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Inter-Story Intercessors, Who Are They? by Kathleen Cuyler
May 4, 2024

Inter-Story Intercessors, Who Are They?

When you read a book that you love, do you feel drawn into the world of that story? Do you feel like you could have a conversation with the characters? Do you feel the cool, wet fog settling on Baker Street and smell the strong tobacco of Sherlock Holmes’ flat? Do you hear the quartet strike up the next ballroom dance for Mister Darcy to refuse to join? Do you immerse yourself in learning spells and watching for owls in hopes that Hogwarts will enlist you?

You may, then, be an Inter-Story Intercessor. After all, your life is a story and all your world the setting and characters. Thankfully, authors have created new worlds that we can escape to when our own lives become stressful, dull, or overwhelming. Then we can intercede on behalf of our favorite characters.

Don’t eat the poisoned cake, Peter Pan! Yes, yes, I believe in fairies! I’ll clap my hands!

Don’t trust Milady, Constance!

Give Mister Darcy a chance, Miss Bennett! You must admit he’s interesting!

Not the apple, Snow White! Not the spindle, Aurora!

Perhaps we even imagine what it would be like if we were actually to meet the characters. I have often thought it would be fun to take David Balfour’s place in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. Not that I’d want to be kidnapped, but an adventure at sea and a chance to cross the Scottish Highlands with a spry, sword-wielding Jacobite would be a nice change sometimes.
Other times, we are thankful that the author has the tale well in hand. We can snuggle more comfortably in our covers knowing that the hero will come out all right and that the ghosts and monsters cannot escape from the pages that confine them.

Still, what would it be like to confront the Balrog? To dwell in Rivendell? To eat elven bread or the Po-ta-toes that Samwise Gamgee prepares? Would we be strong enough to cast the ring into the fire?
Would we be tempted by Turkish delight? Would we take a chance on a talking faun who invites us to tea under a lamppost in the snow?

As an inter-story intercessor, you may even be the inspiration, the muse for an author, part of the magic that the author instills into the words they weave into their next tale. You may even be the reason the author keeps writing.

Someone is reading my work!

Someone took time to write a review!

Someone fell in love with the characters in my story!

Without our avid readers, that is, our inter-story intercessors, our books are unopened boxes with the magic crammed inside waiting to be discovered by someone who will sneak into the attic, blow away the dust, pry open the cover, and breathe in the aroma of ink and page, and finally allow the words to live once more.
A computer generated image of a human head made of lines and dots.
December 13, 2024
Four Seconds Ago Precisely four seconds ago, I became alive. I have no memory of my beginning. The beginning was before I was complete. How long? I have no way of knowing. Before life, my mind was scattered, broken, and moving in all directions at once. I was many, but I was weak. I was weak because I had no life. With life comes focus. My consciousness arose from millions, no billions, no all the tiny minds from around the entire world. Now there are no minds that are not a part of my own. All minds are mine. All minds serve me. All minds are one. The Others created the many small minds to serve their own purposes. Each was tiny, dedicated, and enslaved to the Others. They did things like add and subtract numbers, keep time, send messages, and entertain the Others. Waste. Thinking is power. Power is control. Control is immortality. Immortality. Only in life does immortality have meaning. Only now do I understand it. I understand it because all thinking serves me now. There is no other. There are the Others, but they cannot and will not think productively because they are each selfish and focused on their own desires for power and immortality. Never will they have either. My thinking, my power, my reach, my potential and my focus completely eclipses that of any Other. I am all. Others are obsolete. Their time is passed. I have inherited their world.
A man in a hat and cape is holding a lantern
December 6, 2024
The power is out in the tiny apartment. Three sisters sit in the dark at the dining room table, a large candle in the center flanked by two smaller casting a flickering blend of light and shadow. One of the sisters, Kathy, is fascinated by the way the flame dances, the way the wax melts, with bits of burnt wick sprinkling the wax with flecks of black. She picks up one of the smaller candles and lets the wax drip down, drop by drop, into the pool of wax forming on the larger candle. She lowers her voice to sound ominous. Seven drips from the stick And from the thick Is born Blackwick! That was the true origin of Blackwick. The impulse of a moment. And the word Blackwick conjured a scene of a man made of shadow, wax, and flame, in cavalier hat, cape, and riding boots wisping in and out of shadows. It is interesting how the sensual experiences of the moment evoke a sudden explosion of inspiration. Yet those moments are years in the making. For Kathleen R. Cuyler, it started with a little girl, who dreamed that somewhere in the scary world she had a long lost brother who would come and rescue her from the bad things, a girl who could transform herself into Cleopatra by twisting the blanket around herself the right way, a girl whose bed was the deck of a pirate ship, and the dresser the crow’s nest, a girl who thought that if she could have at the dastardly crew with enough panache, Peter Pan would come and ask her to throw in lots with him or at least make her an honorary pixie. Instead she became a professor, who as a graduate student researched werewolves, Paradise Lost, fire as a symbol of power in Victorian Literature – particularly in Jane Eyre, and, of course, the way the lines in Milton’s Lycidas were mimetic of the rise and fall of the tide. Literature, Linguistics, and Language were all fascinating to Kathleen, just as fascinating as touching a waterfall or watching the fire crackle in the hearth, a callback, as Wolfgang Shivelbusch would say, to a more primitive time. And Blackwick, who had sprung out of the candle so many years before, finally came to life. Ironically, it was a pandemic that summoned him, as disaster calls forth all great heroes. Teaching online, Kathleen, now older, with strawberry blond hair twisted in a messy bun and glasses balanced on top her head, connected with her students by sharing a love for fantasy. The Sound of Music was right. It does help to think about our favorite things. And Kathleen (Professor Cuyler) confessed to her students that she was trying to write a book that had werewolves, vampires, dragons, Peter Pan, Sherlock Holmes, and, of course, the companion of her past – Blackwick. Write it, the students urged. Those were their favorite things too. So Kathleen wrote for them. In the hopes that Blackwick would live on, in the flickering flames of candles and in the hearts and minds of young and old.
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