Stretched Thin...

I feel pretty exhausted, truth be told. I managed to get myself started on another (potentially) fanfic-o-doom, this time for Saiyuki. This past weekend was hectic, because I was editing Entropy and drafting the as-yet-unnamed fic...at the same time. The new fic was hammering hard, demanding to be written, and yet I had promised myself that I would get another Entropy chapter ready for posting. I persevered and finished the editing.

I have good-ish news, I suppose. Today, I edited and posted a short piece for a Saiyuki challenge community on Livejournal. Did I mention I've gotten myself an LJ for the exclusive purpose of fanfic? Well, I did. I will probably end up crossposting all the things that go up on AFF on the LJ, mostly because I want to offer alternatives to viewing sites. (Read: posting on LJ gives a thin veneer of classiness to my tasteless writings, hahaha.)

Also today, I finished drafting part two of a two-parted fanfic/writing experiment. I say experiment, because it's one of those flip-side things, where you get one writing style and perspective in one half and another radically different style and different perspective in the other half. (And both halves cover the same events.) I need to figure out a real title for it, too. I hope to polish it off tomorrow.

I worked a short while on the unnamed fic, too. It kind of rickrolled me, really, because I was focusing on that two-parter (which is a vastly, vastly different kettle of fish) and the other story was all...BAM! Write this scene, since you're sitting right there! I don't care if you don't want to, you have no choice! Do it!

Let's see...I want to edit another chapter of Entropy over the next couple days, too. (It might be a good idea to draft more of that, while I'm at it. I'm running low on pre-written, just-needs-editing chapters for that.) I have a pretty good handle on where the story is going. It's just a question of connecting the dots with a combination of plot and character development. I haven't exactly lost interest in the story, but I am getting tired of grinding away. I suppose it's more accurate to say that other stories are getting my attention more than this one. (I shall do my best to persevere and get more done, though!)

Must go, words will eat me...

~Later

Updates and Odds and Ends

Here's the deal. I've temporarily down-ranked the Entropy index. I'm doing this partly because I don't want any crossover traffic to be getting confused about what's what with Entropy. I'm going through and revising things in order to post them elsewhere, and I don't want people to think that what they've read of it here is the be-all-end-all. It's not. The story is constantly evolving, changing, growing. Some changes are minor, but there are going to be some big revisions, too. I'm working hard to better mesh the older and newer material. It's hard to keep such a sprawling body of work consistent. So anyway, that's why the Entropy index is currently moved down a bit. It can still be found in the tags under "Entropy chapter index."

That aside, I have been working on new chapters for it in addition to polishing the old ones. At this very moment, I have three chapter thirteens. Or wait. No. I have four chapter thirteens and a general sketchy outline of what chapter thirteen is supposed to cover. Working from that outline has produced three chapter thirteens in addition to the fourth, original thirteen. Obviously, once they're all nice and ready for posting, they will no longer be 13a, 13b, and 13c. They'll be thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen...and depending on how the original thirteen looks after all that new stuff, there'll be a sixteen, too. (And all of that will trigger the domino effect, considering I already have a chapter 14, 15, and 16.) I swear, every time I turn around Entropy gets bigger. Maybe I should have called it Inertia. (I'm joking. ^_^)

Besides Entropy, I've recently done up a one-shot, also Naruto and also Kakashi/Sasuke-centric. I'm still on the fence about posting it here, because it definitely requires some sort of adult content warning. Is it possible to be graphic and tasteful at the same time? I definitely shot for intimate and delicate (versus raunchy and porntastic) but I didn't really skimp on the details...In fact, I sort of wallowed in the details.

I have a few other bits and pieces from various fandoms floating around, but nothing is too serious at this point. I've been consumed by the big projects recently.

As for non-fandom things...I haven't done too much. I drafted a poem recently but haven't touched it since. Really, I have two poems on the back burner. I also have been picking at a fiction piece, but I've been derelict in pushing forward with it. That particular one is tricky: I've written some for it before and it was quite serious. Doing bits for it now, I find myself dipping into the humorous and almost farcical. It's tough to balance the different moods and styles, and I'm not convinced I'm doing it successfully. I suspect it's going to be one of those stories where the different styles interrupt the main story every so often. (I consider the serious parts to be the real meat of this story.)

I've had a real yen for discussions of writing craft lately. I've been re-reading pieces of writing manuals and style guides. I've been reading about reading too, and have just encountered a rather interesting-looking book on the subject, entitled "The Crafty Reader." Part of the premise of it seems to be about reading as a multi-faceted discipline. the thing that grabbed me about it was that A. the dust jacket promised a good discussion on the craft and tools of critical reading, and B. it kind of promised to debunk and demean the New Critical theory. (I despise New Critical.)

Still, my search for shop-talk isn't turning up a lot of results. I want discussion, not a "Thou shalt write this way and this way only" sort of thing, of which so many books on writing are. I suppose I'd do better looking for essays on writing, really, but it's kind of the same problem there, with the added distinction that a lot of the "good" essays are either by or about authors I don't read, and the works they may discuss are, for lack of a better term, dated. If I wanted to delve more into the socio-historical aspects of writing craft, I would...but I don't. I think part of the problem is that I can't clearly define what I want; I am only able to look through and say that this or that is what I don't want.

Ugh. This was a singularly unproductive post, wasn't it?

~Later

New and Improved Chapter 1!

Holy moley. A whole year? Really? I've finally come back around to fixing the flagrantly bad chapter one of the dread fic Entropy.

Reccomended reading before going forward: The Prologue

Enjoy!


Chapter 1
---

Kakashi waited outside the Hokage's office. He knew exactly why he was here, but that didn't stop his stomach from churning unpleasantly. He had doubts and misgivings about all this. Could he really accomplish what the Hokage had set him to do? He forced his body to relax, made his hands hold onto the paperwork securely but without crumpling it. As he did with most quiet moments these days, Kakashi ruminated.

It was an unspoken rule not to mention the fact that Sasuke was crazy. True, he’d never been right in the entire time team seven had known him, but he had become decidedly worse after receiving Orochimaru's tutelage. Killing his brother had been the last straw.

But, while the ninja of the village were careful not to say anything in front of Naruto or Sakura, they had no such compunctions about Kakashi. Kakashi wondered why this didn’t apply to him. Perhaps because he had been an instructor and not a classmate? Maybe everyone thought Sasuke and he had not been close, despite months of group training and months of one-on-one and that middle-of-the-night intervention that had so miserably failed. Kakashi sighed.

He knew he shouldn’t blame himself entirely. After all, he had had a few months to try and affect the patterns of years’ worth of obsession in a particularly stubborn and willful not-quite teenager. Even then Sasuke had looked like he was only just stopping himself from imploding with hate and anger and despair. He’d been so feral the night Kakashi had tried to intervene, so violent and cruel.

Kakashi smoothed the papers in his hands. He corrected himself. No. Not cruel. But unthinking and uncaring beneath the widespread branches of the tree. If he’d had wings then, no doubt he would have flown off on the wild winds that had stripped the leaves off twigs and frothed the water of the river into great sprays.

Kakashi had failed him, no matter that Sasuke was as flat and dead as the moon. He hashed and rehashed the events, thinking that there could have been some way he could have done more. Kakashi's heart twisted deep in his chest. He felt responsibility for everything Sasuke had done after that, could see the lack of his influence so clearly in all the bad, wrong, and downright nonsensical events that followed Sasuke's defection.

This was why, now, years after Sasuke’s return to Konoha, Kakashi had agreed to take him on again. Sasuke’s homecoming had been no easy thing. Admittedly, he had come back to the village of his own will. It was pure bad luck that he had come to destroy it, but it was the thought that counted, right? He cared enough about it to want it wiped off the face of the planet, at least.

It had been obvious to Kakashi then--and was still plain to him now--that Sasuke had come completely unscrewed. It showed in his commanding, too. He had been too focused on destroying the village and not enough on things like defense…or basic tactics. He hadn’t seemed to care if his people got taken down, as long as he had more time to cause as much destruction as he could. Sasuke had been bent on personally taking out each and every house, building, or wall of mortared stone.

Kakashi remembered that a good third of the village had been flattened by enormous battling summons, and most of what remained had been scorched by Sasuke’s hard-won Amaterasu. The academy was reduced to rubble. Many good ninja had died, not the least of whom was Tsunade. To be more accurate, she didn’t actually die during the battle but rather some days afterward from chakra exhaustion from both the fighting and the healing afterward. Tsunade had spent her last hours dictating village business from her bed. One of her final orders as Hokage was to send Naruto out as a diplomatic envoy.

