I didn’t choose the shelter life. The shelter life chose me.
And then—thank the stars and the soft blanket gods—they chose me.
She was buzzing with energy the day she walked in. Nervous system overloaded, heart too big for her chest, eyes darting toward every cat like they might bite her soul. She was the one. I knew it.
The man with her had a quieter vibe. Gentle, kind. The kind of person who wouldn’t startle a cat like me. He sat next to her and looked at me like he wanted to understand me. That counted for something.
“What about this one?” she asked, pointing at me, like she didn’t already know.
They named me Frodo. Not because of the ring, but because I was small, scrappy, full of purpose, and probably dealing with some unprocessed trauma. Same as her. And she has a weird obsession with Lord of the Rings.
Those early weeks were warm. I’d curl up between them on the couch, their laughter vibrating through my fur. They were a team. A home. A safe spot I didn’t know I needed.
But over time, the air changed. The kind of quiet that settles when people aren’t sure what to say. Still loving, but tired. Still gentle, but distant.
I didn’t understand all of it—I’m a cat, not a therapist—but I knew something was unraveling. I started sleeping on her chest instead of at the foot of the bed. She needed me closer.
When the goodbye came, it wasn’t loud or cruel. Just sad. Quiet. Necessary.
He packed his things, and I sniffed every box like it held a clue. She stayed sitting on the floor after he left, arms wrapped around her knees, and I laid beside her in the silence.
And from then on, it was just us.
Her and me. The little cat with too many feelings. The woman with too many, too.
I didn’t know it then, but that was just the beginning of a wild new era—full of messy art, loud feelings, a questionable obsession with lemon and lavender-flavored everything, and eventually… someone new.
But we’ll get to him later.
For now, just know this: I wasn’t rescued.
I was recruited.
Chapter 2: Operation: Relocation (The Great Sneak-In of Frodo and Sam)
I don’t remember agreeing to a relocation plan.
One minute, I was sulking on a windowsill at her parents’ house. The next, I was shoved into a carrier next to Sam—the beige drama queen—and whisper-yelled at to “be quiet, for once in your lives!”
Something was happening. Something covert. Something illegal, probably.
I could sense it.
She was nervous. Hair in a bun, bags under her eyes, three half-packed tote bags dangling from one arm. She kept glancing over her shoulder and saying things like, “We’ll only stay a few nights,” and “He won’t even notice.”
Bold lies.
Sam, being a total amateur, meowed approximately every four seconds during the ride. I stayed silent. Strategic. Focused. Just kidding I meowed even more than Sam did.
When we arrived, the door creaked open like a portal to Narnia. This was not our house. This was his house.
The Law Man. The One Who Steals Her Bedtime Attention.
It smelled like cologne and logic.
She smuggled us inside and whispered, “Okay, okay, just for tonight.”
It turned into forever.
For the first 36 hours, he genuinely didn’t notice. She fed us, cleaned the litter box, and snuck us toys like she was running an underground operation.
But then—of course—I had to speak.
It was 2:37 p.m. I saw a moth. I meowed with purpose. And from the darkness came a groggy, “Was that a cat?”
She panicked. I swished my tail with pride.
The truth came out. She confessed. Sam blinked innocently. I stared directly at him, unblinking, daring him to say no.
And you know what he said?
“Okay.”
Just like that. No yelling. No “they have to go.” Just “Okay.” Then he pet my head and said, “You’re very vocal, huh?”
I didn’t purr. Not right away. But I forgave him.
…Since then, I’ve claimed the house as mine.
The window in the bedroom is my lookout. The couch is my observation perch. The yoga mat is definitely mine—especially when she’s on it. And I even venture outdoors now!
He doesn’t call me “little guy.” No. He calls me Panther. Like I’m some majestic, jungle beast prowling the countertops of suburbia. Which, to be clear, I am.
He tells me to get down at least seventeen times a day. “Frodo. Get down.” “Dude. Down.” “Panther, seriously.”
And I do…
Most of the time.
Not because I fear him. But because I respect the man who feeds me chicken treats, cleans my litter box, and lets me stay.
He loves her. He loves us.
And that makes him mostly acceptable.
(But I’m still watching him. Always.)
Chapter 3: Sam: The Quiet Menace Who Gets Away With Everything
Let’s get one thing straight.
I am the main character.
I have depth. Mystery. I stare into corners like I see spirits and occasionally scream into the void just to keep things interesting.
Sam?
Sam is cute.
That’s his whole personality. Just… stupidly cute.
He doesn’t even try. He just exists—flame point fur, soft baby face, tiny gentle paws—and everyone loses their minds.
“Aww, Sam.”
“Look at Sam!”
“He’s like a little prince!”
I knock over a snake plant: villain. Sam sticks his paw in a cup of water: comedy genius.
I brood in a window, contemplating the mysteries of the universe. Sam falls asleep in a laundry basket, and suddenly it’s “the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
It’s exhausting.
He doesn’t even meow that much. Just looks at you like, “I’m small. Please never stop loving me.”
And it works.
I could hate him, if I wasn’t so busy watching his back.
I’m the one who checks the door before he walks through it. The one who wakes her up when he’s feeling sick. The one who keeps one ear open during storms while Sam curls into her neck and sleeps like a baby sea otter.
He gets away with everything. But he also makes her laugh when she’s sad. He rubs his head against her face in that soft, silent way that says, I’m here too.
And I respect that.
He’s not my friend.
He’s my brother.
And unfortunately… he’s kind of perfect.
Chapter 4: The Healing Human
I’ve seen her break.
Not in the dramatic way people expect—no glass shattering, no screaming matches, no violins playing in the background.
She breaks quietly.
Like a mug with a hairline crack. Like a bookshelf slowly tilting under the weight of too many expectations. Like someone who’s been strong for so long, she forgot it was okay not to be.
I’ve seen her on the floor. In the bathroom. On the porch. On the hallway rug, forehead pressed to the ground like maybe it would whisper something back.
And I do what cats do.
I stay. I boop her with my head and give her nose kisses.
I sit just close enough to say, “I’m here,” but not close enough to make her push me away. I blink slowly. I breathe in sync with her. I wait.
Some days she’s on fire with art—painting with her whole body like she’s trying to sweat something out of her bones. Other days she doesn’t move. Just stares. Quiet. Still.
Healing, I’ve learned, is not a straight line.
It’s messy and weird and involves a lot of late-night snacks, unfinished journals, and crying during commercials.
Sometimes she dances in the kitchen with no music on. Sometimes she forgets how to eat. Sometimes she sleeps wrapped around Sam like a security blanket. Sometimes she talks to her plants like they’re old friends who just stopped by to check on her.
There are notebooks and paintbrushes everywhere, and tears in the laundry and lavender candles that burn for hours.
I’ve watched her stitch herself back together with poems, potting soil, and sugary pink lemonade.
It’s not glamorous.
It’s brave.
Humans forget how brave they are.
But I see it.
I’ve always seen it.
And no matter how many days she cries or sleeps or forgets how beautiful she is, I never stop showing up.
Because she showed up for me first.
That’s what love is.
Even if she puts my treats on top of the fridge like I won’t scale a cabinet to get them. (I will.)
Chapter 5: The Garden Is Not a Litter Box (But I’ve Tried)
She loves dirt.
Not like, “Oops, my hands got dirty.” No. She wants the dirt. She crumbles it in her fingers, rubs it between her palms like it’s healing clay from some ancient ritual, and whispers to her house plants like they’re about to tell her a secret.
I respect it.
But also—I’ve seen a lot of dirt in my life. And do you know what dirt usually means to a cat?
Exactly.
So naturally, when she dragged a giant monstera into the living room and left a wide-open pot of soil unattended while she ran to grab a watering can, I saw my chance.
I climbed in, turned around twice like a gentleman, and settled into position.
She came back mid-squat.
“FRODO, NO!”
It was dramatic. Arms flailing. Water sloshing. She gasped like I was trying to assassinate her dreams. I leapt out of the pot like a startled ninja and knocked over two other smaller pots filled with dirt on the way.
That was the beginning of the Garden Wars.
She brings in trays of herbs and I sniff every one like I’m the customs agent of Houseplants. She gets out her trowel and I sit on top of it. She lays out pots and I lay in them.
I am, as she says, “not helpful.”
But here’s the thing: she talks to the plants like she talks to me. Soft voice. Full of hope. As if everything she touches might bloom with enough love.
And when she’s outside, covered in dirt with leaves in her hair and freckles on her arms, she looks… happy. Peaceful. Like maybe the world makes a little more sense when she’s helping something grow.
So no, the garden is not a litter box.
I know that now.
But every once in a while—when she’s not looking—I still stick a paw into the chamomile just to remind everyone who runs this jungle.
Spoiler: it’s me.
Always has been.
Chapter 6: The Paint Witch and Her Chaos Room
She calls it “art.” I call it “colorful-based warfare.”
