I could lie awake all night and just listen to you breathe, and it would make me happy. I could lie awake all night and reach out my hand and let it hover, just a fraction of an inch away from the warmth that is your skin, and it would make me happy. I'm always so happy when we're here, lying like this, side by side. I can curl up against you and feel you there, and know that I'm not alone. You have no idea how happy this makes me.

I just wish...I just wish I could see you, sometimes. I miss that, miss seeing the way your hair fell across your shoulders, the way your eyes caught the light and held it until they glowed; I miss that sometimes. I can feel you, even when you aren't near, but I can't see you. And my memories are growing so old, and faded, and fuzzy around the edges.

I dream, sometimes- you know that. I've woken up screaming so many times just to find myself in your arms- and you never said a word, you never had to. I'd dream of that night, the bright lights and the sudden shock and the screams, oh God, the screams...Even after I couldn't see anything, even after I lost consciousness, I still heard the screams. Still heard your screams, and Jacob's, and Jordan's, and Joeseph's. And even though I know I must have imagined it, I could hear the baby, six months not yet born, screaming. But then I wake up in your arms, and the nightmares are just dreams, only they aren't, they are memories...the last memories I have of them, of my husband and your husband and Alethea's husband...and of your face. My last memory of all of you is colored with screams of pain.

It hurts, you know. Everything hurts- the places where my eyes used to be, they ache when I lie awake like this, with my head turned in your direction. I can stare at you as much as I want and listen to you breathe, but I can't see a thing. And it hurts, that place inside me where I once held a little girl. Funny how I would be the first of the three of us to give birth- me, the youngest, the unsure one. But maybe I was being cocky, trying to outdo you and Alethea; my punishment is this. Blind and barren, and all I can do is lie awake and listen to you breathe.

It's all I have left to make me happy, sometimes.

--Excerpt from "Stories from the Sunny Hill Cafe"

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If I ever really do become a writer, Sunny Hill is what I would write. Until then all I will do is work out scene fragments and characters- it's far too big of a project for me to even think about attempting now. The above fragment is from Athena Jenkins' point of view- she's a blind waitress, and I still haven't quite figured how that actually works. But it made even less sense to put her in the kitchen or at the front desk, (actually, that would have made more sense, but Alethea sure as hell does not wait tables) so Tina got stuck waitressing. But it's not like Sunny Hill gets more than five to ten customers a day, anyway. It isn't a real cafe, after all. It just pretends to be one.