So, while Sasuke had spent the first few weeks after the destruction of Konoha with Ibiki at the ANBU headquarters, Naruto had been fulfilling Tsunade's request. Kakashi scratched his head, trying to remember. Naruto had spent a year--or was it two?--as a diplomat, first to Suna and then on an as-needed basis to less friendly countries. Although he lacked a certain polish, he was exceptionally good with people. It also didn’t hurt that he had, by then, subsumed all the Kyuubi’s power and could (though he never did) flatten a country with that massive chakra reserve.

During Sasuke's debriefing and Naruto's diplomatic dispatch, a secondary ninja council had taken over as a temporary measure while the village rebuilt and took stock and tried to decide who would be Hokage next. Shizune had taken the lead on it for a time, before declaring that the hospital needed her more. Ibiki was second choice, but he declined before they could officially elect him. He much preferred the shadows to the limelight. Danzou had stepped in to fill the void, which lead to Sasuke's transfer from the ANBU holding cells to the Konoha prison.

There had been months of infighting and backstabbing and dirty politics, to all of which Kakashi had been privy. Finally, the remaining jounin and ANBU who were not loyal to Danzou banded together and kicked him out of office through surprisingly democratic methods. Those same ninja had then stepped up to the responsibility in a rotational fashion. Kakashi had begged off of council duty: he knew he wasn't suited for such a tedious and thankless job, but he had couched it in terms of being more useful in the field taking missions. Thankfully, the majority had agreed with him.

When Naruto had come back from diplomatic deployment, he did some time on the council rotation. He consolidated power, won over councilors and heads of clans, and proved himself to be politically astute. Then he had taken another turn. And another. Finally, the provisional government agreed that he should become Hokage. The regular council insisted that he have advisors who were, quote, “not biased towards him in such a manner as to cause undue favor of his ideas.” This meant that Kakashi wasn’t allowed anywhere near him. (Not that Kakashi wasn't already flat-out with critical and difficult missions.) Naruto's council-appointed advisors were Ebisu, Ibiki, Shizune, and Anko. Naruto agreed that the advisors would assist him with village matters large and small, for a probationary period of six months. If he didn’t manage to run the village into the ground in that time, the council would consider allowing him complete autonomy after that.

Ibiki and Anko had bailed on him after a week. Apparently, for the first time in his life, Naruto proved in a very big and public way that he was more than competent. Shizune gave up dogging him after a month. Ebisu stuck it out the longest, but this was more for the sake of looking good in front of the council than any real desire to assist or police Naruto. By the time Ebisu quit, Naruto had firmly cemented himself in village politics and no one said anything when he announced, with great aplomb, that Ebisu would be returning to his former duties.

As soon as Naruto had officially accepted the mantle of Hokage, he got to work cleaning up the village. He had made public works one of his priorities. He wanted everyone to have a home and he wanted all the buildings and infrastructure repaired, rebuilt, or replaced. The last thing that went back up was the Academy. Once everything was rebuilt, Naruto had set his sights on the prison. It rankled him that not only did Konoha have a prison in the first place, but his former best friend was there…had been there, actually, for nearly five years. Whoops. Naruto asked Ibiki to look into it, and Ibiki did. Yes, Sasuke was still there. No, he didn’t plan on escaping. No, he wasn’t going to destroy the village anymore. Yes, yes, he was still terribly crazy. Dangerously so. Although Ibiki used the terms “unstable” and “likely to harm himself.” Sasuke wasn’t doing notably worse in prison, but he wasn’t getting better.


So Naruto, still as surprising as ever, had come up with a plan. The plan still gave Kakashi a warm feeling of pride that this young man had once been his student. Naruto had made many diplomatic overtures and promises and called in favors, and in return the prisoners were sent off to various other countries as menial hard laborers. They’d be fairly treated: properly clothed and fed, but supervised and, most importantly, they wouldn’t be in prison any more. For those prisoners who were ninja, Naruto consulted with Shizune and Sakura and the knowledge of the Kyuubi. He found ways to block their chakra. It was a hard decision to make, but Naruto couldn’t just let the prisoners loose, even in the supervised work environments, to start causing trouble again. If the former prisoners were ever rehabilitated, the blocks could, in theory, be removed.

As soon as the prisoners were taken care of, Naruto gleefully had had the prison demolished. He had vowed that he would find solutions other than incarceration for future offenders. But all this progress still left the problem of what to do with Sasuke. Naruto had been convinced that, given more time, Sasuke could recover into some semblance of normalcy. So, briefly, Sasuke had gone into the hospital. It didn’t help anything and. In fact, Sasuke had gotten a bit worse. More isolated. More withdrawn. More likely to burst out in a fit of anger.

And so Kakashi had volunteered to watch over Sasuke. Or, more accurately, Kakashi was volunteered by the Hokage. Naruto had given it a lot of thought and decided that Kakashi had a better chance than anyone else. Better chance of what he didn’t say. Survival, probably, though success was also implied. It had been made an official mission, paperwork and all. Kakashi would be taking charge of Sasuke tomorrow, which was why he was waiting to see the Hokage now. He had looked over and completed his half of the paperwork. He just needed to turn it in.

Kakashi wondered now if he should have visited Sasuke during either his prison or hospital stays. He had been busy, yes, but being busy was an excellent excuse to not do it. He hadn't always wanted to see Sasuke, for one. He didn't want to see the changes the years had wrought, didn't want to connect the genin he'd trained to whoever Sasuke had become. Of course he had doubts about this mission. But, Kakashi reminded himself, he had to do this. He would do this. He may not like it, but he could endure it.

He took a deep breath and steeled himself as the door to the Hokage's office swung open.

"Come in."

The Hokage's voice drifted into the hall.

Kakashi rose from his seat. It was unavoidable. He couldn't escape this duty now, no matter how he felt about it. He double-checked his paperwork, took another breath, and stepped into the open doorway.

---

I think it is entirely less choppy than before. I also hope that it now reads a bit less like the boring exposition it used to be. (Okay, so it's still exposition. I just hope it's more readable now!) I probably still didn't do enough to make it less boring, but I think I made real, genuine improvements. (For comparison's sake, here's the original chapter one. I'm not removing it from the site, but I will be redoing the index so new readers get the improved version.)

Anyway, I must away! Onward and upward to better and different things!

~Later

Take that, crappy exposition!

I have re-worked chapter one of the dread fic Entropy! I'm going to take a break before I give it a quick look over, but I'm fairly pleased at how I was able to streamline it and make it slightly less boringly expositional.

Expect it to be posted later this evening.

~Later

In the wind...

Remember when I said, back whenever it was, that I was going to have to write all-new material for chapter thirteen of Entropy? And remember how I said more recently that that chapter was going to be a boring montage-ish chapter? Well, I've made a fool of myself. I have a chapter thirteen now, and it is not a montage. It also covers a fraction of what I was intending to cover, which means I need to do even more new writing to catch up between twelve and the chapters that lay in the story's future (which I have already written and will need to rewrite.)

Speaking of rewrites, I've done a quick re-read of Entropy as posted here. I've found some parts of chapter one that I will be tending to in the next couple days. I can finally say that distancing myself from the story has helped me find the problems. I now see better what needs to be improved and removed in order for chapter one to fit in smoothly between the prologue and chapter two. Lesson learned: try to avoid writing prologues after laying out chapters of stuff that come after! I think I can properly streamline chapter one now. It's such a relief! (Especially knowing I had some serious, very obvious errors in there.)

In other news, I've officially taken up with an online fanfic community. This is exciting, mostly because it affords me the opportunity to expand my readership rather dramatically (and yet, so easily!) I'm just getting used to the setup over there as far as posting goes, and it also amazes me how satisfying it is to watch the number of hits my story has crawl higher. (I put up one quick story over there just to acclimate myself to the controls and process and all. I'm going to take my time with the rest of what I want to put up.)

Conversely, this may mean a gradual increase in visits over here, as I've listed this as my website...not that I'm expecting much of anything.

One thing is for sure, though. I'm going to try my best not to sit around waiting for warm fuzzies and hits to come my way. I'm going to try to keep busy writing! If I just keep my head down and work, I may eventually get somewhere. With that in mind, I'll probably post something here in the near future. Fingers crossed!

~Later

Feline Stewardship?

I am consumed with these sorts of thoughts lately...

---
The cat bashes his tail against my shins. He is convinced this will make me feed him treats. He fluffs his tail up, whips it back and forth, and thwacks it insistently on my legs. If he were a tom, he’d probably spray with excitement as I finally reach for the pouch of treats. As it is, he looks ridiculous with his tail vibrating and snaking. He marches in place on my feet.

Fifteen pounds of feline fury crouches over the food dish. He tracks the fall of the treats. His pupils are blown wide. He meows. Only two treats are forthcoming, and two is more than enough, but, of course, he does not feel the same.

Ah well. This is why I am in charge: I have the thumbs it requires to open the cabinet with the treats and to open the Ziploc package itself.