The room smells like wet acrylics, old dreams, and Mod Podge. It’s where she goes to feel everything all at once and cover canvases with her soul. I, personally, go there to nap on the only clean surface available—the warm corner of the desk she’s constantly trying to reclaim.
There’s paper pulp in the blender. Not food. Not even soup. Just torn-up bits of emotion getting spun into fibrous sheets she later writes poems on. I’ve stepped in acrylic paint, chewed on oil pastels, and once got glitter stuck to my tail for three days.
She paints with her fingers sometimes, like she’s trying to physically remove something from her chest. And when she’s in the zone, she forgets everything—me, Sam, her tea, the entire concept of time. The music plays loud and weird and sometimes she sings. Badly. I love it.
I watch her make messes and then name them beautiful. I think that’s brave.
Chapter 7: She Doesn’t Cook, and That’s Fine
The kitchen is for coffee, snacks, and minor emotional breakdowns.
She’s not what you’d call a “cook.” She’s more of a… food assembler. A scavenger. Her talents lie in finding microwavable bacon, pairing it with pickles, and calling it dinner. Sometimes it’s just toast. Sometimes it’s peanut butter and a spoon.
I’ve seen her burn a frozen waffle. Twice.
But you know what? She’s nourished. She’s hydrated (sometimes). She has favorite mugs for different moods and once ate an entire jar of peppercinis in one sitting after a stressful email.
The oven is more of a decoration. The stove? Emotionally unavailable. But the microwave? A faithful companion.
She doesn’t cook. And that’s fine. She feeds herself in other ways.
Chapter 8: Downward Dog Is Offensive
She twists herself into an odd pretzel while I sit nearby and wonder if she’s okay.
Yoga time means mat time. Which means “my mat” time. I don’t care how intentional her breath is or how open her heart chakra is supposed to be—if there’s a flat surface on the ground, it belongs to me.
She lights candles. She plays spa music. She moves slowly at first, like a leaf in the wind. Then she makes this strange grunting noise and tries to put her foot behind her head. Sam watches from under the couch with mild concern.
I’ve stepped on her back mid-plank. I’ve knocked over her water bottle during Shavasana. She still calls me her “yoga buddy.”
Sometimes she cries at the end. Just a few tears. The quiet kind. I curl next to her when that happens. That’s the real yoga, I think.
Chapter 9: Work Is a Scam (Unless You’re a Cat)
She leaves. She returns. She counts minutes until lunch.
She works now. Part-time. At the boyfriend’s law office. It’s quiet work, mostly papers and phones and sighing loudly around 10:41 a.m. every day. She says things like “just making it to lunch” and “it’s too nice of a day out to be stuck inside at work.”
I don’t get it. I sleep 18 hours a day and no one makes me fill out a time sheet.
When she comes home, she drops everything by the door and lays on the floor. Sam sits on her back. I walk across her hair. It’s called decompression. We’re professionals.
She works, but she doesn’t live for it. She lives for morning light, late-night snacks, and the moment she unbuttons her pants after a long day. That’s the paycheck.
Chapter 10: Sex Is Loud and I Don’t Want to Talk About It
Every night. Same noises. Same guy. It’s like a weird ritual I never agreed to be part of.
They love each other. That’s nice. Truly. Love is beautiful. But love is also… loud. And rhythmic. And involves way too much eye contact.
I’ve tried everything—scratching at the door, fake coughing, staring directly at them from the dresser. Nothing stops them. Sometimes they laugh. Sometimes they ignore me. One time she threw a sock at my head.
I now consider the hallway my safe space. I sit there with wide eyes and existential dread, waiting for the awkward moans to end.
It’s fine. I’m fine. But if I have to hear one more “Oh my God” I might spiritually relocate.
Chapter 11: Her Brain Is an Amusement Park Without a Map
Some days she’s a rocket ship. Other days, she’s a soggy noodle.
Her brain moves fast. Like faster-than-light fast. She thinks six things at once and forgets four of them before finishing a sentence. She gets distracted by air molecules and hyper-focused on reorganizing the spice cabinet at 1 a.m.
Sometimes she’s too sad to move. Sometimes she laughs so hard she chokes on her own spit.
She writes lists she never follows. She overthinks every text. She apologizes for things no one even noticed.
But she’s brilliant. She loves big. She remembers tiny details and forgets major holidays. She’s chaotic, yes—but never careless. I trust her. Even when she forgets what day it is.
Chapter 12: Humans Are Strange and I’m the Only Normal One Here
You cry over songs. You forget where your keys are. You talk to the moon like it owes you money.
Living with humans is like watching an improv play with no intermission. They do weird things on purpose. They eat food that hurts their stomachs. They talk to their pets in baby voices and then wonder why no one takes them seriously.
She’s the weirdest one I’ve met. She has conversations with plants. She rearranges furniture at midnight. She says things like “the vibes are off in this corner” while doing headstands against the wall.
But she also loves better than anyone I know. Fiercely. Loudly. Softly.
She chose me. And that makes her strange, sure—but also wise.
She’s my human.
And for all her weirdness, I wouldn’t trade her for the world. Not even for the good tuna.
🪡 The Art of Dressing Myself: Fashion as My First Form of Art
Before the canvases, before the poetry, before the essays—I was already making art. I just didn’t realize it yet.
It started with an outfit.
Putting together clothes has always been my way of expressing who I am—without needing to explain it. To me, curating the right look is like painting a picture: color, shape, mood, contrast, comfort, boldness, softness. And the canvas is me.
Over the years, so many people—friends, strangers, even my therapist and a woman in HR at a law firm—told me I had a unique, interesting, stylish fashion sense. That I should be a fashion curator, or an influencer. I always shrugged it off. I didn’t think of it as a talent. I just thought I liked what I liked.
But now I realize—that is the talent. Having a personal sense of beauty. Knowing what makes you feel like you. Not just following trends, but trusting your eye, your body, your voice.
And so, I’m finally honoring that.
This new section of my blog is for the artists who don’t always call themselves artists. The ones who express themselves through textures, layers, thrifted magic, oversized jackets, statement boots, a favorite pair of pants that feel like home. It’s for anyone who’s ever felt more like themselves just by wearing the right thing. It’s for anyone who’s ever been told they “have a look” and didn’t know how to take it.
It’s for the neurodivergent kids who communicate through aesthetics before words. It’s for the adults still rediscovering their reflection.
This isn’t about being trendy (although sometimes trend and truth collide). This is about style. Your style. The kind that makes you feel real, alive, and a little bit braver.
Yes, I still wear outfits that flop sometimes. And honestly? I kind of love that too.
Welcome to my fashion fling. Let’s dress like we mean it.
Neurodivergence is a word you might hear tossed around more and more lately — but what does it actually mean? Is it just about autism? ADHD? Something else? Let’s break it down together.
1. What Neurodivergence Really Means:
Neurodivergence simply means that a person’s brain works differently from what’s considered “typical” (or “neurotypical”). It’s not automatically good or bad — it’s just different. And different isn’t wrong.
Neurodivergent people often experience the world, emotions, communication, and thinking patterns in ways that don’t line up with what society expects.
Some common forms of neurodivergence include:
Autism
ADHD
Dyslexia
Dyspraxia
Tourette’s
OCD (sometimes included, though it’s complex)
And many more
2. Why Neurodivergence Matters:
Because the world is mostly built for neurotypical brains, neurodivergent people are often misunderstood, shamed, or forced to “mask” who they are. This can lead to:
Misdiagnosis (especially for women and marginalized groups)
Chronic exhaustion and burnout
Mental health struggles
Feeling like “something is wrong” when it isn’t
Understanding neurodivergence isn’t just for those of us who live it — it’s for everyone. Because empathy, inclusion, and real acceptance start with knowing the truth.
3. Real Life Example:
Imagine you’re in a classroom where everyone learns best by listening to lectures — but you learn best by touching, moving, or building things. The teacher says, “Sit still. Listen. Stop fidgeting.” You start believing you’re broken. But you’re not. You just learn differently. That’s neurodivergence in action.
4. Final Thoughts:
Neurodivergence isn’t a “problem” to be solved — it’s a beautiful, valid way of being human. If you’ve ever felt “different” in ways you couldn’t explain… If you’ve ever burned out trying to act “normal”… If you’ve ever felt like you’re wired for a different rhythm of life… You’re not alone. You might just be neurodivergent. And that’s something to honor, not erase.
🕰️ The Timewalker: Part One – The Threads We Carry
This is the first part of a story I’ve been writing—about Wren, a young autistic and ADHD woman who can time travel with her black cat, Cat. She doesn’t change history with brute force—she changes it with empathy, insight, and by seeing what others miss. This is for anyone who’s ever felt too much, asked too many questions, or been told they don’t belong. You do. We always have.
Chapter One: The Crack in the Wall
Wren didn’t notice the crack until Cat meowed at it.
She was mid-scroll, knees pulled up to her chest, half-wrapped in a blanket burrito on her thrifted couch. Outside, the sky was sulking in that half-hearted spring way—too grey to be comforting, too cold to justify another hot chocolate. Cat, for his part, had been sitting by the back wall for a solid ten minutes, staring like it had personally offended him.
