Deena, I may take you up on the research. Believe me. This is a kind of research at which I can get extremely lost, medical/genetic.

Both yours and PC's drabbles have the superb last lines. Gut-kickers.

Everyone's work is so lovely. And so personal. Memory is like that, eh? But I wanted to thank you (the universal Buffista you) for two reasons. One, for your honesty and passion in your writing. It shakes me loose. And two, for making this available and so open and warm. I feel like writing, and I love getting responses that are both appreciative (or otherwise!) and intellectually and emotionally present. It's making for a terrific creative environment, and I am enjoying the heck out of it. If a little worn from the ceaseless gut-punches of good writing! Anyway, thanks. It's good to be here.

This is my first drabble. I just posted it in the GWW livejournal as well.

He slowly removes the braces from her legs., and she is suddenly an awkward teenager at the doctor’s office. "Can you name this deformity?", the doctor says, pointing at a part of her leg as he finishes removing the brace and turns toward the resident. The resident is young, handsome, and she is an awkward teenager. She opens her eyes and stares at the man lying in bed with her. He removes her braces and is as eager to explore the fishnet stockings that lie beneath. Her legs are not a visual aid, they are hers and they are sexy.

Oooo - sj, I like! "Her legs are not a visual aid"

Oooo - sj, I like! "Her legs are not a visual aid"

Thanks. I was very unsure of that sentence.

Crossposted to LJ. This one has been floating around in my head since Steph posted the theme. Getting it from circling thought-memory to words on a screen was harderthan the previous ones. In the past two challenges I wrote, checked words, and had to pad up to the limit. This one was harder. I had to pare away words, and choose them carefully.

Music flows around her. Rough wool scratches her arm where it links through his, and her face, where she leans against him: wool and Old Spice and another familiar scent mingled. She glances up to the choir loft; sharp eyes are upon her, over the top edge of the hymnal. She drops her gaze and shrinks tighter against him.

He reaches in his pocket and offers her a tiny stick of Dentyne. She unwraps it greedily and pops it into her mouth. The burst of sweet and cinnamon blocks, for an instant, that Medusa's gaze.

Ow, wow, on both.

Bev's is all about the texture, which is where I live. And I have certain similar memories to sj's experience with the doctor. And Liese's thing, about being shaken loose? No way to be any righter than that. It's what this sort of writing is supposed to do.

It was jarring to go from the language of the first paragraph to the word "Dentyne." It all has an evocative feel to it, though.

See, that was the part I liked best - from uh-oh to ah-HA!

Dentyne was his default--it was the only gum at the time that didn't stick to dentures. It was also the third element in his distinctive Sunday smell, the one that cements the sense-memory for me.

sj, yours is very powerful. I do wonder if your using the phrase, "awkward teenager" twice was deliberate, for emphasis and comparison?

PC, I'm so pop music illiterate I think I'm getting hung up on the music I'm unfamiliar with rather than your writing. Which I'm still thinking about, so there's worth there for me.