Quin Goes On A Date [how romantic]

Here is the second in my series on the characters in The Wounded World. Those of you who have read the book know that Quin finds one particular woman interesting--Meriym. Well, several of my author friends are romance authors, so naturally I decided a little romance might be fun. You can read the original post here.

For those of you that don't know, the book takes place (in part) on the planet Sagitta, where Quin, a tall, dark, and silent man employed by the local military, returns home to find that his father has disappeared. He also discovers that his father has left behind a mysterious and dangerous Door which can take you to nearly anywhere in the universe. Accompanied by his close friend, John, Quin sets out to find out what happened to his father. Along the way he meets the beautiful Meriym.

This entry is designed to give you a taste of Quin and Meriym’s relationship - post-novel.

A little background: The main characters of this snippet are Quin and Meriym. John is Quin’s best friend, Wolf is a mutual acquaintance of Meriym and Quin, Kip is Meriym’s son, and Melissa is a coworker of Quin and John’s who works at the Globe. In addition, giving leaves is a symbol of affection in Meriym’s culture, as opposed to flowers in ours.

Quin and Meriym Go On A Date

He stood patiently on the curb, awaiting the arrival of Meriym. Wolf was due to drop her off at this spot, two hours before sunset. He thought that perhaps he should feel nervous, but there were a lot of things that should probably make him nervous and didn’t. Besides, Meriym had explicitly told him not to be nervous, and he was good at taking orders.

At precisely two hours before sunset, Quin heard a cough. He turned his broad shoulders and bald head to the left to see Meriym and a very hirsute Wolf striding towards him. Meriym was stunning, in a dark red dress with intricate embroidery around the hems. Her hair was piled on her head, and she wore sparkling sandals on her feet.

Placing a small smile carefully across his lips, he nodded at them. Wolf scratched the ground with one foot, and then leaned forward and slipped a leaf into Quin’s hand.

“Thanks,” Quin said, and pulled an entire bouquet of leaves from behind his back. Wolf nodded in approval, grunted once, and disappeared into the nearby bushes.

“How sweet!” Meriym exclaimed, taking the bouquet from him.

“I picked a safe restaurant,” Quin explained, leading her down the street. The venue, only about a block away, was famous for its Marbresian Bird Delight and potato salad. She seemed to like just about everything; and if she wasn’t a fan of the menu, he would take her somewhere else. In fact, he probably should take her somewhere else, he mused, so John wouldn’t know where they were going to eat.

The restaurant featured brick walls adorned with unusual feathers from various species of birds. This probably had something to do with their most famous dish. Small lights were hung in strings across the ceiling, which Quin quickly scanned for security cameras. There were eight in the front lobby, and probably countless others in the dining areas. Many high-level government officials ate here on a regular basis, which meant that John would be able to keep an eye on this date from every angle.

The hostess, with a feather necklace and a strange feather headdress - really, they were taking this whole bird theme a little too far - led him and Meriym to a table. It was secluded, as Quin had requested beforehand, but not too dark. There were still four cameras pointed at the table. 

He scanned the room. A couple sat at a table on the far side; a family of four dined at a larger table by the windows. A lone man read a newspaper a few tables over. Quin frowned. A lone man at this restaurant? It seemed odd, but he put it out of his head.

He turned his attention back to Meriym.

“How was the trip over?” he asked.

“Oh, fine,” Meriym replied. “I was surprised by how close you are! It only took us about fifteen minutes to get here, even though Wolf said we were travelling thousands and thousands of miles.”

“Doors make everything a lot quicker,” Quin agreed. “I’m excited about the ramifications of the new Door especially - I think sharing culture is going to be a fun and interesting challenge.”

“We already do it on Path,” Meriym agreed. “And it seems to be working out, now that everything has pretty much stabilized. I feel so lucky that you were the one that came to rescue us from imminent destruction.” She looked down, her long eyelashes dark against her cheeks.

A cough sounded from the man with the newspaper. Quin ignored it, and stared at Meriym instead. How could he tell her that, in fact, he was the lucky one?

“How is Kip?” he asked instead.

A smile played across Meriym’s lips. “He was very jealous and wanted to come with me. I promised him that we would set up a playdate with John sometime soon.”

Quin chuckled, and then silently berated himself for not thinking of that sooner. That would have been the perfect strategy to prevent John from spying on Quin’s first date in many, many years.

“How is John, by the way?” Meriym asked. 

“Oh, I’m fine,” came a voice from the other side of the room.

Quin closed his eyes and took three deep breaths. When he opened them, the man with the newspaper had risen from his seat and now stood next to their table.

“It’s lovely to see you!” An enormous grin plastered his face. 

“I thought you were going to play with your ringworm tonight,” Quin stated calmly. He thought that maybe he should be angry, but really, hadn’t he expected it? Expecting John to mind his own business was a bit as realistic as expecting John to grow up.

“Good news! Stacy cleared up my ringworm with a little bit of Doctor Miracle’s Miracle Lotion!” Nodding excitedly, John slipped into the seat next to Meriym. “Mind if I sit down?”

Quin shrugged and leaned back in his seat. Only a few more minutes - then John would be gone.

