I walk in, and yeah, I know I look strange. I know most people don’t often get a chance to see one of my kind up close--especially not one like me, who tips the scales on the “bird” side of the equation--and I know most people are perfectly happy with the situation. That’s their problem, not mine.

See, it becomes my problem when I walk into a store, and somebody spits on my feet, for no reason other than I walked in and dared to have wings. ...As far as I could tell, anyway.

Used to be, in situations like this, I take it upon myself to teach the ill-mannered boob a lesson, and this often involved various parts of their anatomy coming into contact with various parts of mine. The offenders tended to remember these lessons, largely because my hands are plated with scale, and I have claws. You know how it goes. (Actually, you probably don't.)

But, see, since I've started traveling with Matthew, I've tried to lay off that, 'cause it's not fair to get him in trouble simply because I can't control my temper. Plus, Matthew and I kind of want to find a place to settle down eventually, you know, and it's hard to do that if I've got arrest warrants following me around the country. (And before you go getting the wrong impression, I don't, not yet. I've never lost my temper that bad.) And right around now, I really need to be careful, 'cause we're going to be hanging around here for a relative while, and I can't go around beating on the locals and hope to remain in their good graces.

So I repress the urge to pop this guy. The urge I don't repress is the urge for a smoke.

See, smoking is just one of my unfortunate tendencies. I don't really consider myself a smoker, and I'm pretty sure I'm not addicted, but every once in a while, I just need a cigarette. I know it's bad for my lungs. I know it's stupid to drop five or six bucks on a pack I'm going to smoke, like, two cigarettes out of before tossing it, but when I want a smoke, I want a smoke. So I grab some candy bars, and get a couple of subs made at the deli for lunch, and I buy a pack of the cigarettes at the counter. The whole time, this ass who spit on me has been standing in the door, staring at me, like he expects me to whip a gun out from under my tail and hold the place up, or something. Ass.

So I take my purchases and exit the store, in the calm and dignified manner of a strange angel who's repressing the urge to be violent, and I decide against smoking right out there in front of the store. I head back to the motel, drop the stuff on the bed without a word, and go out on the landing.

Best cigarette I've had in ages.

Talked Matthew into staying at the very least through March. I have to go birdwatching with him a couple of times (a not wholly objectionable activity), but it's worth it to get to hang out in Florida, where it's warm and sunny and not hurricane season for months.

Excellent.

ETA: Oh hell my leg is asleep, from the knee down. And because of the way my legs are shaped, that means I've lost sensation in two thirds of the limb! Shit. Now how'm I supposed to hobble to bed?

Finally. Finally. Eleven days since my last entry, and we have managed to make it into Florida. Let me tell you, I could not be happier. I hate having to wear bulky clothes, hate having to carry around the extra weight. I hate being covered up.

What I love is walking into a restaurant with my head high and absolutely ignoring all the funny looks that get sent my way. They’re all jerks for staring anyway. What, were they raised in barns? (And there’s my trite cliché for the day. Your turn.)

So yeah, Matthew wants to go visit his parents. I’m certainly not going to say no, since we were in Colorado for the sole reason of visiting my parents, but I’m going to try and convince him to hang around here at the very least until the spring is settled.

Now, I know this sounds selfish. And yeah, I’ll admit that part of this is because I want to hole up in a hotel and chill on the beach for a few weeks. Hell, we don’t even have to stay in one place—I wouldn’t mind sightseeing Florida. I’ve heard the Everglades are gorgeous, and there are supposed to be some good spots for birdwatching down here. Matthew loves that; it might be a good way to convince him to stay.

But I do watch the news, on occasion, and even more than the news I watch the Weather Channel. I know what kind of winter you guys are having up there, especially in the Jersey-Pennsylvania-Maryland are. All of that fluctuation between warm and cold is not something I’m going to risk flying in. If the weather’s changing every day, then the winds are changing every day, and unpredictable conditions lead to accidents. Period. That’s a chance I’m not willing to take, not now. So we’ll stay in the south if I have to handcuff Matthew to the bed to keep him here, and we’ll wait for the weather to settle.

I may not have gone to high school, but I’m not stupid. I may not be particularly good at following directions, but I’m not reckless. I won’t risk anything happening to us.

We decided to go east. Matthew hasn't seen his family (in Maryland) in a while; he wanted to get home for Christmas and failed. I just want to layover in Florida 'til winter's over, but we'll see how that works out.

So we're flying into Texas, maybe three days ago, following--vaguely--the Rio Grande. We have to be careful to stay on the United Sates side of the river; Border Patrol doesn't take lightly to strange angels sky-hopping from one side to the other. I'm soaring the thermal, 'cause there's almost nowhere better than the southwest and the great planes for the warm-air elevators, and it's what my wings are built to do. I'm just chilling, letting the air do all the work and listening to my headphones.