----

Not much of a freewrite. But it wasn't the only thing I worked on today, writing-wise. Maybe tomorrow will feel more profitable. Profitable? Profit-full, perhaps? Whatever the word is, I want to feel rich with writing, for the first time in months.

On a vaguely related note, I was reading bits of "A Cookbook for Poor Poets And Others"--a cookbook about frugal cooking, among other things-- recently, and I suddenly realized that the title might not mean what I had always thought it meant. I always thought it meant poets who were bad at poetry, but I now understand it also means/could mean poets who have no money. I supposed you could be a poor poet who is poor, as well...which would definitely explain your using that cookbook!

Still, I like the idea of a poet writing exceptionally bad verse. (Not that I would seriously want to read it. "Bad" poetry is painful to read.) I suppose my child's brain--my mother has had that cookbook probably longer than I have been alive--latched onto the idea that being bad at poetry meant you had to compensate for or automatically be good at some other area (like cooking.) But, sadly, poetry and cooking are not a linked skill set, inversely proportionate or otherwise.

...I feel rather silly that my post-freewrite ramblings are at least equal to if not greater than my actual freewrite.

~later

Diseases are icky.

I know, I've been missing for a couple days. I've been severely lacking in motivation to do anything constructive...in fact, I've done a pretty good job avoiding the things I want to accomplish.

Today, though, I have a small piece of a freewrite. This isn't the whole thing, but I'm really struggling to process how I feel about the part I'm not posting. I'll probably have to write more of it before I've resolved the problem (and still I might not post the rest of it.)

---
Harry had an unreasonable fear of gangrene. He’d never experienced it, nor had he ever known anyone who had. And, as a receptionist in the office of an obstetrician, the likelihood he would encounter gangrene in the workplace was very slim.

Harry wasn’t the adventurous type. He considered an evening in to be the best sort. He had a record collection, focused on pre-World War II opera divas. While he had cd doubles of some of his collection, much of it couldn’t be found on cd. Harry preferred to use his record player, at any rate. He felt closer to the singers. His interest in movies was also pre-World War II; he liked the silent, black-and-whites much more than what passed for cinema these days…though he conceded the creation of the DVD was probably a good thing. He didn’t have to worry about wearing out his vhs tapes anymore. Harry also had a cat, Burt. Burt was quiet, middle aged, and seemed to enjoy the opera as well. He was a good lap cat. Burt didn’t complain if Harry to the same album over and over.

Harry’s taste in clothing tended to button down shirts and sweater vests. Occasionally his co-workers teased him about being an old man before his time, but largely he didn’t mind. He had a comfortable, safe life with a comfortable, safe routine, surrounded by the things that gave him the most satisfaction.

But Harry still feared gangrene. He feared it so much that any slight deviation in his health was attributed to it. Suspicious moles, stubbed toes, a scratch gained while riding the subway…all of it pointed to gangrene. He had not one, but two physicians. They were both on his speed dial. He had a small library of medical texts and a special book with nothing but photographs of the various stages and permutations of gangrene.

He spent two hours before work each day examining himself in the bathroom mirrors, comparing himself to the pictures in the book. Burt assisted and encouraged. And then, after dinner but before his bath and his time with his movies and opera divas, Harry would spend another hour on a quick check for gangrene which might have developed during the work day.

---

I too have a fear of gangrene, but more in a general "that's really gross" way, not a "holy crap is that gangrene on my body?!?!?" way. I believe it's hardwired in the species to fear visible grossness. You know, the whole deal about not wanting to eat a delicious meal if it's being served up on a garbage can lid (whether or not the lid is used, clean, sterilized, or new.)

Maybe I should write more about the scary things that, were I a different person, could rule my life and change the way I behave. Nightmares are always rich soil for creativity, even if they are unpleasant.

~Later

What a Crock.

Quick freewrite. I've been thinking about this all day.

---
Mass Hysteria

It happened like this:

Once upon a time, there was a planet, occupied by men and women. The men did manly things, like shooting guns and playing sports and earning money, which they brought home to their wives, who did womanly things like have babies and cook dinner and knit wooly socks. This system worked rather well for the men and not so well for the women.

So, gradually, women started joining a massive Cult of Ideas. No one knew who founded it, exactly, but women all over the world joined it with the belief that chores and wage-earning and everything that made up their lives should be shared equally between men and women. They went through great pains to keep this society secret from men, because the men were sure to try to nip this rebellion in the bud, seeing as the current status quo was just fine for them.

This Cult of Ideas crept into the lives of the women over many, many years, and it became less of a secular idea and more of a religious one. Its members started praying to a universal Goddess to help them change things and make it all even between men and women. (By this time, men had become even more stuffy and unwilling to change the way things are, because the way things are is the way things always have been, and who wants to break up that sort of history anyway?)

And so it came to pass, on this planet inhabited by men and women, that a wave of mass hysteria swept the planet, and the men of the planet panicked like nothing else. You see, for a very long time, “mass hysteria” was a purely mind-over-matter issue of panic and delusion. Men knew this, and they also knew that it was a woman thing, having its roots in the womb, center of all of those uncontrollable, dangerous emotions found in women. Men didn’t have hysteria.

But, possibly through alien experimentation, maybe through the power of the years of women’s prayers, men all over the world suddenly developed wombs of their own. The men panicked like there was no tomorrow. And the women laughed themselves sick before they did anything else, like try and help the men adjust to this abrupt anatomical phenomenon.

----

This idea may sound completely cracked out, but it's not half as crazy as this show I was watching today, an anime in which a little boy lives in a jungle with his mom. And one day his mom inexplicably adopts a strange little girl who eats everything (like statues and people everything) and the stuff she eats gets sent to a different dimension...inside of her. And she can spit the stuff out again if she really wants. It's insane but insanely cute. Plus, it has the bonus of having one of my favorite voice actors in it.

Anway! Back to mass hysteria! I've always thought it was kind of a strange term. Sexist, yes, but also weird. And anyway, these days "mass" is always about cancer...or church. But mostly cancer.

My brains are going to explode out of my aching skull, and I'm still not free of yesterday's ailments. I should go to bed, maybe?

~Later

What's in a name?

For some reason, I seem to write about names a lot. Here's a short snippet entirely devoted to it.

---

Prudence Chastity Maheux, age seventeen, was counting down the time until her eighteenth birthday, when she would legally be allowed to change her name. She didn’t know what her parents had been thinking, naming her that. Maybe her mom had still been high on painkillers when she put that down.

Since age ten, when she had realized it was patently uncool to share her names with the Pilgrims coming off the Mayflower, Prudence had been looking for a better name. Her parents had been calling her Prudie since she could first talk. No amount of argument could convince them that her new nickname (adopted age twelve) was Chaz. It was the most cool, smallest part of her soon-to-be-ex name. Still, she reflected, Chaz was a little bit too boyish for a forever name.

Prudence had been collecting names over the past seven-and-a-half years. She kept the list in a three ring binder. She’d write down names of movie and book characters, classmates, and celebrities. If she overheard a name she liked, it went into the notebook. She had several baby name books and she eagerly awaited the coming of new phone books with their thousands of intriguing entries.

She knew all about last names as first names, and names that bridged the gender gap. She knew some names that crossed from widely male usage into widely female and the converse. Prudence was of the opinion that many Germanic names were too harsh for what she wanted. French ones sounded too snooty. And the Celtic ones…Prudence couldn’t even pronounce half of them, let alone imagine calling herself by one.

Still, she had hundreds of names to choose from, and she spent a little time each day trying them out in front of the bathroom mirror. Otherwise, how would she know which one she was? Sometimes she liked one enough to try it out for a day or two, signing her new name on her school papers and refusing to answer to her (soon to be ex) name. Prudence had invested in some “Hello my name is” stickers and they were invaluable.


---

I always have a hard time naming characters. I can't imagine how hard it might be to name myself. I mean, I go by a nickname I've had for years, but it's derived from my full name. I don't know that I could find the perfect, right name for me starting cold from a list, even if I took years to suss it out. And as for legal name changes? I don't know that I could jettison my old name. My name has history and sentimental importance attached to it.

But, if I were a Prudence Chastity, I'd make the effort.

~Later

The Dream Experience

So, for today's freewrite, a regurgitation of the dream I had whilst napping away the early evening hours.

----

I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and ended up smack in the middle of an alien invasion. I had been shopping in an antiques mall, hundreds of booths and corridors and staircases that looped around in a dizzying display of merchandise. I was stopped by an elderly gentleman who had apparently heard me whistling Beethoven and he wanted to know if I could sing. He gave me some sheet music and I embarrassedly admitted that my sight reading skills were bad. Nonetheless I sang for him.