“Okay,” she muttered. “What existential threat have you found now?”
Cat flicked his tail once, slow and deliberate, and didn’t look at her.
Wren squinted at the wall. She’d lived in this studio apartment for three months now. The paint was peeling. The windows whined when the wind blew. The radiator was possessed. But the wall? The wall had never cracked before.
She stood, her joints stiff, and padded over in sock feet. The air near the wall felt colder. Not “the landlord forgot to insulate” cold—off cold. Like a breeze from a place that wasn’t here. She pressed her hand to the surface.
The crack was hair-thin but long, stretching like a jagged smile from the baseboard halfway up the plaster. Wren traced it with one finger. It thrummed faintly beneath her touch, like a heartbeat. Like it was… waiting.
Nope. Nope nope nope.
She stepped back. “Okay, no haunted apartment wall nonsense today.”
Cat meowed again, sharper this time.
Wren sighed. “You’re a menace.”
She scooped him up. He was heavier than he looked, all muscle and indignation. He immediately began to purr, but his eyes stayed fixed on the wall.
Wren had always noticed things other people didn’t.
The way certain lights buzzed so loudly she couldn’t think. The subtle shift in someone’s tone before they got annoyed. The patterns in ceiling tiles. The weight of words unsaid.
It wasn’t magic, exactly. Just her brain doing its own thing. A blessing and a curse, depending on the day.
Today, it mostly felt like a curse.
She’d been running on fumes for months before she finally crashed. Dropped out of her grad program. Stopped replying to texts. Moved back to her hometown because the rent was cheap and nobody asked questions.
Everyone said she was “too smart to burn out.” As if intelligence could somehow override sensory overload or social exhaustion. As if she hadn’t been masking since age five and it didn’t cost her everything.
The only one who didn’t expect anything from her was Cat. And possibly the wall.
That night, Wren couldn’t sleep.
She lay on her side, staring at the ceiling fan creak its slow, tired circles. Cat was curled at the foot of the bed, snoring in his own weird little way—like a tiny engine powering some ancient machine.
At 2:13 AM, she got up and padded to the wall again.
The crack was glowing.
Barely. Faint enough she might have missed it if not for the way the light danced—blue and silver, like moonlight on water.
She knelt. Reached out.
The moment her fingertips brushed the glow, the air shifted. Her room dissolved.
The couch, the radiator, the fan, the city outside—gone.
Replaced by warmth. Dust. Sunlight filtering through olive trees.
And a boy in a white tunic staring at her like she’d just fallen out of the sky.
Which, to be fair, she sort of had.
Chapter Two: Olive Branches and Open Mouths
The first thing Wren noticed was the heat.
It wasn’t the cloying humidity of Florida, or the stale radiators she grew up with—it was dry and golden, like sunlight had been ground into dust and sprinkled across the earth. The air smelled like dirt, thyme, and something floral she couldn’t name.
The second thing she noticed was that she was barefoot.
The grass was soft but scratchy. Too real. Too here. She looked down and realized her hoodie and leggings were still on her body, but the crack in the wall—the wall—was nowhere in sight.
And the boy in the tunic was still staring at her.
He looked about her age, maybe younger, with a face carved in curiosity and wide, stunned eyes. His tunic was off-white and belted at the waist. He held a clay jar in one hand, frozen mid-step.
“Uh,” Wren said. “Hi?”
The boy blinked. “You speak Greek?”
Wren blinked right back. “I—what?”
The words had slipped out of her mouth in her usual accent, but he had spoken something entirely different, and she had somehow… understood it. Not like she was translating, but like her brain had already sorted it before she could even question it.
“I—guess so?” she said.
He took a cautious step forward. “Are you a spirit?”
Wren blinked. “No. Just a girl. With a cat. Who is… not currently visible.”
Cat, of course, had disappeared.
Or had never come through the crack at all.
Her stomach flipped.
“Where am I?” she asked. “This isn’t Florida. This isn’t… this isn’t 2025.”
The boy tilted his head. “Twenty-what?”
Wren took a deep breath. The scent of olive trees hit her full force. She turned in a slow circle. Beyond the grove was a cluster of stone buildings, whitewashed and glowing in the late-afternoon light. Hills rose in the distance, dotted with cypress trees. A goat bleated somewhere nearby.
“I think,” she said softly, “I just time traveled.”
The boy dropped his jar.
It shattered on the ground.
They called him Thanos. Not like the purple guy, but short for Athanasios. He led her toward the village, cautiously, like she might disappear or smite him at any moment.
Wren was too overwhelmed to do anything but follow.
Her senses were on fire. The sound of sandals against the packed earth, the way the sky seemed wider, the chirping of insects—everything was so loud, so unfiltered. There was no air conditioning hum, no traffic, no glowing screens. Just… life.
And smells. Cooking fires. Wild herbs. Animal musk. Sweat.
Sensory overload threatened to swallow her whole.
“Breathe,” she whispered to herself. “In. Out. In. Out.”
Thanos looked over, concerned. “You’re not ill, are you?”
“No. Just… autistic.”
He frowned. “I do not know this word.”
Wren exhaled through her nose. “That makes two of us, honestly.”
The village was small—white buildings with flat roofs, narrow pathways, and pottery everywhere. People wore tunics, worked with their hands, and gave Wren many side-eyes as she passed.
A woman muttered something and made a gesture with her hands. A little girl pointed and laughed. A goat tried to eat Wren’s hoodie drawstring.
Thanos whispered, “They think you’re a nymph. Or a witch. Or Hermes in disguise.”
“Well,” Wren muttered, swatting the goat away, “Hermes does have great taste in shoes.”
“Who sent you?” he asked seriously. “The Oracle?”
“I don’t think anyone sent me. Unless Cat counts.”
Thanos stared.
Wren pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t even know why I’m here, okay? One minute I was in my apartment, touching a weird crack in the wall, and the next I’m standing in an olive grove getting goat-nibbled.”
“I believe you,” he said. “Strange things happen in this land.”
They reached a house with wide stone steps and a columned entrance. “My father is a philosopher,” Thanos said. “He’ll want to speak with you.”
“Oh great,” Wren muttered. “A man with opinions.”
As she stepped into the cool interior, Wren paused. The house smelled like ink and parchment, and roasted garlic. A different kind of grounding.
The moment she entered, an older man looked up from a scroll. His eyes narrowed as he took her in—sweatpants, hoodie, messy bun, and all.
“Who,” he asked in a measured voice, “is this?”
“This is Wren,” Thanos said. “She fell from the sky.”
Wren opened her mouth. Closed it. Sighed. “Hi.”
The philosopher stood. “You are not from here.”
“Nope.”
“You wear strange clothing.”
“Comfy,” she said, tugging on her hoodie.
“You are alone?”
“…I lost my cat.”
There was a beat of silence.
And then the philosopher did something strange.
He smiled.
Chapter Three: The Quiet Ones
The philosopher’s name was Damon. His house smelled like intellect and olives.
Wren spent the next few days sleeping in a corner room with a woven mat, trying to make sense of the century she’d fallen into. Cat was still missing. Every morning, she scanned the hills and alleyways. Every night, she whispered into the warm, candlelit dark, “Find me, please.”
But she wasn’t idle.
She asked questions—more than most people thought proper—and she answered with precision, especially when Damon invited her to his gatherings with other thinkers.
At first, they humored her. Then they underestimated her. Then they realized she could run mental circles around them.
Wren had always thought in spiderwebs—a million threads spinning at once, connecting across time and space and seemingly unrelated things. In this world of orators and scholars, her fast, pattern-obsessed brain was suddenly not a liability but a superpower.
Still, the women never spoke.
They poured wine, prepared figs, swept thresholds.
One afternoon, Wren caught a girl named Myrine watching her.
She was maybe twelve, eyes like polished amber, and she flinched every time someone raised their voice. She barely spoke, and when she did, she whispered in rhymes under her breath.
Wren approached slowly, like she might a bird in the woods.
“You think in pictures too, don’t you?” Wren asked.
Myrine nodded so faintly it was like her head caught a breeze.
Wren knelt beside her. “Do you hate loud sounds?”
Another nod.
“Do you repeat things in your head when the world feels too big?”
This time, Myrine smiled. Not big. Just enough.
“You’re not broken,” Wren said gently. “You’re like me.”
They met in secret—Myrine and three other girls who never quite “fit.” One lined up pebbles along the edge of the courtyard and remembered everything. One hummed tunelessly and had eyes that darted everywhere, absorbing it all. One never made eye contact but painted wild, aching beauty in the dirt with a stick.
They had been called “difficult.” “Touched.” “Useless.”
Wren called them brilliant.
She told them they were ancient minds living in a world that didn’t know how to see them.
And they listened—rapt, wide-eyed, and lit from the inside.
Wren taught them how to name their needs. How to stim safely. How to use metaphors and speak in ways the world might understand. Not to conform—but to be heard.
