Thanks!

Is it my browser, though, or did you intend all yours aprostrophes to be question marks?

I compose in Word, for the count, and unless I paste it into a text editor on the way to the posting box, that's what happens. Silly character sets.

It's nice to have a little distraction, to keep her alert. She wants to be there when her parents wake up, and clean up all the red water the bad man spilt on them before he left.

Ah, a grizzly little image. Makes me smile.

Now I need to make myself write, damn it.

That's weird - I compose in Word, as well, and import it directly into here, and it doesn't mess with my apostrophes.

I have to fix all my apostrophes when I copy from Word.

- revisionist

The doors are closed, but the windows are open all the time. No a/c, so the better to let in the desert breezes of monsoon. It smells sweet, some unnamable glimpse of life under the sandy earth, released by last night’s rain.

In the backyard, mamacat prowls. The kittens cry for her. In the house, the dog sniffs the former cat nursery. Out front, rufous hummingbirds wage war on the weaker species. The house finches perch on the feeder like so many sparrows dipped in red wine.

Who says the desert is dead? I step out my doors into paradise.

Awww, mama cat and babies appear in drabble form!

Yeah, and I cheated with the name to make mamacat one word! It's an uncapitalized proper noun, I swear!

And I'm still going. This one fictional! Almost. Because this happened, but not with life-altering consequences, and I sure as hell can't play my scales at 240.

---

- more traveled by

With eyes closed, she runs the scales again, starting with G. She anticipates the familiar, delightful ache of the five-fret stretch at 240 bpm.

But the ache of memory doesn’t dull the pain of immediacy. She opens her eyes. Her instrument is gone. Turning away from her bandaged, mangled hand fails to make it whole again.

She remembers with bitter clarity each motion. Her hand on the frame, eyes turned away. Then the gasping, creaking sound as she shut the door on her hand and her career. The blood red on the white car door. The sound of paths diverging.

But the ache of memory doesn’t dull the pain of immediacy. She opens her eyes. Her instrument is gone. Turning away from her bandaged, mangled hand fails to make it whole again.

I have been there and done that (mine involved rebuilding seven of tem fingers and doing skin grafts), and boyoboyoboy, do I feel your pain. Brrr.

Two wonderful drabbles.

We have a coffeehouse on the Caltech campus called the Red Door Café. If I don't manage to work that in somehow, I'll be very sad.

You do more than I, deb, as my injury was utterly minor. Rendering that piece more fiction than not.

But fret hand injuries sure are scary, so I extrapolated the (thankfully unnecessary) fear.