Driving home from Target today, I was walloped by a plot bunny with Clovis-like mind control powers. If I stay as excited about it as I am right now, it'll leapfrog everything else in the queue, and I'll start on it as soon as I'm finished with Anna. Without further ado, in keeping with this week's drabble theme, here's how I think it starts:

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1799ish, Portsmouth

Elizabeth's teeth chattered a staccato rhythm, half from terror, half from cold. A steady drizzle fell, and the night was black but for the dim glow of lanterns shining from tavern windows or carried by better-prepared citizens.

Her boot settled in something slimy and malodorous, and she stumbled to her knees. She choked back a cry of pain, but not before four brawny, terrifying sailors on the other side of the street stopped and looked at her. Thank God she'd thought to steal her brother's clothes before she ran away--what would happen to a young woman in proper woman's clothes in a place like this at this time of night didn't bear thinking of.

"There's a likely one," the oldest and biggest of the sailors said, and they swarmed across the street toward her.

Oh God.

She'd forgotten all about the press gangs.

Susan! That's a great start!

Keep it up!

(sorry about excessive exclamation point usage)

Hi, Kristin!

This is one of those things where the basic premise and a few visual images hit me so strongly that it was all I could to not to run up to strangers in the street and tell them all about it. Just bubbling over with story.

I've actually done that. It's sad how they don't care.

(envying Susan the bubbling over-ness)

Xposted to LJ, here's a little something:

She passed her hands over the glass jar and murmured a word or two, and then picked up the container as though it was cool enough to handle. Niala was sure she saw stars move in the depths of the liquid, and smoke curl above its surface before the crone stoppered the neck of the jar tight with a carved wooden plug. For the first time, the old woman’s eyes met Niala’s.

“Seven drops, no more, no less,” she instructed, putting the jar into Niala’s hands. “Morning upon waking, night upon retiring. Seven days without fail, morning and night, seven drops each time.”

There's a bit more of it, but I pared it down as close as I could get to 100 words.

Ooo, Bev, I like.

I've liked so many of the drabbles, actually, and I haven't had any free time this week to explain why.

t hangs head

Intriguing, Bev.

Another scene (just after the murder at the Sunset Bar). Introducing a main character.

Raymond Chandler's ghost may come haunt me for this.

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McCrary, LAPD Homicide, was one of those guys you'd expect to see checking out the nudie rags at the stands off Hollywood Boulevard. Big, rumpled, with eyes so small you'd wonder how he could see past the end of the cheap stogies he always chewed.

That was crap, though. He was sharp as a razor. Those small sleepy eyes never missed a damned thing. Right now, he was staring at the back door of the Sunset Bar.

"Marlowe. Hey." He jerked his head at the door. "You know what? My guys are morons. The killer didn't get out this way."

An intro drabble from a piece with a paralyzed narrator that I've started working on recently (my grandfather was paralyzed from the neck down due to polio for the last 40 years of his life, so it's a topic I've kicked around before):

There’s something joyous about water in motion. Think about the way water seeps up from the ground, too buoyant to be suppressed. The way it splashes over the edge of the tub. Sweat. But when water stops moving, something essential is lost. Ice has no life. It can be beautiful, but it is a hard, rigid beauty. A beauty of distance.

Imagine you have two choices. You can live a short time immersed in water in all its danger and movement, or you can live forever encased in ice. Which would you choose?

I would choose to drown.

"I hold with those who favour fire...."

That piece reminded me.