The debate came on the fifth evening.
A philosopher named Nikandros—booming voice, broad shoulders, ego like Mount Olympus—declared that women were unfit for reason. “Emotion is their language. They do not possess the spine for truth,” he said, sipping wine like the world existed to applaud him.
Wren rose slowly.
She hadn’t planned to speak.
But rage was a kind of lightning, and she had long since stopped trying to contain it.
“If emotion disqualifies a person from truth,” she said, “then why do your men kill over insults and spill blood for pride?”
Laughter rippled across the room. Uneasy. Intrigued.
Damon, seated nearby, gave a single approving nod.
“You think yourself clever,” Nikandros said. “But cleverness is not wisdom.”
“No,” Wren agreed. “But noticing patterns is. And I see a pattern in who is allowed to speak, and who is told to pour the wine.”
A stunned hush.
Wren pressed forward.
“I’ve watched women listen more closely than any man here. I’ve seen young girls calculate silence like it’s currency. We have minds like rivers and memories like maps. We see what you miss because you dismiss it.”
Nikandros rose.
“Would you debate me, then?” he asked, half-mocking.
“I already am,” Wren said, and smiled.
They debated for hours. Rhetoric, logic, ethics.
Wren was relentless—her ADHD hyperfocus locked in, her autistic need for precision turned razor-sharp. She took every assumption and flipped it inside out like a garment.
When the crowd finally dispersed, it was with muttering, awe, and no clear victor.
But Nikandros sat down quietly.
And poured her the wine.
Later that night, as the sky bruised purple over the hills, Wren sat beneath a fig tree with Myrine and the others. They practiced words: “I prefer quiet.” “I need space.” “Please speak slower.”
Myrine asked, “Will girls like us ever be remembered?”
Wren looked out at the horizon.
“Maybe not by name,” she said softly. “But I think—maybe—they’ll remember the shift. Like something cracked open here, and the light changed.”
A sudden rustle behind her.
Wren turned—and there, trotting across the grass like he owned the timeline, was Cat.
“Mrrp,” he announced, tail high.
Wren let out a laugh that turned into a sob. She scooped him up and held him to her chest.
“You found me,” she whispered. “I knew you would.”
Cat headbutted her chin.
“Okay,” Wren said, wiping her face. “That’s enough emotional vulnerability for the day.”
Chapter Four: The Smell of Smoke and Salt
The wind changed first.
It swept in low and strange through the fig trees, curling at Wren’s ankles like invisible ribbon. The hairs on her arms stood up. Even Cat paused mid-paw-lick and blinked toward the hills like he heard something she couldn’t.
Wren stood slowly, narrowing her eyes at the horizon.
The world shimmered. Just slightly. Like a heat wave or a memory.
She looked at the girls, still laughing and etching patterns into the dirt.
A pang of ache tightened in her chest. She didn’t want to leave them. She hadn’t realized until now that she could.
But the tug in her ribs, the pulse in her temples—it was starting again. The same way it had before.
Time was shifting.
Calling her forward.
Cat leapt onto her shoulder like he knew what was coming.
“Tell your truths,” she whispered to Myrine. “Even if the world isn’t ready.”
Myrine nodded, solemn and glowing like she’d swallowed a little sun.
And then, in a blink—
The world fractured.
A sharp CRACK, like thunder pulled sideways. Air ripped open in front of her—a seam of light and wind and impossible sound—and Wren was lifted off her feet, not by force but by fate.
Cat yowled, claws digging into her hoodie.
There was no time to scream.
Only a flicker of images: ink-stained parchment, cobblestone streets, muskets in shadow, candles behind shuttered windows, and the smell—smoke and salt and something like revolution.
She landed hard.
On her side, in a narrow alleyway, pressed between two brick buildings that felt too close. The air was colder. Damp. And filled with sound—horse hooves, footsteps, men shouting about shipments, someone ringing a bell.
Cat launched from her shoulder, hissed at a passing rat, then casually started licking his paw like he hadn’t just been yeeted through a time-hole.
Wren groaned, sat up, and checked herself. No broken bones. Her brain was buzzing like a hive, though. The sensory input was intense—unfiltered, wild. A whole new century was crashing in.
She took a deep breath and looked around.
She was in a port town. Somewhere northern. The street signs were carved wood, and everyone was dressed in layers of wool, linen, and pride.
A boy nearby looked at her with wide eyes and dropped his basket of apples.
“Sorry,” Wren muttered, trying to act like she hadn’t just fallen out of a tear in the space-time continuum.
She stood up and adjusted her coat.
“I need to stop landing in eras where pants on women are a scandal,” she muttered.
Cat meowed in agreement.
As they wandered toward the noise of the town square, Wren caught fragments of conversations:
“…British troops settin’ up down by the wharf…” “…Governor’s tax again, it’s robbery…” “…Franklin says we need to organize…”
Wren’s heart sped up.
She wasn’t in just any moment.
She was in the thick of it—colonial America, right before the Revolution.
A time when everything was about to ignite.
And Wren, girl of patterns and paradox, had a front row seat.
She turned to Cat. “Alright, buddy. Let’s go accidentally change history—again.”
Cat blinked slowly, like he was the one keeping it all together.
They stepped into the square.
The scent of rebellion lingered in the air like smoke that hadn’t started rising yet.
Chapter Five: The Quiet Power of Eliza
The square was alive.
Voices overlapped in a symphony of tension: merchants haggling over taxed goods, young boys dodging carts with handmade pamphlets clutched in ink-stained hands, and soldiers on the edge of suspicion.
Wren kept her head low and her mouth shut. Observation first—always. That’s what made her a decent time traveler: she didn’t barge in with answers. She watched. She listened.
And she followed the thread of discomfort. That strange static that came when the world felt off—not just politically, but personally. That thread always led her to people who felt like her. People whose inner lives didn’t fit into the neat boxes history tried to fold them into.
Which is probably why she noticed her.
A woman in a slate-blue dress, standing slightly apart from the bustle, one hand pressed to her chest like she was holding in a breath. She wasn’t panicked. But her eyes… her eyes flicked across the crowd like she was scanning for patterns.
Like she saw too much—and didn’t know where to put it all.
Cat slinked ahead, tail high.
Wren followed.
When she got closer, she recognized her. From paintings. From letters she’d studied in her college history seminar, back when she was still trying to pass as “normal” and didn’t yet know her brain was wired differently.
Eliza Schuyler Hamilton.
Not yet the wife of Alexander. Still Eliza Schuyler. But already brilliant. Already overlooked.
Wren approached slowly. “Excuse me… are you alright?”
Eliza blinked, startled. “I—yes. I believe so. Just… too many voices at once. My sister says I feel everything too much.”
Wren smiled gently. “That’s not a flaw. It’s a skill—just not one this world knows how to use yet.”
Eliza tilted her head. “Do we know each other?”
“No,” Wren said carefully. “But maybe we should.”
Cat brushed against Eliza’s leg, purring softly. She knelt instinctively and stroked his fur with the kind of tenderness that made Wren’s throat tighten.
“You’re not from here, are you?” Eliza asked.
Wren’s lips twitched. “That obvious?”
“Not your accent. Your eyes. They look like they’ve seen something the rest of us haven’t yet.”
Wren took a breath. “I know what it feels like to be underestimated. To be too much and not enough at the same time. To hold so many ideas in your head it feels like you’ll crack open if you don’t let them out—but no one listens.”
Eliza stared at her.
Then slowly—slowly—she nodded.
“There is something I’ve been writing,” she said cautiously, “but my father believes it improper.”
“I’d love to read it,” Wren said. “Or hear it. Or help you finish it. Whatever you need.”
For the first time, Eliza smiled.
“Then perhaps we should talk.”
Over the next few days, Wren and Eliza met in secret corners of the garden or tucked behind shelves in her family’s expansive library. Eliza shared drafts of letters—sharp and articulate, questioning loyalty, liberty, and the roles women were expected to play in a revolution that barely saw them.
Wren encouraged her to keep writing.
They spoke of freedom—not just the country’s, but their own.
They even joked about Wren entering a public debate disguised as a young male scholar. “No one would expect a woman to argue Plato better than half the men in Boston,” Wren smirked.
“Especially not one with a cat on her shoulder,” Eliza teased.
Cat sneezed dramatically.
On the day of the debate—a gathering of men discussing “the moral implications of resistance”—Wren did exactly what she wasn’t supposed to do:
She showed up. Uninvited. Underdressed. Unapologetic.
And when a man half-drunk on brandy scoffed that women were too emotional to understand liberty, Wren rose from her seat, cleared her throat, and said:
“Then you haven’t been listening to the right women.”
And she spoke.
Not just for herself. Not just for Eliza. But for every woman who carried the revolution in her bones and was told to stay quiet.
And for once, the room listened.
Eliza, standing in the back, didn’t cheer.
She nodded. Like something had shifted.
And maybe it had.
