Kalli's Journal

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Dream by Day

One of Emily Anderson's favourite things to do was update her website before leaving for school. Justin Johnston, who sat beside her in her first-hour math class, thought that in itself was crazy. What if she'd coded something wrong and it was wrong all day? What if something else was wrong? What about all the e-mails she had sitting around and waiting?

Emily always shrugged it off. She did check her code, and when she made an error, no one ever got too upset. Mostly they just mentioned it, or thanked her for fixing it. Never did she pretend to be a professional, after all. Everything on her website was self-made in one way or other.

Her code came out of a basic HTML book that her older brother, Matthew, had bought for her. All of the art was hand-drawn and colored either by hand or on the computer. And she wrote all of her own stories, of course.

She had, with a little help from Matthew, bought her own domain and taken care of all of that. She'd set up her email. From there, she'd just tried a bit of everything to see how it all worked. That was the most fun, aside from writing and creating.

Math, on the other hand, was not fun and creative.

In math class, Emily was prone to daydreaming and doodling, both with lines and words. Her notes were more scribbles of stories and drawings than equasions and formulas. It just didn't hold her interest, even though she tried.

Luckily, when the assignments were too difficult, there was Justin, who lived just a few houses away. He understood every assignment without difficulty, and often he explained things better than the teacher did. Though anyone could do that, Emily assumed. Even Justin had said that.

In exchange, she helped Justin be creative, as much as he could be. He wasn't the sort to daydream. Not about anything other than math, at least, or possibly rocks and volcanoes and all of that.

When she was in the sky with Jorin and her other faeries, writing stories now syndicated in a few places, he was well-rooted on Earth, keeping a place for her.

"What happens when a faerie likes math instead of magic?"

Emily looked over at Justin. He'd eaten half of his lunch while she'd only picked at hers. Not for a lack of interest, just that she'd really wanted to sketch out some leaf designs before she forgot them. The basic idea for a vine border had struck her in World History and she'd just not had the right pencils til she'd run back by her locker. Now she had to knock out the design or else!

"Hmm..." Emily flicked her gaze up at the lights for a second. "I guess he'd build houses or work on other projects like that. Something where he'd need to measure things, where magic wouldn't quite be the right thing..."

"Someone has to do those things..." Justin smiled at her. "Could you maybe write a story like that? If... you didn't think it was boring, I mean."

Emily smiled back at him. She'd never really noticed that aside from his glasses being a couple decades out of date, he wasn't bad looking. He'd just always been Justin, who lived down the street, who was smart and helpful. And she'd had her head in the clouds, which was usually a good thing.

"I think that'd be fun," Emily replied. "He'll need a family, I guess. Maybe someone really different than he is... It'd be better that way, so they don't get bored when they only have one thing to talk about."

"You think so?"

"As long as they find each other interesting, it'll be okay," Emily said. "He can build houses and she can design all the inside stuff and put up all the barriers and charms..."

"A team," Justin said with a nod. "I like that."

"So do I," Emily admitted. It was a very good idea. She'd have to think about it all afternoon, except during art class.

"But," she continued, putting a green pencil back to paper, "I need to finish these leaves first."