"Playing Blind"

So, I often find myself purposely not turning on lights, going around with my eyes closed, or  just not looking at what I'm doing.  I'm trying to understand what it must be like for Calista. And I've found that all this "practice" at being "blind" has some advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:

• When cutting onions and you tear up, you can keep your eyes closed while you put the onions away.
• Too lazy to turn the light on? No biggie.
• Power outage without a flashlight? No problem.
• thirsty? still no problem.  Made it down out of my loft bed, found a cup, went to the bathroom, filled it, and brought it back without spilling it.

Disadvantages:

• Spilling said water all over the place the next day because you're a klutz and forgot it was there.

Yeah.

Idea I had today while reading Alex Flinn's Cloaked (which combines several fairy tales: Frog Prince, Elves and the Shoemaker, Six Swans, and more)
A combo of The Little Mermaid and The Six Swans: Main girl is half-turned into a swan by the evil step-mom, but something interrupts the spell, and as the youngest, she only gets partially affected.  Retaining her human shape, but losing her human speech to swan-speak, she has 3 seasons to either make shirts of flowers or have someone fall in love with her.  Or something like that.  There's a prince, too.  And the girl and swans are heirs to the Air Kingdom.  Perhaps they were winged humans.  I like that idea.  A lot.  Though I suppose they could still be merpeople...