Loss. A gift. More vultures. More content on my Patreon, and subscribers, sales and shares all very badly needed.

Photo copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved.

After a truly terrible week, I'm hoping that gift depicted up there is a sign that things are turning over for the better.

As most, if not all, of you know, we lost She-Wolf Friday morning. For four and a half years of my life, every single day revolved around "nine and nine": That is, I had to make sure I (or at least one of us) was around to check her blood glucose and give her her insulin and her supplements and her food. In recent weeks, that's expanded to new meds and puppy pads taped over her bed and cleaning up leaks and and a bunch of other things. It's been very strange, these last two days, to get up and come downstairs and have none of those latter things to do, and not to have to schedule the rest of my days around the nine and nine. Raven feels it, too. He's mostly refusing food, even raw meat. It apparently finally sank in last night that she's not coming back, and he's grieving hard.  It's very empty.

But . . . it occurred to me over the last week that her escorts were here: The mated Swainson's pair returned for the third straight spring, and they've spent an inordinate amount of time directly overhead. I finally realized, on Wednesday or Thursday, that they gave us another gift: They have built their nest closer than we've ever seen (neither of us has ever seen a hawk's nest inhabited, much less built, because they like to keep it distant from human predation). It's across the road, but directly within our line of sight, and close enough for my zoom to get that shot up there (click on it. Seriously). More? It's directly within the line of She-Wolf's resting place, and as we were taking care of what had to be done, they were soaring and circling and going back to watch from afar. They are guardians and guides, and just as the Cooper's hawk did for Griffin, I'm convinced they were here for her as much as anything. And they're still here for us.

But last week, from Monday's events to Friday's, have left us all pretty raw. My health has suffered fairly substantially over the last week for it, and now I have to try to climb back to the place where I was, which is still far lower than five months ago. The stress continues to be heavy and harsh, and the bills don't pay themselves. Not that the collectors care; they'll kill me and tell you I asked for it.

Anyway. We need sales, badly. I also need new  subscribers to my Patreon page, badly. I've set my initial monthly goal at $1,000, which will let me pay off our medical bills in just three years, imagine that (yeah, that's sarcasm, but I don't have any other options but this one). Thank you, once again, to the thirteen folks who have believed in me sufficiently to subscribe already, and who collectively have gotten me past the 60% mark. I still need a little shy of 40% to make that goal, and I am asking folks outright, please: Share the link, and subscribe if you can. Pledges made through tomorrow will bill on May 1st; anything after that will bill on June 1st. And since I have $4K worth of vultures breathing down my neck right now (okay, so it's really more like $24K, and they're getting nasty about it, and yes, this IS the "discounted rate"), I really need to be able to meet this goal and pay off as much as possible as fast as possible.

So here are all the links, and the rest is cut-and-paste; please share them:

• My new Patreon, The Interstices (Writing Between Worlds);
• Wings's site, for sales;
• Wings's direct PayPal link;
• A way to buy me coffee (which actually goes to all of our medical bills, which continue to mount; another almost $400 for Wings this week);
• Amazon wishlist, which mostly consists of supplies for She-Wolf;
• Partial registry #1, from Bed, Bath and Beyond. There are new kitchen-y things on it now, stuff that I didn't realize we'd need to replace (either because the RV ruined it or because we gave it away when we had to downsize).

I've posted several recent-ish but not brand-new things on my Patreon, in addition to the three brand new ones at the bottom; some are accessible to patrons only, while a bunch are readable for free by everyone.I've got a bunch of new stuff in the works, but the last week has left me literally no time for writing, editing, or anything else; I'm hoping to carve out this week almost exclusively for that, but we all know how that goes. I'll do my best to get a lot of the new content posted as fast as I can. Much gratitude to all of you, and please continue to share the links.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.