(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
Another scene (just after the murder at the Sunset Bar). Introducing a main character.
Raymond Chandler's ghost may come haunt me for this.
---
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.
It's really powerful, Kristin. Do you know where the piece is going?
"I hold with those who favour fire...."
That piece reminded me.
Deb, yes! If this goes anywhere, I actually want to use that poem as a recurring theme. How interesting that you thought of it.
P-C (edit, and others!), thanks for the compliment!
My narrator is a little bitter, but she changes throughout the story. In my mind's eye, it's a story about what it means to be human when you are unable to do the things that most people think of as most human -- eat, have sex, be active, etc.. In my grandfather's case, he couldn't eat or write or type or even breathe for himself. He could barely talk. I think there's something there I want to explore further, and this narrator may be my gateway to do so.
It's really powerful, Kristin. Do you know where the piece is going?
Not entirely. The beginning came to me all at once one night, but I haven't mapped it out yet.