That night, the portal returned—rising behind the Schuyler family’s stable like fog burning gold at the edges.
Eliza walked Wren there, quiet.
“I don’t know where you came from,” she said, “but you made me feel… possible.”
Wren swallowed the lump in her throat. “Promise me you’ll keep writing.”
“I will. Even if no one reads it now.”
“Someone will,” Wren whispered. “Someday.”
Cat meowed in farewell.
And then the air split open again—pulling them into the next story.
The next fire.
The next thread.
Chapter Six: Echoes in the Smoke
The portal spat Wren and Cat out into a storm of gray and silence.
Ash drifted on the wind like snow.
They landed hard, knees scraping against frozen soil. The air was thick with gunpowder and grief, the kind that clung to the bones of the earth long after the battles ended.
“Civil War,” Wren whispered, pulling her coat tighter. “Mid-war, maybe. Or just after.”
Cat pawed at a stray Union cap lying half-buried in the mud, then shook his fur out like he’d just stepped through a bad dream.
They walked.
No portal had ever felt quite like this—not just like a place, but a weight. Like the timeline was humming with pain, and history was bleeding through the cracks of itself.
Eventually, they reached a farmhouse. Crumbling at the edges, but not abandoned. Candles flickered in the window. Laundry hung limp on a crooked line.
Inside, Wren found her: an older Black woman with sharp eyes and a steadiness Wren felt all the way in her chest.
“Name’s Clara,” she said after a long pause. “You came through the woods like a ghost.”
“I’m… passing through,” Wren offered, not quite lying.
Clara didn’t press. She had the look of someone who’d seen stranger things than girls who didn’t quite fit into the year.
Clara was a teacher. A former enslaved woman who’d escaped to the North and had returned South after the Emancipation Proclamation to help build freedom from the ground up—one student at a time.
She kept a school in her sitting room, with salvaged desks and handmade chalkboards. She taught children to read and to question.
And she kept a trunk under her bed, filled with things she called important.
That’s where Wren found it.
A small, leather-bound book. Worn at the edges, pages softened by time and touch.
Not a journal.
A collection of letters.
Wren flipped one open and her breath caught.
The handwriting. The cadence. The questions.
Eliza.
The title read: “Reflections on Liberty, Womanhood, and the Hidden Cost of Revolution” – E.S.
Wren blinked back sudden tears.
“You know it?” Clara asked, curious but calm.
“She—she was a friend,” Wren said hoarsely.
Clara nodded. “Came into my hands through a Quaker family in Pennsylvania. One of the daughters was passing them around to women meeting in secret. I think her mother had gotten them from an abolitionist out of Boston. I only know this much: these words? They made me fight.”
Wren swallowed hard. “Can I read it?”
Clara gestured to a rocking chair. “All the time in the world, baby.”
That night, as thunder rolled in the distance and Cat curled on her lap, Wren read Eliza’s words like scripture. They weren’t just poetic—they were strategic. Arguments for equality, compassion, education. Questions about how the country could birth freedom while binding half its people.
And in one tucked-away note, Wren found this:
“If I cannot change history now, perhaps I can plant questions in the hearts of women who will.”
Wren closed the book and held it to her chest.
It was working. Eliza’s quiet fire had traveled from girl to girl, heart to heart, until it reached Clara. And now Wren.
And that changed everything.
The next morning, Clara asked Wren to speak to her students.
“They won’t understand where you came from,” she said, “but they’ll feel what you know.”
Wren took a deep breath. She talked about asking questions, about using your voice even when it shakes, about how people had always tried to write women and neurodivergent folks out of the story—but they were never really gone. They were the margin notes in history’s great manuscript. Waiting for someone to read them out loud.
The children listened. Wide-eyed. One girl—ten, maybe—sat straight-backed in the front row, fingers tapping her knees in a rhythm Wren recognized.
After, that same girl asked Wren if it was “bad to think different from everyone else.”
This time, it opened not with urgency, but with purpose.
Like it knew Wren had found something she needed.
As she stood in its glow, Clara pressed the book into her hands. “Take it. Maybe someone else needs to read it next.”
Wren hugged her. “They will.”
She stepped into the light, Cat following behind, tail brushing Clara’s skirts.
Time cracked open again.
And the echoes of Eliza’s words traveled forward—riding with Wren toward whatever came next.
Chapter Seven: Ink on the Walls
The portal dropped Wren and Cat into heat and stillness.
This time, they landed in a narrow alley, the smell of fried okra and train smoke in the air, the sound of gospel floating from a distant window. The sun bore down on a small southern town—Georgia, maybe Alabama. Wren could tell from the way people looked over their shoulders when walking past the “Whites Only” signs.
Cat leapt gracefully to a nearby windowsill and meowed, annoyed.
“I know, buddy,” Wren murmured. “We’re not welcome here.”
They slipped down side streets until they found it—a faded sign above a brick building: “The Magnolia School for Colored Girls – Founded 1892.”
Inside, everything was worn but shining with care. Fresh chalk on the board. A vase of wildflowers on the teacher’s desk. Sunlight slanting through gauzy curtains.
And standing in the middle of the room, fixing a stubborn map of Africa to the wall, was a woman in her thirties. Tall. Graceful. Eyes like flint.
She turned, startled. “Can I help you?”
“I’m Wren,” she said. “I’m… passing through.”
The woman didn’t ask how Wren got in. Just narrowed her eyes like she’d met a few mysteries in her life already.
“I’m Miss Lila Ashby. You here for the reading circle?”
Wren blinked. “The what?”
Lila smiled. “We meet after school. Read and write things we can’t say out loud in daylight.”
Wren felt that old tug in her chest. This was the person she came to meet.
That night, Lila invited Wren to stay for dinner. Collard greens, black-eyed peas, cornbread. Cat got his own saucer of milk, which he licked with exaggerated dignity.
After the meal, Lila pulled out a tattered envelope.
“I keep this with me,” she said. “Been passed down through women in my family for three generations.”
She unfolded the pages carefully.
Wren’s breath caught.
It was Eliza’s letter. The same one Clara had kept. But this one had notes in the margins. New thoughts. New fire.
Clara’s handwriting.
And below that, new lines. Slanted and graceful.
Lila’s.
“I don’t know who this Eliza was,” Lila said, voice soft but reverent, “but her words traveled like a song. Clara was my great-aunt. She taught my mother to read using this. My mother taught me.”
Wren looked up, stunned.
“She said the words would call out to the right women. The ones with questions.” Lila met Wren’s eyes. “They called to you, didn’t they?”
Wren nodded slowly. “They always do.”
That weekend, Wren sat in the back of the reading circle while girls aged ten to sixteen took turns reading passages from banned books. Some shared poems they’d written. One girl wrote about feeling like her mind was “a thousand bees and a thunderstorm,” and Wren nearly cried.
Afterward, Wren asked her about it.
“I don’t talk right. Not like the others. My teachers say I’m too loud, too fast.”
Wren knelt beside her. “You’re not broken. You’re brilliant.”
The girl smiled, just a flicker. “Miss Lila says that too.”
“Miss Lila’s right.”
That night, Lila confessed that she sometimes wondered if her resistance mattered.
“They close our schools. Burn our books. Treat us like shadows.” She clenched her fists. “What if nothing changes?”
Wren handed her a note. Just a scrap of paper, but on it she’d written:
“If I cannot change history now, perhaps I can plant questions in the hearts of women who will.”
Lila read it in silence. “Eliza.”
“She did change history. So did Clara. So are you.”
When the portal came, Wren felt it like a breath on her neck—soft but sure.
She hugged Lila, who whispered, “Take the letter. It belongs to the ones who carry it forward.”
Wren tucked it into her satchel beside Cat, who let out a satisfied purr.
As the light began to shimmer around them, Wren glanced back one last time.
Lila was already back at the blackboard, chalk in hand, writing a new question for her students.
“What would freedom look like if you wrote the rules?”
Chapter Nine: The Vote That Wasn’t Enough
The portal opened with the crackle of static and the scent of warm asphalt. Wren landed hard on the sidewalk, Cat tumbling beside her and letting out an indignant mrow as a car with tailfins whooshed past.
They were in the South again. This time: Selma, Alabama. 1965.
There were signs everywhere. Literal ones: “COLORED ENTRANCE,” “REGISTER TO VOTE HERE.” And invisible ones, too: tight shoulders, wary eyes, the heavy silence of a community waiting to be heard.
Cat stuck close this time, tail twitching.
Wren ducked into a small church with a crooked sign that read “Voter Education Project – Meeting Tonight.” Inside, people filled every pew. At the front stood a young woman in a plaid dress with hair pinned back and eyes like steel.
“Tonight we don’t talk about what we can’t do,” she was saying. “We talk about what we will. We will walk. We will write. We will vote. And we will not be moved.”
Her name was Ruthie Clare Ashby—a descendant of Lila Ashby, Wren realized with a quiet thrill. And in Ruthie’s hand, just like before, was the same envelope. A little more tattered. A little more powerful.