Matthew and I don't interact a lot while we're flying. It's hard to get close enough to talk with any ease, and who wants to have to shout a conversation, right? So we tend to stay apart, trying to avoid mucking about with each other's wings and fucking up the air currents. So I'm flying, and I realize I haven't even caught Matthew out of the corner of my eye in a while, so I (cautiously) look around for him.

He's gone.

Oh shit, I think, and just then a bomb drops past my left wing, tearing the cushion of air away and sending me tumbling until I get a chance to right myself.

I can see Matthew below me, wings tilted nearly vertical as he tries desperately to brake after the stoop. He's done this before, because it's what his wings are built for. He can soar, but he's made for high speed and aerial agility. Peregrines get to exercise their abilities in the pursuit of food--the only thing he can pursue is me.

Bastard.

Matthew was feeling shaky, so we hit a motel earlier than we prefer to. It was a good thing--both Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III were on TV yesterday. Awesome. I love those movies. (And note which one's missing? HAH!)

We're over the border now, in New Mexico. It's warmer, now--I don't feel like I'm going to freeze just walking outside. Still, I'd like a couple more longitude points under my belt before we start planning what to do next.

Changed the layout of this journal. This "Expressive" is way better than the component I had earlier. I really wish I could get the one with the feather, but I'm sure as hell not paying for a paid account just to get some stupid layout.

I'm sure I can figure out how to customize this thing. Can't be too hard, right?

Colorado is a cold place and I don't like it. It was better when I was a girl, because I wasn't allowed out in winter and we had a very nicely climate-controlled house, but now? Not nearly so pleasant. Cheap motels aren't known for the heat-proofing of their rooms, and flying, in winter?

Didn't I cover this last time? Maybe not. You see, there's more complications to flying in winter than just snow and tricky air currents. There's the clothes.

This is actually far worse for me that it is for Matthew, because I'm built more strangely than he is. The clothes I wear have to be carefully tailored to fit me, and because of the flight surfaces on my arms and legs, I can't wear anything more than shorts or half-length sleeves without interfering with my ability to control my flight. If I do wear clothes like that, they have to be seriously belled, because crushing those stiff little feathers hurts like a bitch. It doesn't help that my legs are digigrade, and if you don't know what that means, what a dinosaur movie sometime (a good one, too, like Jurassic Park, not a crappy one like Carnosaur) and take a look at the raptors' legs.

The size of my wings also interferes with shirts in that the backs have to be specially cut out and altered so that they can be strapped on around the joints. I'm just glad that they don't connect to my back the full length of the flight surface--the feathers may extend to my ass, but the muscles only anchor in the area where the scapulae are on humans. (And yes, I do have scapulae--they're just shaped differently.)

I can slide clothes in under the feathers, I just have to be careful. Halter tops are easy for me, since they're all ties already, and they were made to expose the are I need exposed. Thing about halter tops? Not much appropriate for cold weather. T-shirts, if you slice the back the right way and add some Velcro, can be easily enough modified for wings. Anything else? Needs a special touch.

I'm lucky in that Matthew taught himself how to alter clothes when he was a kid; he's handy with a needle and thread, and he makes almost all of the every-day clothes we wear. He's cut tearing up T-shirts down pat; I think he can do it in his sleep now!

Pants aren't as bad as shirts. Yeah, we have tails, but if you cut a divot down the back, and then wear a belt that skips the loops at the back, it's not too bad. The pants go under the tail, the belt goes on top, and boom! There you go. Angel-capable pants.

We've got the warm-weather, normal stuff in hand, but stuff for cold-weather is difficult. It's hard to fly in huge, bulky clothes, and we can't afford to carry around huge parkas and pants, weight-wise. Hell, we can barely afford a couple of sets of normal clothes, emergency camping gear, and my laptop. Believe me when I tell you that Matthew and I travel with the barest minimum of gear possible. So we commissioned some special weather gear. It was a splurge, but we got special tailored, light, thermal stuff. It's not hypothermia insurance, by any means, but it gets us where we need to go in winter.

Still. I've had enough of the cold, so we're heading south. We're taking it slow, and meandering incredibly, but we're going south. Arizona, here I come!

All right, so it's been, what, thirteen days since I last posted? I know I'm not setting a great precedent here to the reliability or regularity of my blogging.

But you know what? I'm not some pampered little girl sitting in her bedroom blogging about every little thing she thinks will interest other people. I'm not at my leisure to post whenever I want. I live a busy life, and I'm not exactly rooted somewhere. I never know where the next day will find me, and there’s a good chance that this will interfere with my blogging. Recall that I’m doing this mostly for me, as a way to remember the big events in my life and to maybe let some other people get an idea of what it’s like to be me, not for you guys. Sorry if that hurts your readerly egos, but that’s the way it’s going to be.

