Thanks, you guys! (Hey, this is kind of fun.)

Since I'm really trying to get back into fiction writing, I'm going to drabble too. I haven't quite gotten the lj thing figured out yet, so I thought I'd post last week's here:

She squinted against the sun, trying to read the salsa-stained menu. At the next table, two couples were building a pyramid of red-and-green cans, adding squeezed lime quarters as ornaments. Their faces were relaxed and faintly pink, glazed with sweat. His back was to the builders, his face nearly invisible in the umbrella's shade. She touched his hand to point out the construction and felt him pull, almost imperceptively, away. The waiter held his pad expectantly. She pointed as one boy stood to complete the top of the pyramid and then collapsed, laughing, into his chair. "What are they drinking?"

[x-posted with the GWW community on LJ.]

Drabble #1 is closed, but here comes challenge #2! (From now on, new challenges will be posted on Mondays; last week's was posted on Wednesday because, well, that's when I created the community.)

Your drabble challenge, should you choose to accept it, is: Place. Drabble a place -- a room, a city, a country, a corner of a backyard, a coffeehouse, a rock concert in a huge arena -- any *place.* My idea is to use the drabble to really evoke a sense of whatever place it is, through your description.

You can drabble it, as always, in any style you wish -- fiction, dialogue, poem -- anything at all, as long as you give us a good sense of place through it.

If that's too vague, please speak up. It just happens to be the idea that crawled out of my brain this morning.

Just so I'm clear on the drabbling...the only rule is no more than 100 words?

I should do this one, cause I suck at description and need the practice.

100 words exactly.

Just so I'm clear on the drabbling...the only rule is no more than 100 words?

The definition of a drabble is 100 words exactly, BUT, frankly, nobody is going to shoot you if you're under or over. I mean, going WAY over makes it no longer a drabble, but for the purposes of this specific drabble community, I'm not going to be a Word Count Policewoman.

Ginger, I loved that.

Rock and Roll Memory

In the little room behind the stage, three girls in bright lipstick are playing with the nitrous tank.

Out in the house, the place is filling up. Familiar faces: there's the earth mama, barefoot and vegan, feathers twined in her hair, ready to dance. There's the skinny dude, selling you tabs. There's the little girl with her ass-crack showing; she'll be up on her boyfriend's shoulders five minutes into the show. The air's full of pot smoke.

The roadies are busy, concentrating. Onstage, guitars sit on stands, amps are ready, and the houselights go down.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome..."

You know, I had no idea I was going to start doing this.

***

For the tourists who visit your city, the French Quarter is a hive of activity after dark. They trip wide-eyed along Bourbon Street, gawking at the strip clubs, letting their ears be assaulted by the music blaring out of bars and t-shirt shops.

But you live here. You know better. You see more. You've walked along Royal at nine in the morning, when the previous night's rain still soaks the pavement, when the only sound is the soft clop-clop of a horse's hooves, when there's nothing more beautiful than the sunlight bouncing off the cobblestones of the empty, quiet street.

Mmmm. I really like that, Dana. Especially the last paragraph, with three short sentences followed by one really long one. That long sentence is a perfect example of using sentence structure to evoke the appropriate feeling. Mmm.

Dana wrote about home too!

*******

For a moment, she can’t remember where she is, or how she got there. The family dramas fall away as she sees every star; close enough to touch, far away enough to flee to, seeing them all for the first time since ...

Why did growing up mean losing the night sky? Here in the boat (someone’s steering it, aren’t they?) going up the river (which river, again?) to the mysterious party, there is nothing but lapping water, scared silence of her companions, and stars that smell of jasmine.

For a moment she shares their terror, but she loves it.