After the meeting, Ruthie caught Wren watching.
“You one of the volunteers from the North?” she asked.
Wren hesitated. “Something like that.”
Ruthie didn’t press. She just said, “We’re marching on Sunday. Selma to Montgomery. We’re tired of waiting for justice.”
That weekend, Wren walked beside Ruthie across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The crowd was electric—hope and fear braided together. Cat peeked out from Wren’s satchel, ears twitching.
Wren kept pace with Ruthie, who carried a sign that read:
“We hold these truths…”
But just as they reached the crest of the bridge, the police came into view—lined up, mounted, unmoving.
Wren felt time tighten around her like a fist.
And then it happened.
The charge. The batons. The gas. People screaming, running, holding one another. Ruthie’s sign flying into the air like a bird with clipped wings.
Wren pulled Ruthie to the side, shielding her with her own body, Cat hissing fiercely from the bag.
When the smoke cleared, they were still standing. Bruised. Coughing. But standing.
That night, Ruthie showed Wren her version of the letter. She had copied the words of Eliza and Clara, added Lila’s teaching notes, and then something of her own:
“I march because someone marched for me before I was born. I speak because someone was silenced. I vote because someone was told they couldn’t. I will not stop.”
“I don’t know if it’ll change anything,” Ruthie said, her voice low, almost breaking. “People keep saying the vote is ours. But it’s not—not really. Not yet.”
Wren reached for her hand.
“It will be. You’re making it true.”
As the portal shimmered to life behind her, Wren turned back once more.
Ruthie stood tall in the doorway of the church, hands ink-stained from writing new flyers, a group of teenagers listening to her with the kind of rapt attention people once gave prophets.
Wren knew what came next—the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the years of struggle ahead.
But in this moment, she let herself believe in the power of small seeds. Because this chapter—the one about the vote that wasn’t quite enough—was still being written.
Chapter Ten: The Echo Chamber
The portal whooshed open behind an old TV repair shop, and Wren landed in a pile of garbage bags next to a neon sign that flickered “OPEN” even though it clearly wasn’t.
Cat leapt gracefully onto a rusted dumpster, tail swishing like an antenna.
Wren dusted herself off and looked around. Brick buildings. Synth-pop leaking from a boombox across the street. Teens in denim jackets and crimped hair laughing under a mural of Ronald Reagan.
The year was 1983, and America was buying what Reagan was selling: “Morning in America.” Optimism. Patriotism. And the slow, quiet erosion of everything people like Ruthie had fought for.
Wren found herself wandering through a public library—the kind with sun-yellowed carpeting and that faint, nostalgic book smell. Cat trailed her down the aisles.
She wasn’t sure what she was looking for until she spotted a zine rack in the corner, half-hidden by outdated encyclopedias.
One stapled pamphlet caught her eye: “We Remember Ruthie Ashby.”
She grabbed it, heart racing.
Inside: grainy photographs of Ruthie marching in Selma, teaching literacy classes, protesting the closure of voting access centers.
But also: a timeline. A note about her suspicious arrest in 1971. A quote scribbled in blue ink:
“Freedom isn’t free, and it doesn’t stay. You have to keep choosing it, every day.”
Wren’s heart ached. In the zine’s final pages was a name: Tasha, Ruthie’s niece, now leading a small grassroots coalition in a city riddled with “war on drugs” propaganda and broken mental health systems.
Wren tracked her down in a community center in D.C.
Tasha was in her thirties, wearing a “Silence = Death” pin and running a voter registration booth between a needle exchange clinic and a free meal line.
“You look like you read,” she said to Wren, raising an eyebrow.
“I try,” Wren replied.
Tasha snorted. “Then read this.” She shoved a flyer into Wren’s hand: MENTAL HEALTH RIGHTS ARE CIVIL RIGHTS.
Tasha had grown up reading her aunt Ruthie’s letters—just like Lila had read Clara’s, and Ruthie had studied Eliza’s.
Each generation passed down truth like contraband in a world that didn’t want it printed.
She told Wren about the cuts to public mental health programs, the closure of institutions with no community care to replace them, the stigma swallowing up neurodivergent people—especially poor and Black.
“We don’t get to have breakdowns,” Tasha said. “We get criminalized, or pathologized, or erased.”
Wren felt it in her bones—the aching familiarity of being misunderstood, too much, too sensitive, too different.
“You ever feel like the world wasn’t made for your kind of brain?” Wren asked.
Tasha nodded slowly. “Every damn day. But I’m here anyway.”
They stood together at a rally the next day, holding signs that read:
“Disability Rights Are Human Rights.” “Our Brains Deserve a Future.”
And beneath her breath, Wren whispered, “So do our hearts.”
Cat purred, rubbing against her leg.
Wren didn’t rewrite a law that day. She didn’t change the President’s mind or undo the damage done by greed disguised as greatness.
But she saw Tasha hand a flyer to a teenage girl who looked like she hadn’t spoken in weeks, and the girl smiled.
And that—that was something.
The portal began to hum again, its pull gentle but insistent.
Wren turned to Tasha. “What should I remember?”
Tasha smiled. “That we were here. And we kept going.”
Chapter Eleven: The Girl Who Always Asked Why
The portal opened not with a bang, but a hum—a kind of warmth that wrapped around Wren like her favorite blanket used to. She landed softly on a sunlit patch of carpet, the air filled with the scent of plastic dolls, peanut butter, and freshly mown grass.
It was 1997. And Wren was home.
Well… a home. Her childhood home, specifically. Cat gave a curious chirp and padded off through the kitchen like he belonged there.
Wren stood in the living room, blinking. VHS tapes lined the entertainment center. A lava lamp bubbled in the corner. A Lisa Frank notebook sat open on the coffee table—her own handwriting looping across the page in colorful gel pen:
“WHY does everyone say I’m bossy? I’m not bossy. I just KNOW STUFF.”
She wandered into the hallway and stopped cold.
There she was. Little Wren. Eight years old. Barefoot. Wearing a bright blue Tweedy Bird shirt and pacing in front of a corkboard with tacked-up drawings and index cards labeled things like “FROGS,” “WEIRD WORDS,” “HOW DO BRAINS WORK??”
She was muttering to herself, scripting conversations and flipping a fidgety plastic bracelet around her wrist. And she looked tired—the kind of tired that sits in your bones when the world doesn’t make sense and no one believes you when you say so.
Adult Wren swallowed the lump rising in her throat.
Cat brushed past Little Wren’s leg. The girl startled. Looked down.
“…Where did you come from?” she asked.
Cat blinked slowly and flopped over, purring like a tiny engine.
Little Wren giggled—sincerely—and for a moment, the air lightened.
Later that day, Wren watched her younger self sit at the kitchen table, frustrated as her mom tried to help with a worksheet. There was too much noise. The light buzzed overhead. The paper felt scratchy under her hand and the pencil was too loud on the page.
“No, no, NO,” Little Wren cried, covering her ears.
“I don’t understand why this is so hard for you,” her mom said.
Adult Wren whispered, “Because no one saw your wiring. But you were brilliant.”
That night, after bedtime, Wren slipped back into her childhood room and sat beside her younger self as she dreamt—still talking in her sleep, still asking questions no one ever really answered.
She left something behind before she went: A letter. Folded, aged, and laced with everything she wished someone had told her.
“You’re not broken. You’re building. You feel things deeply because you see deeply. Your brain isn’t wrong—it’s a lighthouse. Stay curious. You’re going to change the world just by surviving it.
Love, You.”
She placed it under the pillow. Cat gave her a knowing look.
The portal opened once more, and this time it shimmered like a memory that never really left.
Chapter Twelve: The Threads Between Us
The portal dropped Wren in the middle of a city park, not far from a small lake reflecting streaks of orange and pink. It was quiet. Familiar. She knew that bench. That tree. This was now.
Cat trotted ahead and leapt up onto a picnic table, tail flicking like punctuation.
Wren stood still. The world buzzed differently here—less dramatic than Ancient Greece or Civil War battlefields, but heavy in its own way. She’d just come from every version of the fight: for freedom, for visibility, for truth, for voice. And now she was standing in a world where the fight was quieter, sneakier, and still so far from over.
She sat down and pulled out the leather notebook she’d carried through every jump. Pages stuffed with names—Clara, Eliza, Ruthie, Tasha—and places—Athens, Virginia, Selma, Seneca Falls.
At the top of a fresh page, she wrote:
“We’ve always been here.”
Across the park, a little girl was melting down in front of a playground—screaming, overwhelmed, misunderstood. A parent looked around, embarrassed, whispering sharp instructions. Wren didn’t interfere. But she noticed.
A teenage boy sat alone on a bench, headphones in, drawing meticulous doodles into the corners of his math homework. Probably called lazy, maybe just lost. Wren saw him.
Nearby, a group of college students rallied with signs reading:
“Neurodivergent Not Broken.” “Mental Health Is a Right.” “We Are the Future, Too.”
Wren smiled.
