Way over the word limit. More of a guideline, really.

Burning

I picked up the cat and walked away up the garden. She didn't understand things like fire, and I didn't want her to be frightened, or hurt.

"Where're you going, chicken?" he called. I turned to see him, bare except for swim trunks, bending toward the pile of branches and grass clippings interspersed with old papers needing to be destroyed. The cuttings were green, and he'd doused the shoulder-height pile with gasoline to help it along. Neither of us noticed that the breeze had died in the early evening. I saw the match strike, felt the ground shake, and felt rather than heard an almost subaudible whoomp. I saw him engulfed in a fifteen-foot fireball.

I didn't have time to register what I was seeing. The fireball was gone, the fumes consumed on the instant of flash. He turned and stepped away, threw himself down on the ground and rolled up again, ran over to me, "I'm okay, I'm okay."

I saw strips, like torn trousers, fluttering from his legs, and his scorched eyebrows. "You need to go to the ER."

"Nah, I'm fine. Pretty exciting, huh?"

No, I really don't think you are, I thought. What came out was, "Okay, but you might want to go rinse off..."

"Yeah," he grinned. "Maybe I should."

By the time I followed him to the bathroom the adrenaline had begun to wear off and he was shivering. "It's starting to hurt. I don't think I can drive." I soaked a sheet in cold water and laid it around his bare shoulders. "Get in the car."

Whoa. Definitely a primer. Always toss the match from a distance.

Major good drabble, there.

In the last month, I've compared my writing to masturbation, smoking pot, and drunk girls getting topless in NOLA. It occurs to me I may not yet respect my skills.

New drabble topic!

Challenge #67 (fire) is now closed.

Challenge #68 -- and I swear I thought we already did this topic, but I checked the topic history, and we haven't -- is cooking. (Hi, Deb!)

Administrative note: there haven't been many drabbles lately, and I'm wondering -- do we need a break? Is it just summer putting people in a vacation state of mind? How about the topics themselves? Maybe they're getting stale. *Please* suggest future topics, because I might be stuck firmly in a rut. Suggest any and every topic you like, please.

Heh. Hi Tep!

I've been slightly down in the drabble numbers because I've been so deeply invested in the new series: 135K words or thereabouts in less than ten weeks has pretty much eaten my brain.

But that's the only reason. Actually, the topics have been extremely resonant.

Aaaaand, we're off...

The Taste of You

"That's what love will do for you..."

Field greens, crisp at the edges. Heirloom tomatoes, weirdly bumpy, perfectly golden at the heart. Mushrooms, sliced thin to take dressing the way croutons would.

"That's what love will make you do..."

Olive oil, crushed garlic, a splash of truffle vinegar, the juice from a lemon, off my own tree. Bread in the oven.

"No matter how hard I fight it..."

I sing to my ingredients. If you're not here to sing to, I cook in your name. Body and heart meet the earth's bounty, singing, remembering.

"I'm still in love with you."

I'm wondering -- do we need a break? Is it just summer putting people in a vacation state of mind? How about the topics themselves?

Tep, I've been moving, and finishing a book, and all kinds of real-life stuff, which has gotten in the way of drabbling. On a totally personal level, I love the more specific topics -- the photos, the situations (one person lying down, one standing up, etc.), because sometimes the one-word ones are too...well, big for me. But I always love reading everyone else's. And I have been wanting to start again. Which I will do this week! I so decree it. (Because I'm totally the boss of me.)

I'm just tired of navel gazing, and it's hard to come up with drabbles otherwise.

And I'm at the other end of the spectrum from both Amy and connie: I think navel-gazing is the purest and truest source for anything I write, provided I do it well. And I tend to back away from most of the "scenario" topics, because I always feel I'm being artificial about it, unless I get totally lucky and do a good one by chance.

edit: but also, one of the cool things about Teppy's topic choices, for me, is how broad the spectrum is. An off-week for me is almost invariably followed by a topic that makes me work.

This one's autobiographical.

Drabble:

When I was nine, Dad was teaching at a small but prestigious college in North Carolina. Mom had split a couple years before, and we rented rooms to a couple of undergrads. They were stereotypical upper middle class Southern good old boys, and their stereotypical Southern Belle debutante girlfriends would come over from their own college to visit most weekends. I remember this one Saturday I had just made a grilled cheese sandwich for my lunch and was taking it out of the toaster oven when one of the girls came in.

"Oh, that looks wonderful! And it smells delicious!" She paused. "What's the recipe?"