And then things went wrong. People with clear torques around their necks started to crowd out the people without them. They started chasing me, relentless. They were going to collar me, make me one of them, an alien. Or, at least, under alien control because they were coming today. I ran and fought and tricked. I punched through walls and ceilings trying to get up and out, but the aliens were swarming near me. I asked the numerous cats lazing about for help, and they obliged. They collected, out of the antiques, necklaces that could serve as a fake torque. I had to slow down in my flight to try them on. I finally got one that fit and I made my way back to an alien, because no one had witnessed my deception. But there was a flaw in my plan: my necklace was not clear, but red.

The red necklace scared the other aliens. From what I could gather without revealing to myself, I was someone higher up in the invasion plan than the aliens had been anticipating seeing so soon. Still, sweating every inch of the way, I made my stately, deliberate way to the exit…and then I ran into my mom and I had to rescue her without raising suspicions and I was so, so afraid for her, much more than I feared for myself. I managed to get her to safety, and the aliens finally caught up to me.

They were going to hold me until their leaders arrived and, by then, I was so tired that I couldn’t fight any more. I basically laid down to die. I was so tired and sad because, really, there was nothing I could do anymore. And then I woke up…which I had tried to do earlier without success.

----

Ugh. I'm sick of alien invasions.

~Later

Returning to the Regularly Scheduled Program

I'm doing daily freewrites again. Just a reminder, these tend to be word vomit with terrible grammar, structural, and continuity problems. The following is no exception.

---

I was waiting for Jessica in the Krogers parking lot. It was the middle of a particularly nasty February Wednesday and the wind howled and clawed at the car. I looked at the dashboard clock. Eleven thirty. I’d been sitting in the car listening to the radio for a half an hour now. I sighed and shifted position. Jessica had said she just needed to pick up a new toothbrush and a couple other small ‘personal’ items. I now suspected she was waiting for a refill of her birth control prescription. Jessica didn’t like to talk about that sort of stuff with me, and I was fine with that. I didn’t like talking about it either. But still, if I’d known this quick errand was going to take so long, I would have brought a book.

Maybe I should go in, see if she was stuck in line at the register. No, I told myself. That was a bad idea. Better wait. She didn’t like to be caught in the act of anything personal. Even though we lived together, slept together in the same bed, and, occasionally, had shower sex, Jessica still wasn’t comfortable brushing her teeth in front of me. I can’t imagine what it would be like if she found herself with a prescription bag, confronted by me in the checkout line.

I was trying to respect her, but it was hard. She made it hard. Hell if I knew why. Maybe it would just take some more time. I looked at the clock. Eleven forty. I needed to go in and check on her. I didn’t want to be stuck waiting all morning. I sighed, looking at the dismal parking lot. It was rainy with standing slush on the ground, and the wind was fierce. I checked my windbreaker, zipped it up as far as it would go. I pulled the keys out of the ignition and unbuckled my seatbelt.

The wind heaved against my door as I tried to push it open. I sidled out and the door slammed, missing my fingers by an inch.

“Stupid wind,” I said.

I kicked the car’s tire and locked up. Jessica had insisted we park as far away from the entrance as possible.

“Just think of all those old people,” she had said. “They’re all lame and stuff. And besides, they can’t drive. You don’t really want to be so close to one of them trying to park in the handicap spot, do you?”

And so we were all the way across the vast, flat plane of tar. I snorted. It was ridiculous how all the new stores had such huge parking lots. It was like they expected the entire city to come in all at once. I’d never seen more than a half dozen cars there at any one time. I trudged through the slush and felt cold water seeping into my sneakers. The footing was shitty. The wind threw water into my face, stingingly hard. I skidded every few steps, and two cars tried their best to run me down. The whole parking lot is empty: why in God’s name did they need to come so close to me?

I made it to the front entrance and I stood there, just inside the doors, letting myself drip and enjoying the heaters blasting air onto the top of my head. I shook myself off, to the apparent disgust of an old lady on her way out. Screw you, grandma. You’re parked right next to the door. No wading across the parking lot for you.

And then, I began to look for Jessica. She wasn’t in any of the checkout lines near the entrance. I made my way to the back. Maybe she was at the prescription counter. I grinned as my sneakers squeaked. The noise echoed up to the huge empty ceiling and bounced around. The whole store could hear my every footstep. It would be even better if I’d picked up a shopping cart. I never failed, by random chance, to get the worst-repaired, most rusty, rattling one. But it was dumb to use a cart when I wasn’t going to buy anything.

Jessica wasn’t there. And, in fact, the pharmacy counter was closed. The blinds were drawn, and the lights were off in the pathetic little waiting area, with its square yard of carpet and two folding chairs. So I wandered the aisles, looking for her. Not in the snacks or greeting cards. She wasn’t sniffing shampoos or comparing razors. She wasn’t picking out Tylenol or vitamins. I spent a little time looking at the display of overpriced beer. That wasn’t even a good sale price.

I made a loop of the store. She wasn’t anywhere. And then, I heard her. It was her, definitely, by the photo counter. Oh. Crap. There was no mistaking it. That was her special “I’m having sex and loving it” noise.

I went over to the photo counter. There wasn’t anyone there, but the blinds on the photo booth were quivering. Fuck.

I didn’t wait around. I sped out of the store and crossed the parking lot in record time. I fumbled the keys, fished them out of the slush, and got in. I didn’t want to wait around and talk, so I left her there. I started the car and drove off, leaving her in the store with her…whoever. I didn’t pay much attention on the drive home, and I nearly got sideswiped because I was too busy thinking about Jessica in the cramped little room full of chemicals and the evidence of other peoples’ lives.


---

Okay, so for some reason, I just couldn't get with the first person past tense. Still, it must be an awful thing to find your girlfriend is cheating on you like that...I can't decide if Jessica was cheating with a pharmacy tech or a photo counter person.

~Later

Pushing Boundaries with Naughtiness

Apologies for the non-writing over this week. I've been stricken ill by some terrible plague and have, honestly, been shivering in a recliner all day every day while watching movies and waiting to die.

To celebrate the possibility that I may be recovering, I give you porn. Gay porn. Well, okay. It's not particularly explicit: I've seen pg-13 movies with naughtier sex. But I'm hoping you, the reader, will find it as evocative as I do. Yes, it is fanfic. But if it makes you feel better, substitute two different man-names. There's really nothing fandom-specific in this story...I just like to think about ninjas getting it on, hahaha.

-----
Sasuke thinks of other things when they do it. Sensational association games. Kakashi’s skin is smooth and he thinks of stones and frogs and water without ripples. Kakashi’s hair is soft and grey, warm mist and kittens and softly broken dawn and his breath is the strange air before a thunderstorm with teeth like lightning closing on his neck, quick strike and on to another area. Sasuke lets Kakashi roll him over on the bed.

He thinks, oddly, of vegetable gardens; freshly turned rows, tomatoes, zucchini, onions in soft dirt. Footprints as his toes flex and his feet arch and dig for purchase in the sheets. Kakashi’s belt buckle jingles, the burr of a zipper and the shush of clothing pushed aside lay train tracks, stretch for miles like scars crisscrossing the pale skin of the land. Horses racing, heartbeat-hooves thunder under hot skies’ intensity.

Kakashi’s eyes and he can’t breathe. Arresting, bright, full of love, for him, full like the ocean. Overflowing. High tide. Seashell nails clutching him, fingers digging into the meat of his shoulders as they writhe, grappling, vying to express this thing between them. Lights flash behind his closed eyelids and he wonders if he’s going to cry.

Sasuke sniffs, feeling water gathering at the corner of one eye, tries to focus more--and at the same time less--on Kakashi, what they’re doing together, to each other. He thinks he’ll go mad as his heart hammers in his chest and it might burst because it is full and squeezing in tandem with what Kakashi is doing and he’s just lying there. He should reciprocate, give back, do something. But his hand is shaking as he reaches and presses even closer to Kakashi and he knows that Kakashi knows. It is branded into his palm, radiating, burning into Kakashi’s skin, will forever be written there, an invisible seal of love and longing and things he’ll never say out loud.

Sasuke’s world seizes. Stutter--stop--stutter--stop-stutter-stutterstutterstop. Stop. His hearing rushes out to sea and returns on a wave. He’s bitten his tongue, and all he can say to Kakashi through the copper taste is “drapes” because the connections are gone. He can’t find the words. Kakashi takes it as approval, because he replies in kind: “toaster oven.” They laugh breathlessly, plastered together on the bed. Kakashi offers him a tissue and Sasuke takes it, holds it, wonders what to do with it. Kakashi takes another and wipes Sasuke’s face--he cried after all, then--and Sasuke dabs at the mess on his front. He brushes the hair out of Kakashi’s eyes and draws him close for a kiss, lets Kakashi’s sweat transform his lips into something else. He tingles, pulls back a fraction of an inch, and they breathe the same air. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

-----

Have I disappointed you by posting something old instead of writing something fresh?