Cat meowed loudly at a passing jogger and curled into Wren’s lap like a weighted blanket. She scratched behind his ears.
“I get it now,” she murmured. “Everywhere I went, there were people like me. Hidden. Dismissed. Fighting quietly.”
That night, Wren sat in her apartment surrounded by old books, protest pins, and sketches of portals she’d drawn half-asleep. Cat lay curled beside her notebook as she flipped through her memories.
She thought of Little Wren and the note under the pillow. She thought of Clara’s courage. Eliza’s words. Ruthie’s fire. Tasha’s grit.
And she thought of her own.
What if I’m meant to be the bridge? Not just between time periods… but between people. Between systems and voices. Between the past and the possible future.
She didn’t know how, not yet. But she knew this: she would not be erased. And she wouldn’t let others be, either.
The portal hadn’t opened again yet. But Wren didn’t mind. Maybe this time, she’d build one.
End of Part One: The Spark
The portal didn’t open again that night.
It didn’t need to.
Wren lay on her back, Cat purring on her chest, and stared at the ceiling as if it were a canvas. She had stories now—ones history never told quite right. She had questions to keep asking, and maybe even some answers to give.
She whispered to the stars outside her window:
“We’ve always existed. Now we begin to be seen.”
Somewhere in the future, a ripple started.
And Wren—neurodivergent, brilliant, imperfect Wren—was ready to make waves.
✨ End of Part One: The Threads We Carry
📣 Coming Soon: Part Two – The Reckoning and the Rise
Wren has seen what happens when stories are erased—and what happens when people carry them forward anyway. In Part Two, she’ll face resistance from those trying to rewrite history, glimpse possible futures, and begin creating a movement of her own.
💬 What part of Wren’s journey spoke to you?
Would you time travel if you could? Have you ever felt like the world wasn’t made for your kind of brain? Drop a comment, share this story, or just sit with it. Your voice matters. You always have.
Yes!! Thank you so much!
good for you! we should be able to disagree without bringing opinions about each other’s bodies into it!
Thank you for your feedback. I greatly appreciate it.
Hi Kayla Sue 🙂 I just found your blog via one of your posts (which showed up as a search…
Great Blog❤️ Please support my new post(like,repost,comment)please❤️ https://wordpress.com/reader/blogs/208441502/posts/21563
Some places raise you. Some places catch you when you fall. And if you’re lucky, you get to carry both in your heart forever.
Dear Northern Indiana and Northwest Pensacola,
I’ve lived between your breaths—one crisp and cornfield-sweet, the other warm and briny with salt and pine. I know your moods like my own. I’ve memorized the way the sky folds down at dusk in both places, different colors, same comfort.
Northern Indiana, You raised me in quiet meadows and long stretches of farmland. Your trees stood like sentinels, and your silence taught me how to listen. I still dream of the way snow falls here—thick, hushed, and holy—and how the wind cuts so clean it feels like starting over. Your fields are empty but never lonely. Your sunsets stretch for miles, soft and slow, like they’re in no rush to leave.
You were my first lesson in stillness. In patience. In how beauty can look plain at first—until you stay long enough to notice the wildflowers on the roadside, the frost patterns on a February window, the way the stars show off on clear nights. You taught me how to pay attention.
I’m back here now—home again in the place that built me. And I love it more than I ever did before. Maybe I had to leave to see you clearly. Maybe I had to grow up to realize you were never as small or quiet as I thought. You are rich with memory and meaning. You are peace and place.
And then there’s you, Northwest Pensacola. You who welcomed me later, when my heart was tired and hungry for warmth. You gave me open skies and Spanish moss, sandy trails and birds that sound like laughter. You gave me Gulf breezes that made me feel like maybe, just maybe, I could exhale again.
Your live oaks wrapped me in their long arms. Your wetlands whispered secrets I’d forgotten how to hear. Your thunderstorms rolled in like a mood, quick and loud and then gone, like my own grief.
You’ve held me in hard seasons, offered me orchids blooming from trees and herons tiptoeing through water. You showed me how wildness and softness can live in the same breath.
I long for you often. I miss the air, the light, the sound of frogs after dark. I can’t wait to come back—to walk your trails, breathe you in, let you remind me of who I was when you held me. Pensacola, I’ll visit as many times as I can. Always.
I carry you both in me— Indiana’s steady hush and Pensacola’s lush chaos. You are my anchors and my wings. My deep roots and my soft landings. My before and my becoming.
Thank you for the way you’ve healed me without needing words. For the spaces you gave me to walk, to cry, to breathe, to begin again.
With all my love, A grateful wanderer between two worlds
People tell me I’m honest like it’s a surprise. Like I’ve just blurted out a confession or a truth they weren’t expecting — and they either nod with admiration or laugh like I’ve just told the world’s driest joke.
And I guess the truth is: I don’t know how to be any other way.
I’ve never had the energy for pretending. Not for long, anyway. It’s like my brain doesn’t know how to hold two versions of the truth at once — the real one and the one people might want to hear. So, I say the real one. Gently, if I can. But still, I say it.
And sometimes, I’m too honest — especially about myself. I’ll share something raw or vulnerable, thinking I’m just being open, and then I’ll get that awkward silence or a half-smile followed by, “Maybe you shouldn’t have said that.” People have told me it wasn’t the right time or place. That it made them uncomfortable. And I get it — kind of. But also, I don’t.
Because I wasn’t trying to make anyone uncomfortable. I was just telling the truth. I didn’t know better. I wasn’t trying to shock or overshare. I just don’t feel like I have much to hide. So it’s hard when other people act like I should. Like honesty about yourself is something to be rationed or kept behind glass.
When that happens, I feel this particular type of shame — like I broke some invisible social rule I didn’t know existed. And I hate that feeling. It makes me want to disappear and never say anything again. But I always do say something again. Because that’s how I process the world — honestly, openly, and usually without a filter.
One moment about honesty that has really stuck with me happened during one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. I was teaching at St. Paul’s Catholic School in Pensacola, and I knew I wasn’t mentally well enough to keep doing my job at the capacity my students deserved. I brought that truth to my principal — a wonderful, wonderful woman whom I deeply admire — and one thing she said to me was: “It’s good that you’re being honest with yourself.”
And that really stayed with me. It reminded me how powerful self-honesty can be — how freeing it is to speak the truth out loud, especially when it hurts.
But I’m still not sure what level of honesty is appropriate around other people. Is there a line? Or is it okay to just be honest, period — and let other people sit with the discomfort of the truth? Because otherwise, I’m the one sitting there, uncomfortable, holding it in. And I don’t think that’s fair either.
What’s especially wild is that usually, it’s the people who are big “MAGA” Trump supporters who’ve told me I should tone it down. To watch what I say. To keep certain things to myself. And those same people are the first to say, “I just love how honest Trump is,” like that somehow makes the things he says okay.
They’re not okay. Not even close. Not even a little. In fact, a lot of what he says is freaky — like in a scary, very very scary way. But sure, let’s police honesty when it’s soft and vulnerable and real… and praise it when it’s cruel and loud and dangerous. Makes total sense.
Sometimes I wonder if “honesty is the best policy” actually means anything. People usually say it when they’re not being honest at all — or when they’re about to say something that is true but also kind of mean. I try not to do that.
I really believe in gentle honesty. Telling the truth with care. Being real without being reckless. Being warm even when the words are hard.
Still, people laugh. They say I’m funny — usually right after I’ve said something deeply true without meaning it to be a punchline. I’ve decided I’m okay with that. If my honesty makes people laugh and think at the same time, that’s not the worst thing.
So yeah. I’m honest. Not because it’s a strategy. Not because it’s brave. Just because it’s me.
“Resume of A Soft Person” An essay from Professionally Confused Since 1992 — Entry Four
2–3 minutes
Objective To continue being human in systems that confuse urgency with value. To create warmth, clarity, and connection—even when it’s not on the job description. To survive with integrity intact.
Experience
Human First, Everything Else Second All Workplaces, All the Time 2008–Present
De-escalated adults and children without ever raising my voice.
Built trust with people in distress, over the phone and across classrooms.
Learned how to stay calm when everything else was unraveling.
Treated coworkers, clients, and students like people, not tasks.
Earned the kind of compliments that don’t go on performance reviews, but stick with you for life.
Intake Whisperer Law Firm #1 & #2 2021–2023
First voice people heard when their life had just cracked open.
Listened without judgment, and translated chaos into coherent facts.
Created space for people to tell hard truths without flinching.
Balanced compassion with boundaries in every conversation.
Helped students feel seen, even when the system didn’t.
Co-regulated through meltdowns and Monday mornings.
Built community, even when support was hard to come by.
Knew when a kid needed a break, not a punishment.
Skills
Reading a room faster than reading an email.
Leading with kindness while holding firm boundaries.
Keeping it together when nobody else is.
Writing messages that say what people need to hear, not just what they expect.
Making people feel safe enough to be real.
Education
Bachelor of Soft Power, Minor in Burnout Informal but Intensive Training 2006–Present
Graduated with honors in giving a damn.
