Dear Diary,
I wake up very early.
It’s still dark outside.
My sister Mack is masturbating, but she’s asleep and can’t help it so it’s okay.
I mean, it’s excusable.
It isn’t really that okay.
I think about putting my pillow over my head, but that isn’t what pillows are for.
Water splashes all over her bed.
I am confused until I remember that Mack studies elemental invocation.
I tell Mack she must have had a very wet dream.
This is funny.
Mack needs me to tell her to get the wet things off of the bed.
I think she isn’t good at figuring out what to do when things go wrong.
I am not very good at knowing what to do when something unexpected happens but I know what to do with a mess.
I help Mack clean up the mess and use a drying spell.
She figures out on her own that we should mop up the floor.
We don’t have a mop but the verb “to mop” doesn’t require one.
It is too early to be up for the day but Mack does not have anywhere to sleep so I tell her that she will have to sleep with me.
I tell her she will need some of my pajamas.
She does not agree.
I insist.
She is not supposed to wear dirty clothes and people are supposed to wear pajamas when they go to bed.
Mack is so much prettier in my pajamas.
I don’t think Amaranth knows very much about clothes or else Mack would have better ones.
In bed, I tell Mack about wetting the bed at the group home.
She doesn’t understand that people tell each other things when they are close like we are.
I don’t think she has much experience with it.
I don’t either but I am trying to learn.
After a while I go back to sleep.
I wake up again at six.
I tell Mack good morning.
She tells me good morning back.
I tell Hand Wash good morning.
He doesn’t say it back.
That’s okay.
He’s just a stuffed bear.
I am asked why we’re up at six in the morning.
I tell Mack it is so I can meditate with my friend Dee.
I invite her to come along.
She declines.
Mack wants to get out of my pajamas before hilarity ensues.
She doesn’t have any other clean clothes.
She is strangely insistent on wearing dirty clothes.
I decide it’s probably a sex thing.
I’m not supposed to judge.
I loan Mack some more of my clothes.
I am asked by Mack why she has sequins on her butt.
They aren’t really on her butt, they’re on the seat of her pants, but I know what she means.
I give her the hair band that goes with the clothes.
She doesn’t want to wear it.
I insist.
I think that she and Amaranth need someone to teach them about clothing.
My friend Dee is waiting for me when I go out into the hall.
I am asked if I had any difficulty cleaning up after the incident in the night.
I tell my friend Dee that I have more difficulty keeping Mack out of dirty clothes than I do cleaning up water.
She laughs.
I am told that my friend Dee frequently wears the same clothes more than once between cleanings, that she cleans them at “ritually appropriate” times.
I am surprised because my friend Dee seems cleaner than that.
She tells me that she secretes less than most races and that she is very careful to keep anything from getting onto her clothing.
I tell her that dirty clothes aren’t supposed to be worn anyway.
She tells me that her robes aren’t dirty unless something dirties them.
I tell her that “dirty” for clothes means they have been worn since being washed.
My friend Dee laughs again and tells me that we both wash our garments when ritual demands.
My friend Dee laughs more when she is alone with me than she does when we are with other people.
I do not know how much she laughs when she is with other people and I am not there.
I suspect it isn’t very much.
My friend Hazel has told me that if someone is laughing and they are happy then it is probably nice laughter, but if they are laughing and they look or sound angry then it is probably mean.
My friend Dee sounds happy.
“Your friend Dee’s a deep one, no pun intended,” Hazel said to Two as the golem girl carefully scrutinized a measuring cup full of flour. “I never would have guessed she had a sense of humor hidden under that big swirly cloak. Are you measuring that flour, love, or counting it?”
“You said to be especially careful with measurements when baking,” Two said. “Because baking is less of an interpretive art than most cooking.”
“Well, I was speaking sort of in general, there,” Hazel said. “I didn’t know it was possible for a person to be more careful with measurements than you already are. Your usual level of care is more than enough when baking.”
Two’s face scrunched up and her head cocked to the side. Her eyes rolled around for several seconds before she turned to Hazel, her face relaxing into a look of slight confusion.
“I need clarification: I should be less careful when baking?” she asked, and Hazel laughed.
“No, no, love… as the saying goes, you can’t be too careful… oh, don’t do that,” Hazel said and Two’s face began to twitch. “Just… measure however you… the way you were measuring.”
“Okay,” Two said, and she resumed her careful weighing of ingredients.
“So, tell me… are you keeping up with that diary still?”
“Yes,” Two said.
“I hope you’re not still doing that crossing-out business,” Hazel said. “A person has a right to their opinion, you know.”
“I know,” Two said. “You told me this before.”
“But you said you kept crossing them out all the same.”
“Yes,” Two said.
“Why?” Hazel asked.
Two didn’t answer. She wasn’t stuck thinking… her face went almost blank. Only her lips, which had become thin and drawn and trembling, showed any expression.
“You can tell me, love,” Hazel said.
“I… I did not think that they were for me,” Two said.
“Now, who in the world gave you that idea?”
“Nobody,” Two said. Her voice and hands both got a little shaky as she admitted this. “Nobody told it to me. I decided it for myself. It felt like I should not have opinions. I did have them. I couldn’t help it. But it felt to me like I shouldn’t.”
“Well, Two, love… that’s just not true,” Hazel said.
“I know!” Two said. “Once I knew that I had decided it for myself, I knew that I didn’t have to keep doing it.”
“Do you mean to say that you realized that if you’d decided one way, you could decide the other way?” Hazel asked. “Or that you decided it wasn’t binding on you since no one else told you it?”
This one made Two think.
“Both?” she said.
“Well, I suppose progress is progress,” Hazel said.
“Yes,” Two agreed, nodding. “Progress is progress.”
I am asked if I would like to decorate a cookie for Mack.
I tell my friend Hazel that I would.
I know how I would like to decorate the cookie for Mack but I am not sure that it will be allowed.
I ask my friend Hazel how much frosting I can use on one cookie.
I am told that the rule is that the frosting cannot outweigh the cookie.
When I finish the cookie, Mack is asleep.
She isn’t wearing pajamas.
Her bed is not made.
My clothes are on the floor.
My sweater is missing a button and my hair band is not there.
I am fairly certain that Mack is my little sister.
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Author’s Note: This is only about a third of the length of what I had planned, but it’s actually going to be the first of many entries interweaving Two’s diary with little snippets of dialogue and other scenes that the diary would have a hard time conveying. I’m going to solve the problem that’s made diary entries so rare, made this one take so long, and kept me from connecting some other snippets I have written but can’t connect to this by doing what some of you have suggested in the past and ask the readership to help with the necessary cross-referencing.
Not any heavy, intensive research… just stuff like, “Can someone confirm when the first time Two ate cauliflower was?”
(That’s a trick question. She’s never eaten cauliflower. She finds the nomenclature confusing.)
Big Sister TWO is just too, too adorable.
Makes feel very protective, my wife would have called it my Silverback instinct. Dull & boring & very tolerant of all the commotion around me, until I perceive a threat to my dependents or other potential victims….
I do not like predators, not at all.
Some dis-assembly required? I’ll sleep like a baby afterwards.
TWO is the big sister in a lot of ways