This morning I opened my fridge to see several bowls full of summer fruit, and this brought me an almost unbelievable amount of joy. The past few months have been uniquely difficult and I’ve struggled to maintain anything like a healthy attitude throughout separation from my friends and family. I’m not, I’ve learned, a person particularly good at regulating her moods. I see a piece of bad news and I look for more bad news to confirm that I should actually be feeling bad.

I have to put faith in the capacity of the world to change. If I tell myself it won’t, that gives me an excuse to sit out. If I tell myself that it not only can, but it must, I can’t let it go. But there’s always a dark part of me that insists nothing I do has value, that nothing anyone does has value, because the forces we seek to overcome are vastly more powerful than we can hope to be.

I know that’s not true, but it still drags me down as surely as stones in my pockets. Sometimes I feel like I’m removing a few stones and replacing them several times per day. Today I saw summer fruit and that was enough to take some stones out of my pockets; a small, small victory that I will celebrate.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

Today’s word—aeaeae—is likely a neologism. When I searched for it, most of the results were of the hex code, which results in the gray color above. Hex code, I thought, laughing, because”aeaeae” means magic.

“Hex code” is short for hexadecimal code, a type of numeral system based on sixteen. It has nothing to do with hexes, which trickled down from the Old High German hagazussa, also the root of “hag.” The “hex” in “hex code” comes from the Greek ἕξ, the word for “six” with a similar pronunciation.

That’s not to say that hex codes can’t be magic; they turn letters and numbers into colors. Even a coincidence like this one can be a surprising source of joy in dark times. Maybe that’s magic, too.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest my entire life. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to live somewhere else—somewhere where they have long seasons of sun, or somewhere with many feet of snow. People always ask if the gray skies get to me, and my answer is always no. I love them. I love rain. I love the slate blue ocean and the rose gold glow of the mountains at sunset and the evergreen of the trees.

But would I feel that way if I lived somewhere else? Would I hate gray skies if I didn’t live somewhere where they are ubiquitous? Would I miss the rain if it was gone?

It’s the “grass is always greener” question, isn’t it? But I’ve always felt that the grass is plenty green right here. Other places are wonderful to visit, but until I find somewhere as uniquely gray, blue, rose gold, and green as it is here, I’ll stick around.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

I have always wanted very badly to be good at science. Unfortunately, my brain is always off doing something else when it should be studying chemistry or physics. I was passable at biology, geology, and astronomy, but once you start throwing in equations the part of me that enjoys learning turns off and starts thinking about, I don’t know, that time I asked someone if they wanted to be “bridge buddies” because we were in a group for having to explain the land bridge theory, and how that ninth-grade memory will probably never, ever leave me, and how I am still embarrassed about it 16 years later, or whatever.

I enjoy science as if I am a fan of it. I think it’s deeply cool, but unfortunately, I have crammed my head so full of song lyrics and obscure vocabulary that I can only sit on the sidelines with a giant foam finger, cheering it on. You go, science. I don’t understand what’s going on most of the time (unless it’s about rocks, which I inexplicably understand rather well), but I’m rooting for you.

Anyway, here’s drabble.

When I was but a wee babe online, I stumbled upon the infamous Ted’s Caving Page (which I would not recommend visiting without an ad blocker). It was one of the first pieces of web-based horror fiction I’d ever encountered, and at the time I wasn’t entirely sure that it was fiction. I didn’t know how to verify things, what terms to search to ease the part of me that was turning this single experience into a deep-seated fear.

I’ve never been in a cave. I probably won’t ever go into a cave, because the moment I step through its mouth (and that we call it a mouth is telling—like we’re stepping into the jaws of some creature to be willingly swallowed) is the moment I start panicking and have to leave immediately. But I find them fascinating anyway; maybe more so, because I really don’t know what’s hiding inside.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.