Chapter 4

unBottled Combo

Hello Sparks!

Okay, I know its supposed to be Fiction Friday, but before we get started with Chapter 5, I’m going to level with you. Life is eating me. Adulting is hard in general, and a twice a week posting schedule is brutal. IYKYK. Wanna tell me about your version?

I’m not going to elaborate (unless you ask), other than it’s been mostly related to sick kids. I’m not going to make excuses, but I do apologize for leaving you all hanging all this time.

This space was supposed to be a thoughtful, conversational place to share things about my process. To discuss the fun stuff, and the life stuff and the craft. It feels like I lost that tone somewhere along the line and became disillusioned with the whole thing. Maybe you didn’t pick up on it, maybe it’s my imagination, or a hint of burnout... Ugh… Never mind. Sorry anyway. Let’s continue.

Business time!

Now, since we’ve unBottled up to the end of Chapter 3, and since Chapter 4 is only two episodes, a short arc, I thought it might be a good idea to throw them together for this and catch us up, so we are all on the same page to start Ch5 fresh and synced.

This particular unBottled Embers has to do with these two posts, which together form Chapter 4 of Bottled Embers.

Ash and Cinders

Figurine puts us back inside Misty’s head. We see a series of memories that seem normal at first but then become somewhat twisted.

First she’s having a fight with her sister. Then baking cookies with mum. Then she’s in the dark trying and failing to speak. Fourth is her watching her father die through a window. Then she’s training with Teag. Through them all she begs James to make it end. Finally, she finds herself in a meadow of soft grass and red and orange flowers, the same one Logan didn’t tell Luke about, while she watches a man that looks like her father walk away.

Logan skips to three years later and things have changed. Elle has deteriorated. Luke is frantic, desperate to wake her up in hopes of stopping her decline. He and Logan argue and Logan tells him about the meadow at last, and worries that Luke will think less of him for believing Misty might be better off going quietly. And honestly, after what happened to put her in that coma, who can blame him?

In Foregone Conclusions, Luke pressures Logan and decides to prep the room even without his consent, so that if Logan does give in, they can proceed immediately. Logan eventually finds Luke with everything ready and accepts the foregone conclusion with relief.

Restrained and under the influence of a drug cocktail to open his mind, Logan makes his connection with Elle. Luke tags along through him, entering Elle’s mindscape where the meadow is no longer green and blooming.

Her mind is now desolate, a blasted plain, lit by three sickly suns. Logan walks searching and eventually comes across a cage beneath a burning tree.

A very young Misty hides there weeping in the warmth of the fire and the relative security she feels behind the bars. Logan approaches cautiously, but Luke’s piggybacking interferes, scaring her. Cursing Luke, Logan talks to her, tries to convince her to leave with him, and despite her ambivalence, she decides she doesn’t want to be alone anymore.

Questions!

So Misty in the meadow? I think this one is pretty obvious, but do you think it was her father or Logan she saw walking away? And why would I make Logan look anything like her dad?

Misty’s memories start out peaceful, then turn twisted. Why do you think it’s these memories? What do they tell us about her? Why in this order, and why does James haunt her the way he does?

Then the time jump… Three years is a long time. What do you think could have happened, and why do you think I made the gap so big? What does the time mean for Luke, Logan and Tom, and what does it mean for Elle?

Her deterioration is somewhat unexpected, isn’t it? What do you think could have caused it? Could it have something to do with her mental state? Could it be an energy thing?

Also pretty obvious, but why does Logan have to be drugged for this procedure? What does Luke prepping the room, even without Logan’s consent, and the fact that he accepts it with relief, say about their relationship? Oooh! This one is a good one for a poll.

The cage and the burning tree paint a sad picture, don’t they? What do you think of the way Logan and Misty have completely different perceptions of them? Why does Misty feel protected by the bars and what does the fire represent?

Logan finally gets through to Misty despite Luke’s interference. Do you think her decision to leave with him is because she trusts him in the end, or because she’s just tired of being alone? Do you think she really wanted to be saved, or did she want someone to prove to her that she’s worth saving?

Nerds Nook

Let’s do craft today.

In the course of this story, we’ve seen a bunch of memories of Misty’s past. I invite you to think about what they mean and the picture they paint of what her life was like before Luke and Logan found her.

There’s the blood on the snow, Chrys dying. Her death is the wound that never heals.

Before that she was at TTH. James and Teag as trainers, James, an evil version of Luke that twists her memories of her family and saves her from them. In her worst moments she wishes for him. So, he can’t be altogether evil, can he? She learned from both her trainers. Physical training by Teag taught her grace and power, James gave her resilience, knowledge and experience.

We see that she had a family. Father that mediated sibling disputes. A mother that baked cookies. A sister, Kayten, who bullied her, and held the blade that killed their Father, but who she also misses and weaves wreaths for.

And she was marked as Talented from birth.

These fragments are not a timeline. They are a collage. They show us that Misty was shaped by abusers, loved by people that feared her, and saved by strangers who didn’t know what they were getting. The meadow is her dream. The cage is her truth.

This collage technique, presenting Misty’s past as a series of fragmented glimpses forces you, the reader, to assemble their meaning. It is supposed to leave you with many questions, wondering what it all means. Misty’s memories are often distorted as well. You wonder what is true and what is a construction of her traumatized mind.

I’ve gone for a thematic layering of sorts. Each memory fragment serving multiple purposes. They build her character and flesh out her world, Telera, that we only see through this distorted lens. There are characters that you never meet.

James is complicated. You’ve heard of Stockholm Syndrome, right? Well, James is a perfect example. He was obviously horrible. He lets her suffer until she can’t take it before coming to relieve her pain, he torments her in a lab, laughs she bleeds. She hates him, and yet when she’s at her lowest, when she’s in pain, when she’s dying—she wishes he were there. Attachment to a tormentor is literary territory, isn’t it? (Winking emoji ;-) .)

That’s it — Nerdy friends.

Keep well.

—Jenny, out*

---

Happy speculating, till the next time! Next story episode drops Friday kicking off Chapter 5, with new (hopefully better) artwork and a new chapter in our characters’ lives. I can’t wait, can you?

New here? Don’t want to miss out -

Need more and can’t wait - check out the Bottled Embers INDEX for the rest of the story.