I have, for the moment, decided against putting this under some kind of content filter because it is (very much) a fill-in-the-blanks piece of writing. If it were a painting, it would be the sort where you'd be stepping closer and back to try to find the perspective in which it makes the most complete picture. To rephrase: I don't think it's got enough in it to qualify for filtering. Let me know what you think, yeah?

I had both a very easy and a very difficult time writing this. It's very easy to get into the sort of stream-of-consciousness this piece takes on, but it is hard to hone it and reign it in. Even now, months after writing it, I'm still tempted to trim and rephrase pieces of it. Have I overwhelmed the reader with too many random thoughts in between the sexy bits? I hope I have, mostly because I thought all of it was sexy, even the weird, disconnected parts. I have this thing about language...(And for some reason, I couldn't come up with a better euphemism for sex than "doing it." It's just one of those things, I guess, founded in my interpretation of the characters.)

Also, I seem to have a continual struggle with pronouns versus proper names, especially when I've got two men on the page. I try to be specific in who is doing what, but sometimes I fail in juggling all the he- and him- and his-es.

~Later


Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. All rights remain with its original creator, Masashi Kishimoto. I make no profit from writing these stories.

Ethel Fantasizes

This is a quickie. I may come back to it later.

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Ethel had a crush on the weatherman. That is to say, she was enamored of his sharply handsome looks and the way he cheerfully reeled off more information on cloud formations and low pressure systems and general temperature and dew point fluctuations than the average news watching person could ever use. There had also been a special report one time, in which the weatherman had been coaxed into a kilt. That sealed the deal.

She had never met the weatherman, and really she had no intention of doing so. But she liked the figure he cut in his suit as he strode across the stage and gestured at the maps. You see, Ethel spent a lot of her time in front of the television. She was getting older, and she couldn’t get around as well as she used to. She needed more time between bouts of activity, and the couch in front of the television was both comfortable and easy to get out of when she was rested.

Ethel lived alone and she liked the noise the television made in her small apartment. She liked to pretend that she knew the people on the television, that any minute now they’d be ringing the doorbell and coming to dinner. It was lamentable that this would never happen, but such is life. Ethel knew where the line was between reality and fantasy, but it was nice to imagine.

And then the weatherman moved in across the street.

----

I can't make up my mind how pervy Ethel will be. I do think that she's going to dance around trying her best to avoid the weatherman so as not to let reality intrude on her fantasy. Also, I'm not really clear on how old she really is. Maybe she has chronic health problems that are making her aging more difficult. I think she's just this side of housebound, though she's not precisely frail, just has mobility issues.

I must away! I'm pretty impressed I wrote anything, truth be told. I do not feel well.

~Later

Fairy Tales

I may have to come back to this.

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The Crown Prince of Halidon was searching for a bride, and all the eligible princesses in the land came to call upon the Halidon royal family. The prince was very handsome; he had hair as dark and shining as the wings of a raven, and lively, bright grey eyes, and dimples that showed whenever he flashed his dazzling smile. He was fair-skinned, tall, and strong and the crown sat perfectly upon his brow. In addition to his good looks, he was blessed with a keen intellect, which helped him run the country smoothly even while his father was still king, and he possessed a wonderful sense of humor. His laughter made women--in particular his mother’s ladies-- swoon. In short, Halidon’s Crown Prince was the catch. And all the princesses knew it.

Now, the crown prince’s mother was not such a nice person. She was, at heart, a bit of a schemer, and so she schemed to find the best princess for her only, beloved son. While the prince held court and hunted and did other princely things, she was going over the princesses’ pedigrees. She decided, after weeks of scrutiny, that, lovely as they may be, none of the princesses of their kingdom would do. They were all too common, and therefore a foreign match must be brokered. So the call went out; the king reluctantly dispatched messengers and sent them to all corners of the world.

Meanwhile, the prince had fallen in love. She was the second daughter of a baker and about as far from a comely, elegant, meek princess as it came. She was very strong from kneading and rolling dough--he’d seen her engage the blacksmith in a friendly contest of arm-wrestling. Though she had lost, the prince was convinced it was because she was not yet a full-grown woman: The baker’s second daughter was only sixteen, but she‘d nearly made the blacksmith lose the match in an apoplectic fit.

She had no pedigree to speak of: daughter of a baker who was a son of a baker who was the son of the baker before that, and so on down the line. As to her looks, well, her face was well enough when it wasn’t covered in flour, and she was tall. Her hair was a fiery red and her eyes were kind. But she was soft and round like a dumpling, unlike his willowy suitors. The prince was entranced. When he dared himself to sneak close enough to smell her, she exuded the smell of apple pie and he longed to be close to her every day and feel her strong, plump hand in his.

Unfortunately for the prince, she didn’t know he existed, because the Crown Prince was too chicken to approach her. He spent much of his time around her trying to talk himself into asserting his princely rights, which would allow him to sweep her off her feet and bring her to the castle forever and ever amen. But…he hesitated, and not just on account of her strength. He wanted her to like him, even though he knew plenty of happy couples who hadn’t met before the wedding. The prince needed to be assured of her love for him. After all, the Halidonian people were long-lived and he didn’t want an angry wife for the century or two it might take for her to calm down.

And then the worst thing so far happened. The baker’s second daughter got a cat, and the prince quickly discovered he was allergic. If he were any less manly, he would have lay down and wept. As it was, he spent a lot of time brooding at the edge of the castle moat and sighing at his reflection. If only there were some way he could get closer to his beloved apple dumpling without sneezing up a storm!

------

I realize it is extremely unfinished. I also realize that no one has a name yet. I didn't want to get distracted by a lengthy name-hunt while trying to write the actual narrative. I could look up name meanings for hours before finding ones that are right. Also, I was going to make the girl younger (like 14 tot he prince's approximate not-quite-thirty)...but I realize it'd probably creep people out, however accurate it may be for the quasi medieval setting.

My thoughts on aging in this fantasy world are this: I imagine the people of Halidon visibly age until somewhere around thirty, and then age less noticeably for a few more decades and so on, so it's really a more gradual process on the adult end of things (as opposed to an aging process where a person is a baby/child/teen for a prolonged period of time before being considered an adult.)

I vow to make there be lots more purple prose should I work on this more.

~Later

Book Review the First

Boy, it's been a while since I've done this. Forgive the choppiness, please. I'm still fairly scattered from the holiday extravaganza this past week.

This week's book is “Follow my Leader” by James B. Garfield.



Follow my Leader is the tale of young Jimmy Carter--not to be confused with the former US president--who is a rather ordinary eleven-year-old. He enjoys a good game of baseball played among friends and, in fact, it is on the baseball diamond that Jimmy’s world changes forever. For, you see, the boys are playing on the fifth of July, and one of them finds an unexploded firecracker left over from the previous day’s festivities. The boy lights the firecracker, panics, and throws it in Jimmy’s face, where it explodes, roughly four pages into the narrative. Jimmy is completely, permanently blinded and spends the rest of the book (183 pages) learning to live without his eyesight.

He grows accustomed to moving about in perpetual darkness, graduates to the use of a white cane, learns Braille, and, finally, gets a seeing eye dog. Then, at the end of the book, he and his dog, dubbed “Leader” go on a Boy Scout trip and save some of the boys from being lost in the woods. This brings Jimmy full circle, from his popularity on the baseball team to his low points of isolation and blindness, back up to the status of hero and good man all around, despite the terrible accident’s lasting effects.

This children’s book hails from 1957, the era of “Golly!” and “Gee whiz!” The following conversation is typical for the book.

“‘Are you going to the school for the blind?’ [The woman] asked.
‘Heck, no. I’m going to the guide-dog school. I’m going to get a dog,’ Jimmy said proudly.
The lady turned to a passenger across the aisle. “This young man is going to a guide-dog school and is traveling all by himself. Isn’t that wonderful?’”

Yes, apparently Jimmy’s harrowing story touches the hearts of all the passengers on the bus, as later they all try to buy his lunch for him.

The themes of American perseverance and patriarchal masculinity are almost overpowering throughout the book. Jimmy, who is, just to remind you, eleven, cries about his blindness only twice before shouldering his burden and pushing forward. He tries his best to carry on as if nothing has changed, though he must learn new ways to read, write, and move about in the world. He appears to be more concerned with no longer being able to captain the baseball team and go on Boy Scout trips than anything else. Except, of course, his pride in not asking his sister for help. He is more than willing to walk down the street holding hands with one of his male friends helping to guide him, but goodness forbid his sister do anything more than bring him cookies and lemonade.