Capstone Project: “How to Be the Strong One Without Going Numb.”
Thesis in progress: “How to Keep Showing Up Without Disappearing.”
References
People who remember how I made them feel.
Students who still check in years later.
Coworkers who could breathe easier knowing I was on the clock.
My nervous system, now learning that rest is allowed.
Me, finally starting to believe that I am enough.
Narrative Outro In the end, this resume isn’t a list of jobs or titles—it’s a testament to a way of being that refuses to let the world define my worth. It’s a quiet declaration that softness and strength can coexist, that caring deeply isn’t a flaw but a form of resilience. Every line here is a reminder that even amidst systems built to drain us, the simple act of showing up with openness and authenticity can rewrite the rules. I’m not chasing accolades—I’m cultivating a life that values being human over endless productivity.
This is Chapter One of my new novel-in-progress, Petals from Her Mouth, a psychological horror story about girlhood, perfection, rebellion, and remembering the version of yourself they tried to erase. I’ll be publishing chapters here as I go. Thank you for reading and for walking with Romy.
“I think I’m falling apart, but beautifully.” — Petals from Her Mouth
Chapter One: The Perfect Girl™
Romy smiled because that was the rule. Not the written one, not the kind on a sign—but the kind you learn in your bones, the kind carved in classroom corners and whispered into your scalp while your hair is being neatly brushed back behind your ears.
Smile. Sit straight. Use the right tone.
She sat in Behavioral Harmony, third row from the front. Her hands were folded on the desk. Palms dry. Nails clean. Uniform ironed. She’d triple-checked everything before she left the house.
Still, the instructor—Miss Grant—lingered too long when she passed Romy’s desk.
“Eyes forward, Miss S.”
Romy’s gaze snapped back to the front of the room. A screen glowed there: soft pink with white cursive text, a daily mantra.
“My feelings are not more important than my presence.”
Everyone repeated it together.
“My feelings are not more important than my presence.”
Romy’s voice caught in her throat.
She coughed. Something fluttered up.
She clamped a hand over her mouth.
It was just a breath. Just air. Just nerves. That’s what she told herself.
But when she pulled her hand away, there it was: A single petal.
Pale pink. Soft. Sitting in her palm like a secret.
She closed her fist around it before anyone saw.
After class, she threw it in the trash.
She didn’t tell anyone. Not her mom. Not her dad. Not even Ivy—not yet.
Because how do you explain something like that?
How do you tell someone, “I think I’m falling apart, but beautifully?”
Later, in therapy, Ms. Voss would ask if she was experiencing “creative ideation,” and Romy would lie and say no.
Because it wasn’t imagination.
And the petals wouldn’t stop.
The therapy room smelled like lavender and static.
Everything was beige—the walls, the chairs, the lamp that gave off light but no warmth. Only the couch cushions broke the monotony, a soft coral pink, the color of diluted blood.
Romy sat down without being asked. She already knew the script.
Ms. Voss appeared from behind her glass desk with her usual notepad and her smile—plastic-perfect, default setting.
“Before we begin, Romy, would you like to take a breath together?”
“I’m already breathing,” Romy said flatly.
Ms. Voss didn’t flinch. She just made a small mark on her pad.
☒ Level One Resistance – Passive Tone.
“Let’s start with your emotional check-in. On a scale from one to compliant, how are you feeling today?”
Romy said nothing.
She thought of the petal in the trash bin. The way it had floated down like it didn’t belong to gravity. The way it had felt like hers, even though it came from nowhere.
“Romy?”
“I guess I’m feeling a little… fractured.”
Another mark.
☒ Word Choice: Unstable Metaphor – Flag for Re-Eval Monitor.
“What does ‘fractured’ mean to you?”
Romy looked past Ms. Voss, to the mirror on the far wall. It was supposed to be one-way. But Romy always saw something else in it.
A flash of herself with no mouth. A twitch she didn’t make. A version of her that stayed still when she moved.
She blinked. It was gone.
“It means I don’t know who I’m supposed to be right now,” she said finally. “But I know I’m not doing it right.”
Ms. Voss smiled again. Wrote another note.
“Self-awareness is a great first step.”
“That’s not what I—” Romy stopped.
She didn’t finish the sentence. What would be the point?
Every word she gave them would be dissected, categorized, weaponized. And anyway, she was starting to feel it again—that shift in her throat. The tickle of something too soft to be swallowed.
“You’ve been flagged for a sleep scan tonight,” Ms. Voss added casually. “It’s standard, just a dream monitor. Nothing invasive.”
Romy’s stomach turned.
“Okay,” she said, barely above a whisper.
“We’re so proud of your progress,” Ms. Voss said.
Then she reached into her drawer and pulled out a small pink sticker.
“Wear this tonight. It helps the scan calibrate. And Romy?”
“Yes?”
“Make sure your dreams are… appropriate.”
That night, Romy stared at the sticker in her hand. It looked like a heart. It pulsed once in her palm.
Slowly, she peeled it open.
And stuck it to her skin.
Her mom didn’t ask about the sticker.
She saw it, though—Romy caught the flicker in her eyes when she changed into pajamas and the pink heart glowed faintly on her shoulder.
But her mom didn’t say a word.
Instead, she handed Romy a mug of tea—chamomile, honey, vanilla. The same blend she made every Sunday night, the one she called reset tea.
“It’s extra sweet tonight,” her mom said, brushing a strand of hair from Romy’s face. “I had a feeling you needed it.”
Romy tried to smile. It didn’t quite reach.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
They sat together on the edge of her bed, legs curled beneath them, the silence soft and full of breathing.
Juno jumped up and made herself a loaf between them, purring like a motor under a quilt.
“I remember when they first started doing these scans,” her mom said suddenly. “Said they were for emotional wellness. Said they’d help girls sleep better.”
“Did they help you?”
Her mom hesitated. Then she shook her head.
“They helped me pretend. Until I couldn’t anymore.”
She didn’t say anything else. Just reached for Romy’s hand and squeezed.
Romy leaned into her shoulder and breathed in the smell of safety—lavender, lemon, and something like memory.
Later, when the lights were out and the house had gone still, Romy opened her journal and wrote one line:
“I don’t want my dreams to be appropriate.”
Then she closed the book.
And closed her eyes.
And waited for sleep to take her somewhere it wasn’t supposed to.
There’s something about waking up to rain that makes everything feel slower—softer, even. The sound of it tapping on the windows, the sky pulling a blanket of gray over the world like it’s telling us all to just pause for a second. On sunny days, there’s a kind of pressure to be out, to be social, to do something that looks like a movie montage. But on rainy mornings? The rules change.
I stayed in bed longer this morning, just listening. No sun blaring through the blinds, no rush. It felt like permission to move gently. No hurry to perform, no obligation to “make the most” of the day.
There’s this underrated magic in rainy days: you don’t have to be chipper or charming. You can be thoughtful, or tired, or quiet. You can wear socks that don’t match and eat soup for breakfast. You can listen to sad songs and not explain why. You can cry a little and it feels like the world is crying with you—or better, for you.
And honestly? Some of my favorite walks happen on rainy days. Not the freezing, torrential kind—but those mild, steady-rain days that feel like the world’s been muffled. I have a select rotation of rain jackets and boots (yes, there’s a system), and something about putting them on feels like an intentional little ritual. It makes stepping outside in the rain feel like a choice, not a chore. Like I’m part of the weather instead of avoiding it.
Rainy days feel like a reset. Like a soft space in between the hustle. They let you rest without guilt. Create without pressure. Breathe without performance.
So yeah, I’m kind of a fan. Not of storms or floods or dramatic weather events—just the plain, slow, steady kind of rain. The kind that hushes the world for a bit. The kind that reminds you that sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing at all. Or maybe just go for a walk in your favorite raincoat.
There’s a Pacers playoff game today—and I’m not going. But my heart is still right there at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
My boyfriend, his best friend, and his best friend’s mom (who honestly deserves honorary superfan status) are going to Game 1 today, and I’m so excited for them I could burst. It’s not just a basketball game—it’s one of those moments. A core memory in the making. The kind of thing that lives in your bones forever.
They’ve been Pacers fans forever—cheering through the highs, the lows, the weird rebuilding years. They’ve been yelling at the TV, celebrating buzzer beaters, and cursing refs with real passion. They care about this team in the way that makes you care too, even if you didn’t grow up with it.
And today they’re there. In it. Surrounded by the energy, the fans, the lights, the buzz of playoff basketball in Indiana. I can already picture the texts I’ll get, the group selfies in front of the court, the recap of every play that made them lose their minds. I love that for them.
Sports are funny like that. They pull people together, give you a reason to scream in unison, believe in something, feel big feelings about grown men in jerseys. And honestly? That kind of joy is rare. When you find it, you hold onto it.
So today, I’m cheering from afar. Not just for the Pacers, but for the people I love having the time of their lives. Let’s go, Pacers. Let’s go, memories.
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