“I was just telling Quin that we should set up a time for Kip to come see you!” Meriym said to John. “He really wants to see your lab, and you told him once that there might be some exotic animals for him to visit.”

“Oh yeah!” John was practically vibrating from his excitement. “I thought I would show him the lab, and the zoo, and the observatory! And then possibly, we could go get pretzels. Can he eat pretzels?”

“Those are doughy pastries with salt on them?” Meriym asked.

John nodded enthusiastically. 

“Of course he can!”

“Speaking of the zoo,” Quin said. “Did you hear the news earlier?”

A frown slipped across John’s face and he shuddered. He turned to Meriym. “Do you know what a tarantula is?”

She shook her head. 

“It’s a giant, evil, eight-legged, disgusting piece of nature that should rightfully be completely obliterated from the universe! And it escaped!”

Quin shook his head. “It’s a spider.”

“Oh!” Meriym exclaimed. “Poor thing! It must be so scared!”

“Poor thing? POOR THING?” John leaped to his feet. “How could you even say such a thing? I can’t believe… you…?”

At the next moment, someone shrieked on the other side of the room. Quin turned his head. A table of people were rapidly pushing their chairs back and rushing to get out of the way of a young woman heading towards their table.

“John!” the young woman exclaimed, beaming.

“Melissa?” A horrified expression crossed his face. Melissa worked in accounting and finance at the Globe. She and Quin had known each other for quite a long time.

“Good news! We caught poor little Fetch. He didn’t actually run away at all - one of the school kids tried to give him a new home.” She held out her hand. 

John shrieked. “YOU BROUGHT HIM HERE?”

“It was right on the way back,” Melissa explained. “Quin said you might be here.”

Quin felt a grin growing across his face.

“You… you…” John stuttered. His face was deep red. “How dare you!” He looked back and forth between Meriym and Quin rapidly. He took a deep breath and scooted around Melissa, keeping as far away from the spider as he could. Then, he ran from room, calling over his shoulder, “You two deserve each other!”

Looking across the table at Meriym, Quin let his smile grow even wider. She returned it with a smile of her own.

“I’ll just leave this here,” Melissa said, winking at Quin. She bent down and set the rubber spider on the table. “You two enjoy dinner.”

“Thank you, Melissa,” Quin said, smiling, and then turned his attention back to the beautiful woman sitting across from him. “Shall we eat?”

“We shall,” Meriym replied, reaching out to take his hand. “And I think I’d like to try Marbresian Bird Delight, if you don’t mind.”

“That sounds perfect.” Quin nodded. And it was.

 

Click here to get blog posts (about books, the universe, and everything) delivered to your inbox weekly!

**All images are from the Internet Archive on Flickr.

**All images are from the Internet Archive on Flickr.

What if John and Quin Had iPhones?

Dear Blog Followers,

A couple of years ago, I did a blog tour for the release of The Wounded World (which most of you know is the first novel in my series). Content I created appeared on blogs all across the internet (12 of them, I think), and I wanted to share some of that content with you, as I prepare to launch myself into the holiday frenzy of craft fairs and book sales.

That is all.

Enjoy. <3

Episode 1: The Spider

John isn't a fan of the outdoors--not in the slightest.

Episode 2: The Pre-Date Advice

We all have friends that give dating advice. John is one of those friends.

Episode 3: The Bad Jokes

Bad jokes are the best kind.

I'm An Old Millennial: Thoughts From a Mad Raccoon

I'm a millennial. An old one, but still a millennial. You know what the world says about us? Self-absorbed, entitled, unreasonable expectations, can't keep our noses out of our iPhones. 

Fine, whatever. 

#brothersister #siblings #hangoutime #selfie #hat #iloveyoubro!

#brothersister #siblings #hangoutime #selfie #hat #iloveyoubro!

You know what else we do? We take pictures of our food. Of our cats. Of our walk to work. We take a lot of selfies. NYTimes calls us the #selfiegeneration. We also use a lot of #hashtags. Basically, what I'm getting at here, is that we spend a ton of time on social media--Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Snapchat, Instagram... We post pictures of ourselves and our food, of our cats and our kids, of the changing seasons and our favourite funny quotes and memes from the internet. We spend hours every week crafting a version of ourselves that we want to share with others--a personal brand, they call it. 

I remember when Facebook was invented, but there are many millennials who don't. And if you aren't a millennial, you probably weren't allowed to join right away. Originally, Facebook was only for college students. You had to have a .edu email address to join, and if you were a lucky teenager, like Josh, you could join because you went to a fancy high school that provided email addresses to its students.

When I first joined Facebook, I had no idea what to post.

Back then, the prompt for posting was, "Ariele Sieling is..." and you were supposed to write something like, "Ariele Sieling is doing homework now." 

So I filled it in with wonderful things like: 

  • "is eating frozen peas."
  • "is not eating frozen peas."
  • "is punchier than a mad raccoon."
  • "is not quite as punchy as a mad raccoon."
  • "is homeworkhomeworkhomeworkhomeworkhomeworkhomeworkhomeworkhom..."
  • "is eating ANIMAL CRACKERS!!!!!"
  • "is not eating animal crackers anymore :("
  • "is somewhere in that little land of in between, where everything is made of butter."