I found this book to be so sentimental and cheesy that it was hard to read. Also, the book was full of randomly placed exposition about various blindness-related topics, which really broke up the narrative. That being said, this was an excellent children’s version of a pulp fiction novel. The kitsch value is almost immeasurable. Notice on the cover the stylish button-down and sweater-vest combo our hero is wearing. And, if he weren’t blind, those glasses wouldn’t be out of place on a greaser. (Seriously, just imagine Jimmy wearing a black leather jacket.)

I didn’t really care for this book, though my mother claims it was her favorite as a child. Being such a product of its times, it is difficult for a person not from that era to read. The values and mores and norms of society had made such radical changes that reading this book was a bit like digging through the contents of a time capsule. (Plus, you know, it’s always a pet peeve of mine when the female characters are second fiddles. Jimmy is the main character, I know, but there’s no female lead character to balance it out.)


Overall ranking: C. For all its faults, it was entertaining to watch Jimmy going along until achieved his ultimate goal of getting a guide dog. The scout trip at the end was kind of ridiculous and over the top.

Groundhogs!

...I'm not sure where this came from. It's kind of insane.

---
They say the town of Kilcastle--current population 2301--was saved by a pair of groundhogs in the days of its founding. The story goes like this:

Back when the settlers were sweeping west in a grand motion to conquer all they saw, they moved into a nice, grassy valley with a river, called the Little Grass Snake, running on its western edge. There was plenty of game to hunt, and fish practically leapt into the boats. There was more than enough timber to go around , and so the settlers built themselves a little town comfortably close to the edge of the river.

The valley was also home to a lot of groundhogs. All the construction and increasing hubbub of human habitation drove most of them out of the town proper, but two stubborn groundhogs refused to be scared off. They maintained a series of tunnels beneath Maddock Barrow’s general store. And, though he tried with poison and shotguns and all manner of clever traps, he could not get rid of them. Why, sometimes this pair of groundhogs had the nerve to enter and exit the building through the main entrance intended for human customers! Eventually, Barrow gritted his teeth and admitted that the groundhogs did his stock no harm and he put up with them.

In fact, the groundhogs became a bit of an attraction. All the children came to see the “tame” gophers and, generally speaking, those with a bit of pocket money might purchase a small candy upon which they feasted while waiting for the gophers to appear. In time, the children named the gophers Mariachi and Pip.

Pip was the female--or at least, the one they presumed was female, given groundhogs tend to look alike. And she was named Pip because she would “pip” her head around the corners of the long display cases before venturing forth across the open floor of the store. Mariachi received his name for the unusually shaped patch of fur on his side; if you squinted, it looked like the sombreros the children had seen on a traveling band of musicians. None of those musicians had spoken a word of English, but Mariachi had cocked his little head at their speech, and so Mariachi was christened.

As the little town grew and prospered, Pip and Mariachi enjoyed a celebrity status among the newcomers. Of course, there were some who did not like the gophers being in the general store. These dissenters soon discovered that the store could do without their patronage, but that they could not do without the store’s wares.

During one spring, the rains were unusually hard. But the river did not overflow its banks. The land could still be farmed. It was dreary with so much rain, and the well-traveled paths had mud deep enough to suck the boots right off a grown man, but nothing truly awful was happening from all the water. So the inhabitants of Kilcastle shrugged it off as best they could and carried on.

But then, one night at the end of spring, Maddock Barrow, proprietor of Barrow’s General Store, was wakened in his bed on the second floor above the store by an unearthly screeching. He ran down the stairs, nightgown flapping, shotgun in one hand, lantern in the other. He rubbed his eyes when he saw the pair of groundhogs whistling ear-piercing notes and scurrying away from the stairs that led to the storage cellar. Hr had never seen them behave like this before. What was going on?

“Now Mariachi, Pip,” he said. “I’m going to take a look downstairs, see what you’re making a fuss over.”

And he peered down into the cellar and was shocked. The whole place was flooding! Barrow’s first thought was for his stock down there, but then he thought of his neighbors. Were they flooded too? He dashed outside to try and figure it out.

A huge wash of water filled the street. Maddock Barrow put on his gum boots and followed the water up the street toward the river and there, he saw that several huge trees had come down from upriver and were diverting the flow of the water right into their little town! Barrow ran door to door, pounding and yelling. Soon the whole population was roused. The women and children gathered a few belongings as quickly as they could and headed for higher ground. The men worked hard; one group worked at digging ditches to help direct the water away from the homes, and another group worked together to try and move the blockage. They also sent their fastest horses and the best riders among the young boys to the neighboring towns for help and as warning.

Three days later, the crisis was over. The trees had been moved, as many homes as possible had been saved, and everyone was safe and dry with roofs over their heads and food to eat. The townsfolk tried to hail Barrow as their savior, but he was modest. Mariachi and Pip were the ones to thank. They were the ones who had saved the town. And so the gophers were treated like kings for the rest of the days of their lives, and no one ever again complained about gophers in the general store.

Over time, the townspeople erected a statue, and groundhogs became incorporated into many store signs. The town of Kilcastle has held a celebration in honor of the valiant groundhogs ach year on the anniversary of the eve of the flood. They even have a play, “Mariachi and Pip Save Kilcastle,” put on annually. But, though this is the official name of the dramatic work, every child of Kilcastle knows that it is, really, truly called“Mariachi and Pip Save the World.”

-----

I know it was kind of rushed but, frankly, I want to go to bed. At least I got the idea out there, right? I suppose it shows that I've been reading several books that take place in the days of the Wild West lately. But also, it's kind of cool to think about all the weird things that crop up in the histories of towns.

~Later

Food as sex?

Ugh. This is what I get for reading fanfics and being hungry at the same time.

----
The reverse of the skin caught on her tongue, rough as it slid down her throat. The fragrance in her nose was delicate and floral and warm and sweet. Juice dripped down her chin and she chased it with a finger. The flesh was tender, falling apart in mellow slickness as soon as she touched her teeth to it. She worked her lips around it and sucked it into her mouth: the fruit slid off the core. She licked her fingers and swallowed the mouthfuls of juice, then closed her eyes and exhaled through open lips and a dropped jaw. Pear scented air circulated through her throat and mouth and up into her nose. It was ecstatic. She chewed the pear down to the soft fibers of its core, no more than a few strands holding the stem to the remainders of the blossom. She licked the leftovers and her fingers once more before rising to wash her hands and face.
---

Here I am, sitting around and fantasizing about how the skin of a pear feels when you eat it. I don't know if I'm the only person who exhales through the mouth in order to better taste a food, but let me tell you, it's kind of a strange habit to try and articulate on paper. I seem to remember a Carver story where a couple uses the eating of food as a substitute for sex. I suppose this snippet is along those lines, except...the eating of food is pleasurable in itself? I mean that the actual physical sensations and actions involved in eating are pleasurable, I guess.

Heh. I think I just made some food porn. Not particularly demanding, but I did have trouble varying the length of my sentences. I notice a tendency to get stuck writing heaps of medium-length ones, and then when I go through them I groan because they all read like clunkers.

~Later

Storytime!

The fruits of my labors!

---
While bending over to heft a ten pound bag of sugar into her grocery cart, Sarah had a wardrobe malfunction. Her beautiful, wonderful, perfect right breast squeezed out of her bra and out of the top of her shirt. She dropped the sugar and it exploded over the floor.

“Oh shit,” she said.

She blushed terribly as she tried, frantically, to stuff herself back into her shirt before anyone saw. Goddamn sugar for goddamn holiday cookies for the goddamn holidays. Why the hell was it on the bottom shelf, anyway?

“Hello there.”

Goddamnit. Sarah yanked the edges of her neckline together. Sugar ground into the skin of her hands and into the cashmere. Shit. Shit. Shit shit shit. She looked up, briefly. She froze.

Whoever he was, he was cute.

“You look like you need a hand,” he said.

Sarah stared at him. Whoever he was, he was cute, a twist on the tall, dark and handsome. He had bright green eyes, dark hair, and a seasonal sweater, very Fair Isles.

“Aww crap, that came out wrong. Sorry,” he said.

His mouth twisted into a smile. He had dimples, she noted. Dimples in his square, classically handsome face. This was so bad.

“Can I offer you my coat and a walk to the restroom?”

He held up the coat in question. It was long and large and probably and excellent cover for her mishap.
Sarah nodded and tried to force the lump in her throat back with a smile of her own. It didn’t go so well, judging from the concern suddenly visible on his face. She concentrated on not crying. He draped the coat over her shoulders and she sniffled. When he placed his basket into her cart and then made to steer the cart, Sarah’s eyes watered.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “Let’s get you to the restroom, yeah?”