So why has it been almost two weeks since I blogged, you may be wondering?

Simple. Matthew and I are in Colorado, in the height of winter. We got snowed in. Honestly, we're lucky we decided to wait a few days--I wanted to move right after my last entry, but Matthew urged caution. He wanted to hang around; he must have some kind of weather sense, or something, ‘cause there was a storm the very next day. We got pinned down in our motel.

As Colo storms go, this one wasn’t too bad. Yeah, there was snow, but at least in town it was cleared quickly, and it wasn’t like we were buried and stranded in our luxurious mountain château. Still, not everything was peachy keen. We could move around town easily enough, yeah, but we couldn’t fly. Partly, it was the weather--heavy duty winds and occasional flurries do not ideal flying conditions make, especially not since we’d be mountain flying, which is always dangerous. Partly, it was the cold. It’s way more expensive that we can afford to have really effective cold-weather gear made for us. We have some stuff, but it’s not like we’re able to camp out in the depths of winter in the mountains.

Honestly, it hasn’t been all that bad. I always relish the chance to stick around somewhere for a few days; the ability to eat regular, hot meals and sleep every night in a warm bed is nice, and even an inveterate wanderer like myself needs a little R&R on occasion. So we spent longer here than I would have liked. So what? There’s actually a little meat on my frame now, which is nice, and it’s been good to have time to repair damaged gear and read and watch TV and spend some intimate time with Matthew.

There’re more uses for a warm bed than just sleeping in it, if you catch my drift, and maybe it was more than coincidence that had us stuck here in time for Valentine’s Day.

I’m ready to move on, though, and the dude on the Weather Channel says we’re in for a clear spell. I overheard some grumbling in the supermarket when I was picking up essentials; Matthew and I have overstayed our welcome, I think.

It’s time to go!

It occurs to me that my first post, while offering some clues, did nothing in the way of really introducing myself. I can't say that it wasn't intentional (without lying), but I know I have to give out some concrete information eventually.

Except that by "eventually", I mean "right now".

We'll start with the basics, I think. My name is Lucinda. I'm twenty-one years old, female, and American. My parents live in Colorado, and their names are Maria and Daniel. I'm part Hispanic--a quarter, if you're one of those people who worships the numbers. You can see it the most in my skin; I'm bronze as sin, especially if I've been flying or otherwise out in the elements a lot.

You could probably argue that my eyes (golden brown) and my hair (dark-dark-brown-that's-almost-black) are testament to this heritage as well. You could argue that, but you'd be wrong. Those particular traits come from my other genetic heritage. Y'see, I'm not your typical, normal woman. I'm not a member of the species Homo sapiens. I'm a strange angel--H. avus.

It's not really a big deal, so don't give me any of that faux-sympathetic crap about it, all right?

My extraction* is red-tailed hawk, which explains my user name and all my icons so far. It also explains the eyes, which really are golden-brown and not just light brown or a brownish hazel. My hair is dark, but not black, the kind of dark brown found in the plumage of many red-tails. I probably don't need to say it, but my wings are full buteo, broad and with a sixteen foot span. That might not sound all that impressive, but keep in mind that a school bus is 30 feet long (or so I've been led to believe). Also keep in mind that I'm not even five feet tall. Sixteen feet is pretty damn impressive. I'm not even going to describe my tail--it is in all respects the tail of a red-tailed hawk, except that it's about two feet long.

I was born in California and raised in Colorado. My parents still live there, but I don't. I haven't had a concrete home for about five years. I just...wander. But I'm not going to talk about that now. There's plenty of time for self-analytical babbling about why I live the way I do in later entries. I'll leave it for then.

I travel with Matthew, whom I've known for as long as I've been wandering. He's a strange angel too, of peregrine falcon extraction, and a year older than I am. He's also wildly different from me in a number of ways, which you'll see as I keep up this LJ. If I keep it up; it's perfectly likely that I'll lose interest in it and just stop posting. I wouldn't be the only person, right?

Okay, so I'm kind of losing interest in this now, and there's some crappy Sleepy Hollow knockoff movie on the SciFi channel, so I think I'll hit post and let it be. There's more about me that I could reveal, but where would the fun be if I told it al in the very beginning? Gotta leave some nuggets to keep up my mystique.

*I know, I know. There's a huge debate over what, exactly, to call the fact that each one of us has the features of a specficic bird instead of general avian ones. Extraction, descent, resemblance. Honestly, I don't like any of them, but "extraction" is the best.