Anyway, you get the drift. Real profound stuff.

#thisistheoldestphotoofmeicouldfindonfacebook #oldphoto #collegefreshman #lighter #fire #wholetmeinthedorm

#thisistheoldestphotoofmeicouldfindonfacebook #oldphoto #collegefreshman #lighter #fire #wholetmeinthedorm

Then, Facebook revolutionized the world again, by letting our parents join, and our grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and our little brothers and sisters, and our boss... and suddenly everyone could see what we were saying and posting, and they could see everything that we had ever said or posted, ever. This put us all in a rather dangerous position, so we started deleting and changing, and, well, you know--being more careful.

And then YouTube, and then Twitter, and then LinkedIn, and then Google+, and then Instagram, and then Snapchat, and countless other platforms joined the picture, each offering you a different way to share yourself with the world. So that's what we did: we shared ourselves with the world.

If you take a quick stroll through Facebook, you will no doubt see any variety of these people on your newsfeed: 

#Iammanyofthesecategories #justengaged #justmarried #catowner #happy #runningmyownbusiness

#Iammanyofthesecategories #justengaged #justmarried #catowner #happy #runningmyownbusiness

  • The always happy person
  • The always sarcastic person
  • The meme person
  • The attention-seeker
  • The non-millenial that doesn't understand how to use all caps
  • The troll
  • The selfie-aholic
  • The philosopher
  • The political activist (at least one for each party, including Libertarians, and then the ones that post only reliable articles, and the one that posts extremely unreliable articles, and then the one that posts blatant propaganda)
  • The religious person that posts prayers or verses
  • The stalker who never posts or comments, just looks and likes
  • The new parent
  • The not so new parent
  • The just married/just engaged/just in a relationship person
  • The college student
  • The younger sibling/cousin/whatever
  • The over-sharer
  • The person that kind of shares, but doesn't actually provide any details
  • The person that works out all the time
  • The foodie
  • The person running their own business
  • The cat/dog/bird/pet owner
  • The sharer/re-poster
  • The fundraiser
  • The artist
  • The holiday lover
#yesI'mreallyaduckwrangler #ducks #countrylife #bathny

#yesI'mreallyaduckwrangler #ducks #countrylife #bathny

You know what sucks about those categories up there? For every category, there is a hater of that category. They say stuff like, "ugh I'm so sick of everyone I know on Facebook getting married and having babies!" or "I can't stand it when people spam me with their personal business. I have enough Tupperware and jewelry already!" or "I'm going to clean out my friends list. If you can read this, congratulations! I unfriended everyone who [fill in the blank with some arbitrary characteristic]." or "Why does everyone always post pictures of their food? I don't care!"

I'm guilty of this type of judgmental attitude myself sometimes--don't think I'm letting me off the hook.

Guess what happened next. Everyone began to screen their posts--they wanted to be balanced, but not too balanced (that person comes across as fake!), happy, but not too happy (they're clearly lying to make themselves look better!), accurate about their life, but not too accurate (we don't need to know about everything in your life that sucks!), detailed but not too detailed (we really don't care about all that stuff!), and on and on and on.

So we end up, today, trying too hard (or not hard enough!) to show the carefully crafted version of us that we want people to see. 

I don't think there is anything wrong with that--and I don't think this attitude is different than the attitude of any other generation before us. In the old days they published things in newspapers, phoned their 25 closest friend when so-and-so's daughter got engaged, or sat out on the porch downtown to hear the latest news from passersby. It's just the medium that's different now.

But I also think that we (millennials, in case you forgot who I was talking about) have been placed in an incredibly unique position. We are able to see detailed versions of the lives of everyone we know, and quite a few people we don't know--while our brains are still developing.  Not only that, but we don't have anyone else who can teach us, from experience, what the right response is--we have to figure it out for ourselves.

I spent 10 minutes looking for a picture with a "bigger story" (where I look happy but there's actually something else going on--but not too much "something else" because I wouldn't want to TMI) and finally ended up with exactly the opposite. This is me, happy, with my brothers, also happy. Because I love them and that is all. :) #biggerstory #life #happy #brothers

We have two ways to respond to the new era of self-branding: we can judge and belittle, put them down to make ourselves feel better; or we can recognize that there is always a bigger story, and as such, choose to view others with compassion and grace.

Because I don't know about you, but I don't put my whole story on the internet for everyone to see. I'm not Kim Kardashian, just Ariele. I pick and choose--I try to show the best version of me. But there's always a bigger story.

I'm hoping that we are a generation that looks for the bigger story, and accepts that there is one, even if we can't see it. I'm hoping that we strive to stay open-minded and big-hearted, learn to care about people even when Facebook doesn't tell all.

And I'm hoping that we choose to look at others through eyes that understand that we'll never understand the whole story but choose compassion and grace anyway, because, after all, we're all human together.

And meanwhile, I'll just keep typing out random combinations of letters and numbers and punctuation in my Facebook posts, in the hope that it means something to someone.