And suddenly, everything was simultaneously so much worse and better than it had been. Sarah and Dimples crunched through the sugar in formation. She stuck it out as everyone within eyesight stared at them, no doubt due to her cart being the loudest, squeakiest cart in the entire store. She put up with it, still red with embarrassment. Dimples was the nicest man on the planet. He was superhumanly nice…and he’d seen her beautiful, beautiful goddamn breast in the baking aisle. Sarah wanted to kill whoever had made her scoop-neck sweater. She vowed never to wear it again as they approached the customer service desk.

“I’ll wait here for you,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll look after your cart.”

Sarah fled to the bathroom. She locked herself into a stall and slid, reluctantly, out of his coat. His cologne made her mouth water and the rest of her feel warm. She fixed her bra and sweater and, all too late, realized she was feeling warmth that had nothing to do with either the burning of embarrassment or the scent of his cologne. She unlocked the stall and looked in the mirror. And then she looked down at the coat in her hands.

“No, no, no,” she said. “This can’t be happening.”

She wetted down a paper towel and wiped ineffectually at the hives raising on her skin. The cool water felt nice, but it wasn’t doing a damn thing to bring down the swellings. She was allergic to wool and that coat that Dimples had offered was a hundred percent boiled wool. At least it wasn’t going to kill her…but it was really the icing on the cake.

“Well hell,” she said, and began to cry. Sarah bawled and drew great heaving breaths that shuddered into more sobs. Her face got all red and her nose dripped and she felt horrible. She bit the inside of her cheek and, slowly, calmed down. She washed her face with cold water and patted dry with more paper towels. She blew her nose.

Sarah steeled herself and left the bathroom at a forced march. She pasted a smile onto her face and greeted Dimples.

“Thank you for the coat,” she said. “I really appreciate it.”

She handed the coat back and noted that her palms were getting itchy now too.

“Oh my God,” he said. “Are you all right? You looked…different before.”

Sarah flushed as he looked her over. No doubt the hives were looking worse. Oh crap. Before for him was sugar-bag before. Crap crap crappity crap crap crap.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’d like my cart back now, please, so I can pretend none of this ever happened.”

“I am so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean…it’s just…”

Dimples looked uncomfortable. Good. Sarah was so beyond uncomfortable right now. She took the handle of the cart and tried to pull it away, but he was still holding onto it.

He stuck out his hand. Sarah stared at it like it was roadkill.

“My name is Scott,” he said. “Scott Garland.”

“Seriously?” she said. “Garland?”

Sarah’s brain felt like it was going to explode and she itched at her hives without thinking. Scott dropped his hand to his side.

“Yeah,” he said. A little wrinkle formed between his eyebrows.

“It’s so…festive,” Sarah said.

“You mean awful,” he said. “Or unfortunate?”

“That too,” said Sarah. “Well, uh, I’m Sarah.”

She held out her hand, which was currently red and itchy as all get out. Scott blinked at her and the corners of his mouth lifted.

“Sarah,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

He shook her hand.

“I’m allergic to wool,” she blurted. “But really it was so nice of you and I didn’t notice at first.”

Comprehension took over his expression. And then he threw back his head and laughed.
“I am so, so sorry,” he said. “I really was trying to help.”

“It’s okay,” Sarah said.

And, suddenly, it was, despite the itchiness and mortal embarrassment and the sugar that crunched in the tread of her shoes.

“This whole thing, it’s just been unbelievable,” she said.

Scott nodded.

“Not how I imagined my grocery shopping would go,” he said.

Sarah snorted.

“Me either.”

“Of course,” he said. “It’s not every day I find a damsel in distress in with the flour.”

And then he froze and looked at her before feigning nonchalance. Sarah blushed again, but it wasn’t so bad.

“Believe me, I’d rather have skipped that part and gone straight to introducing myself,” she said. “Or maybe I would have just given you the eye if we happened to bump into each other.”

Scott laughed again, and Sarah fell a little bit in love with his nice, white, even teeth and the way his neck came out of the collar of his sweater.

“Well, I’ve got to get going,” she said. “Cookies to bake and all that. But thank you again.”

Scott let go of the cart.

“Take care,” he said.

“You too.”

And with that, Sarah wheeled away from the nicest guy in the world, hoping she would never see him again, even if he was handsome and funny to boot.

---

I thought this was both funny and slightly painful...but mostly funny. I know there's probably no man on earth this considerate, but that's the good part about fiction. I swear I was going to write more and have even more stuff go wrong for Sarah, but I'm just too darn tired.

~Later

Further Arctic Adventures...now with less Arctic!

...this whole thing makes me think. Maybe I'll try for a different story tomorrow?

---
Eventually, the unicorn was placed in a laboratory, where an international group of scientists puzzled over it. They marveled over its perfect preservation and were shocked to find that, despite its being frozen for untold eons, no cellular decay had occurred: its cells were neither blemished by time nor burst from the freezing temperatures. And so they took the unicorn off the mortuary table and lowered it into a vat of restorative liquid. They hooked it up to a ventilator and a machine that mimicked the function of its heart. The scientists studied it.

The scientists took scrapings of its horn and hooves. They took hairs from the tail and mane, swabbed the mouth for remnants of saliva. They drew blood samples and, with a very fine hypodermic needle, took a portion of the contents of its tear ducts.

The tests on all these materials were contradictory and inconclusive. Depending on who looked under the microscope, they were either something unlike any other earthly result, or they pointed to an exceptionally average horse. The blood samples were poison one day and an effective cure for every disease the scientists had on hand the next. The hoof scrapings were pure silver and lighter than air; they were heavier and duller than lead, giving off no reflection at all. The horn…well, four scientists in a row quit after handling it. Of those four, one became a monk and devoted his life to God. Another was soon arrested for a series of brutal murders. The other two were never heard from again, though it was rumored that they had both ended up in asylums. Shortly after, the scientists were forbidden direct contact with the samples. But the experiments continued.

After the fourth scientist had quit, Stephen St. Gradie started having strange dreams. He dreamed of the arctic, of the glacier where he’d found the unicorn. Even in his dream he knew, logically, that the entire area had been excavated and nothing else had been found. But, whenever he closed his eyes, he saw it as it had been. But everything was wrong and twisted, as was the wont of dreams. The sun shone hot, hotter, blistering until the ice melted into strange shapes. The ice fields, as far as he could see, bloomed with strange flowers and plants made of ice. His tent transformed into a pile of stones and the unicorn came bursting out of it, its steps shattering the rocks into spalls of ice. St Gradie was afraid, and he ran, he always ran from it. He ran until he tripped and fell, and, just as the unicorn bore down on him and would have crushed him with its hooves, he forced himself awake.

Stephen St. Gradie dreamt the same sort of dream over and over. Always the unicorn pursued him, and always he ran, waking just before it could harm him. His sleep became so poor that he visited a physician. The doctor prescribed a mild sedative to help him sleep, and for a time it worked. But then, it happened.

He was sprinting across the strange, glittering fields of flowers, and the sun was hot on him, and he could feel the unicorn’s breath on his back. A vine reared up in front of him, too fast, and he tripped and fell. St Gradie scrabbled on the ground, trying to get up, to get away, to get out, to wake from this nightmare. The unicorn stood over him, pawed at his legs with its shining hooves. It lowered its horn, snorted, and pressed forward. Stephen was trapped against a wall of ice. He couldn’t move; the ice-vines held him fast. He gasped for breath, sweat rolling down his face. The unicorn’s horn was directly in front of his face, and the hot breath from its nostrils washed over him. The tip of the horn pressed against St Gradie’s eye, and he did not move for fear of losing the eye.

And then, a voice.

“I’m sorry.”

And the strange logic of the dream told him it was the unicorn speaking.

“Sorry?” said Stephen. “For what?”

“For this,” said the unicorn. And it pressed forward with its horn and St Gradie was blinded in the blink of an excruciatingly slow eye.

He woke screaming and clawing at his face. The maid came running and, when she saw the state he was in, sent for the doctor. The doctor sedated St Gradie and had the maid lay him back into bed. The doctor bandaged the furrows Stephen had dug into his flesh.

St Gradie dropped back into the field of ice, pierced by that horn and seared by the pain. But, though it hurt terribly and he could not see, he came to a realization. The unicorn was feeding itself through its horn and his eye into somewhere beyond. But it didn’t make any sense, even in the dream. Why would the unicorn need to go somewhere? Why him? Where was it going? And then it was gone.

He opened his eyes and the field of icy flowers was gone. The unicorn was nowhere to be seen and his eye was once again whole. The tent was just as it had been, the ice with its slightly pocked surface stretching for miles in front of him. St Gradie peered into the tent. His two assistants were asleep, and the kerosene stove glowed with warmth. His bedroll waited for him, laid out in the heat cast by the stove, and he was suddenly unbearably sleepy. So he lay down, parka, boots, and all, and slept.

