Lunar Shore

Foreword

Hey, guys. It's Rian.

Welcome to the third, and final, installment in the Solar Flare trilogy. In case you missed it, this is the order you should read them:

Solar Flare-> Basic Smoke -> Water Story-> Lunar Shore

Don't worry. I know the description focuses on Kiley, but your favorite characters are still very much MAIN in this story, too.

I wanted to get some things out of the way at the top of the story.

First of all, I am mostly deaf. I have been since birth. I chose to give my specific disability to a character in this story. He complains about the inconveniences caused by his disability. Other characters notice it, remark upon it, and sometimes don't do a great job remembering to make allowances for him. Some of the characters get actively rude about the situation. At the end of the story, his deafness is not magically cured and he doesn't return to "normal". His deafness is a part of him, but simultaneously, has nothing to do with him as a person.

I do not want to get one single comment protesting the way I wrote MY disability. I wrote things the way I wrote them to give people a peek into the life of an invisible disability. You can't look at me, nor could you look at this character, and see proof of our everyday struggles. We are dismissed and disregarded. Accommodating our hearing is annoying and inconvenient for other people. It's easier to brush us off, to say "nevermind" when we ask someone to repeat themselves. It's easy to call us dramatic for hating when there's too many noises happening at once for us to decode speech.

It's just too easy to ignore us when we ask for help.

There is something else I want to bring up.

I am a white American. I am roughly the same color as printer paper. I have never experienced racism in my life, nor will I ever suffer from it in any serious way. But in this story, I attempted to represent racism a bit deeper than I did in Basic Smoke. I channeled stories I've heard and read from Black people in order to add a sense of realism to my story, to pay my respects to the communities my characters represent, and hopefully open some eyes to the fact that you don't have to be a member of the KKK in order to be racist. Using microaggressions, silencing BIPOC voices, infantilizing, and stereotyping is racist, too. If I messed something up, or did a token stupid white author thing, let me know. I am here to learn as much as I am to write.

Rants over. Enjoy the story, and remember:

Stay safe and stay sane.

- Rian