When Stephen St. Gradie woke from his sleep, the maid leapt out of her chair and ran from the room. He yawned. He felt remarkably refreshed, like he’d slept for years. Then a knock came on his bedroom door.

“Yes?” he said. “Come in.”

It was the doctor. He came in and sat in the chair at the side of the bed.

“How are you feeling?” said the doctor. “You gave us a nasty scare last night.”

“Ah yes, well,” said St Gradie. “Had a terrible nightmare you know. Just awful.”

The doctor hmmed into his beard.

“Well, anyway, I’ve fixed up your face where it got scratched,” said the doctor. “I recommend you get some more rest. We’ll talk more in a few days, how’s that sound?”

He stood again.

“All right,” said St. Gradie. “Sorry to be such a bother. I’m afraid my maid can be a bit flighty.”

“Nothing to worry about,” said the doctor. “Better safe than sorry, after all.”

“Yes,” he said. “Better safe than sorry.”

The doctor left the room. Stephen St. Gradie laid his head back against the pillows. Later. He’d rest and think about the dreams later. For now, though, he was ready to tackle the bathtub. He rang for the maid. It was going to be a good day. He could feel it.

----

Can you tell I don't approve of testing on animals?

More seriously, I tried my best to tone down the 'science is evil' mood that kept cropping up when I was thinking it over. I'm also considering the possibility of zombie unicorns. As to the weirdness of the samples' test results, I suppose I did a bad job of conveying the thought that maybe, just maybe, something can be all encompassing and nothing at the same time. (No, the unicorn isn't God. I'm not pulling an Aslan, I promise. I just think this unicorn is an extraordinary sort of creature.)

In other news, I'm in the process of selecting a book for the book review. I'm kind of busy with holiday preparations right now, so I haven't felt together enough to do a lot of reading beyond fluffy "romance" novels. I do love me some purple prose! But...is it worthy of reviewing?

~Later

Arctic Adventures part one?

Apologies! I was out of town for a couple days and was somewhere with no computer/internet access. But I have a little freewrite for today, so that's something. I may do more on this same topic...

---
On the last day of Stephen St. Gradie’s fifth Arctic expedition, his findings vaulted him from obscurity to worldwide fame. Had he found nothing on his dig, he would have retired and gone down as an eccentric has-been. As it was, however, he suddenly found himself the toast of the natural history and zoological science societies. For you see, Stephen St. Gradie had found something quite unexpected, and it all started with something small.

St. Gradie had been a solid (if unexciting) explorer in his day, looking for, largely, whatever hadn’t yet been seen and documented. The problem was that there were a lot of other, better explorers already ahead of him. He found himself constantly in second place. On the upside, he had become an excellent cartographer and many remote regions of jungles and mountains were mapped under his exacting eye. But really, what Stephen wanted, what any explorer wanted, was to discover something for himself.

In the last decade of his public career, St. Gradie became convinced that the two parts of the world that had not been explored to death were the bottom of the sea and the treacherous frozen polar caps. Since he was, at heart, a man devoted to the land (and since he had no feasible way to carry air down to the sea floor) he decided the poles were his destiny. He spent years preparing for the expedition: finding men to go with him, gear and supplies that would hold up to the extreme temperatures, a ship that would take them as far as they could go on the route he mapped.

The first expedition ended nearly before it started; their ship could not maneuver between the ice floes, and they spent so long getting the ship free that they had to turn back before they starved to death. As it was, St. Gradie spent months recovering, and the sensation in his hands and feet never fully returned. He was lucky, though, considering most of his crew lost fingers and toes to the cold.

The second expedition took even longer to organize. Stephen had lost a lot of credibility with the disastrous first attempt, and he had to make certain financial adjustments when one of his sponsors backed out. Still, there were many who did believe in him and did believe that he would find something of value in that frozen wasteland. St. Gradie’s second expedition turned up nothing. There had been massive storms, one after another, and they had been quite unable to leave their base camp for any length of time that might facilitate great discoveries. Still, on one of the very few clear days, St. Gradie did learn something valuable: there was another, wider break in the ice that went much further north.

The third expedition cost him all but one of his sponsors. It too, turned up nothing but ice and snow and frostbitten extremities, despite using the new route successfully. He didn’t see so much as a tree branch in the month he spent camped atop the ice.

St. Gradie’s fourth expedition was much smaller and was completely funded through his own money. By this time, the public eye held him as an ice-mad lunatic. Still, no one made to stop him when he pushed off and was gone for, all told, six months. He came back and, almost immediately, began to arrange his fifth and final journey.

On the fifth expedition, he found something amazing frozen in the ice. He and his two assistants had made camp some eight miles east from the ship‘s landing. They had been camped in the same spot for three weeks. When the weather was clear, in the beginning, they had ventured forth to explore the glaciers and crevasses and ice fields. Then, unseasonable storms rolled in, and they were forced to spend their time inside the large base-camp tent, making use of its kerosene heater, or otherwise they would freeze to death. The tent began to settle into the ground, in a combination of increased foot traffic of its floor, and the heat of the living space slowly melting the ice underneath it.

One day, St. Gradie noticed a lump in the ground next to the stove. He thought almost nothing of it; the icy ground was never even. This protrusion simply was in a spot that made each of his assistants stub their toes and trip while tending the fire. It was when he himself tripped over it that he took exception to it. He ordered that, as soon as the weather broke, they were to move the tent to more desirable ground.

Eventually, the weather cleared. But, as his luck was wont to run to the bad, it broke the afternoon before they were scheduled to start back to the ship. There was no sense in moving the tent for one more night.

The fateful morning dawned clear and cold. The assistants hurried to pack everything up again. They crated the stove and other essentials and moved all the luggage out of the tent. Then, they took down the tent as St. Gradie supervised. And then, while folding the ground cloth, one of the assistants tripped.

“Sorry, sir,” he said. “Must be a rock.”

The assistant made to get up.

But St. Gradie’s keen sense of orientation told him something important: it was the same spot where the stove had been, the same spot that had been the cause of so many bruises and stubbed toes and barked shins.

“Don’t move a muscle,” he said to the assistants.

And, ever so carefully, he peeled the cloth off the ice. The assistant on the ground shifted his hands when asked, and eventually he was walked backward off the tent. St. Gradie knelt and examined the rock.

“It’s not a rock,” he said. “Is the teakettle still warm?”

He shoved the second assistant, who fetched the kettle. St. Gradie painstakingly poured the warm water over the ice while the assistants hovered.

The assistant who had fallen snorted.

“It’s just a narwhal,” he said.

St. Gradie got as close as he could to the tiny bit of horn and he studied it for long minutes. Then, finally, he stood. He brushed the ice off his knees.

“You,” he said. He pointed to the second assistant. “Get out my tools and heat some more water, quickly!”

“And you,” he said to the first. “You go to the ship as fast as you can and tell them to bring a sledge.”

“But it’s just a narwhal!”

“It most certainly is not,” said St. Gradie. “And I’ll thank you not to scoff at this major discovery! Now run!”

St. Gradie spent nearly a week extra in the arctic. He and his people had nearly starved to death; they lost two crew members to exhaustion. But it was worth it, in the end. St. Gradie returned home with a unicorn. It was frozen in a block of ice, but it was perfectly, exquisitely preserved. And it was most definitely a unicorn. The only question was: what would become of it?
----

Unicorns are awesome. Sometimes I find it interesting to think about what it might have been like at certain times in history, and the days of ship voyage and discovering new lands and things is definitely one of the most interesting ones, I think! There's also plenty of room for me to kind of pick and choose and go in a steampunk sort of direction. I'm really taken with the potential for weird details. I mean, come on. A frozen unicorn plonked down into a land of sci-fi Victorian technologies? It could be very cool.

I remember this book I read a long time ago-- "The Winter of the White Seal" or something similar. Anyway, it's about this ship full of whalers or sealers headed towards one of the poles, and they get blown off course and everyone dies except one man. He lives alone on a terrible little beach backed by a glacier for a really long time. His only companion is a seal that he half-tames...and then tries to kill when he gets really desperate. So then eventually the man takes himself out onto the glacier to die, and he falls through a crevasse/tunnel in the ice, and ends up on a much more habitable beach and, I believe, he eventually gets rescued.

That was a serious digression. Sorry. My point is that adventuring and stuff is very cool, provided you can suspend your disbelief enough to not focus on the lack of technologies at the time. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't seem like a big deal now (like, say, the Oregon trail) but it was a huge thing to do back in the day.

Consider this adventure story a two-parter. I've not yet written enough of the story to lay down my original inspirational scenes. This prologue, if you will, is just catch-up so I won't be scratching my head later trying to figure out how I got to where I'm going.

Also, I am not satisfied with the adventurer's name. I may have to re-spell it or something.

~Later