Category Archives: Flash Fiction Pieces

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Trusting Changing Rhythms – ROW80 Update, March 6, 2013

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Did these last few days seem to fly by, or was that just me?

On Sunday, the children and I went to a bookstore to meet up with Elizabeth Mitchell, a visit we’d talked about since sometime last summer. We had a pleasant and somewhat chaotic visit, as Sunday afternoon is not, apparently, as quiet a time to meet there as I had assumed it would be.

Shortly before bed, my neck began to hurt as though I had pulled a muscle in it. A hot shower, hot rice bag, and ibuprofen eased it. Monday was quiet. I did some hometending, and reading, and a bit of writing and planning. I took things easy.  Still, toward bedtime, my neck tightened up again.

It’s just now occurred to me to wonder if my neck isn’t tight in part because I stuck it out in my Monday Meanderings (name change pending!) this week…psychosomatic resistance, maybe?

Tuesday, I met Eden Mabee for our weekly workout. I modified my typical plan significantly, to nurse my neck. I avoided any weight machine that might stress it, and stuck to the three main leg machines. Then I pedaled 6 miles in just over 26 minutes on the recumbent bike, and called it good enough….still, by the time I got home, my neck was hurting again.

Things are settling, and opening…Photo by Kristen Lamb, courtesy WANA Commons.

Eden stayed a while, because Jim and the kids had gone out for the evening while we were away, to give me some time to be home alone – they returned 20 minutes or so after she left, so I really didn’t have much time to myself.

It’s Wednesday, now, and Jim has to work, and our family to a more typical routine (the kids are out playing in the yard, frolicking in the first promise of spring’s arrival, and I am hometending reading, and writing).

I may find fewer opportunities these activities, during the day, and I will resume being the primary hometender. However, Jim is leaving me a much tidier home, and I’ve gotten a lot more sleep, during his time off, so I feel ready for what’s next…

Have you had any major shifts inyour  normal routines during this round? Were they helpful in meeting your goals, or less so? Were you able to adjust?

ROW80  Update:

WANA113 – My BIG ONE:

  • I realized I made a mistake with my Word Cloud Grokking, so will be revising and reposting it – once I figure out how to make a folder!
  • I commented on 2 other word clouds.

Targets:

  • Read/comment on five word clouds.
  • Fix Word Cloud Grokking.
  • Begin Grokking #3.
  • Attend Thursday Webinar, and catchup on the first one.

Transitions can be lovely…Photo by Catie Rhodes, courtesy WANA Commons.

Sponsor Visits: Up to Date

Targets:

  • Continue on-time visits.
  • Sign up as a Round 2 Sponsor.

Reading: (slowing down some as I move into slack tide, and am writing more.)

Target:

  • Continue reading; do exercises in Steering.

Blogging:

Targets:

  • Introduce Wordless Wednesdays for The Unfettered Life
  • Introduce Sunday Sampler to shanjeniah
  • Blogging action plan next steps for shanjeniah and Trueborn Jottings.
  • Begin collecting material for posting queues – brainstorm ideas (this should have been first, but….).

Writing:

  • I am using the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge to write some exploratory flash pieces that alternate between Spock‘s and Niaan’s POVs, and will provide, I hope, approximately two to three sketchy chapters for each of the inagural books for the Trueborn Warp and Weft series.
  • I am also experimenting with deep POV, and first person narrative.
  • Thus far, I have rough posts written through H.
  • I am using the exercises in Steering the Craft to explore other moments in the epic series, as I have had a few ideas and nascent scenes rattling around waiting for the next High Tide writing spree.

Targets:

  • Submit “A Splash of Red” by March 10.
  • Compile QUOMIS. (will save editing for Round 2, so that I can focus on classes and other projects).
  • Continue A to Z rough drafts through  K.
  • Colorblock posts A-C.
  • Rough list of 2013 Noveling Projects and next steps for WIP novels.
  • Review six month goals, rough list for Round 2.

Beta-reading:

  • “Blow Me a Candy Kiss”- completed and returned.

My current evaluation can be found here.

Unfurling and shifting…photo by Catie Rhodes, courtesy WANA Commons.

As we move into the final weeks of the round, are you eager, or apprehensive? I welcome you to share your comments below – let’s get the conversation going!

It’s a BLOG HOP!

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The Palliative Spore – Flash Fiction

 

Inspiration for the nodestone. Photo via Google Images.

From the breath that she had placed the nodestone where Jeniah could not help but find it, Aletris had known that she must, as the counterbalance, create a path to healing, or at least some bettering, against the time when the Trueborn’s need for the tool lessened, because, even then, it was a certain thing that she, who could cling so tightly to her Otherworld prey, would not relinquish it without much struggle – struggle that, after all that had gone before to weaken her, might kill her –

As the nodestone would, too, without protection.

And so, there must be a means by which the poisons of the tool could be lessened, so that the Trueborn might, in time, come to a place where she could heal safely…

The stone she would keep, Aletris knew, until and unless she secured a better trail to lead her to Kaivelt. No poison, now, could be more dangerous to either of them than losing what had been forged in pain and anguish, and which was, in the end, the only hope, now, for either of them.

She had never created such a thing, and, in the beginning, while Jeniah raved with Huntlust and the deeper passions of Kaivelt’s fiery madness, she had little enough time to consider it. This daughter was a danger now, to herself and all others, and that bore watching, constantly, so that she could shield the rest of her children from it, leaving only the intruders defenseless against her skill and cunning, for even their strange light-bending weapons could not help them if they took note of the need to draw them only as their throats were being torn from them.

And, still, she was the world, and the only home any of her children had ever known – save this one, who could feel as Kaivelt did, and was coming to know his wondrous worlds – the desert world, the water world, and the strange world that forged its own path through Everdeep.

It was a good thing, the distracted time of sending prey away from the Trueborn’s need to rend them, not for true hunger, but for bloodlust; it allowed her a fine understanding of the full scope and shape of the madness, and so her panacea would be fit to the need, created solely for that purpose.

Like the nodestone, it must appear in a place and at a time when Jeniah would be drawn to it, because, if not, there was no way to force this one, now, even if she would.

A glowing thing, that grew only in the shade, in restful places….but not one that needed ground to srping forth in, for the Trueborn was more a creature meant for the trees, and most often took her shelter in a bower or upon a limb.

When the Trueborn fixed her maddened energies finally only on the interlopers, Aletris began her study, creating, rejecting, creating again, testing, adding a bit of this and removing a bit of that…

Until, finally, she looked upon a delicate spore that blew upon a wind she conjured just for it, to land in the mossy place on a wide high lifepine branch, just the type of place that would draw the Trueborn when she must have a bower for her Matehunt.

Inspiration for Aletris’ cure…

With delicate weavings of sunlight and shadow, rain and time, the spore grew into a lovely mushroom, its creamy skin flecked with hints of iridescent orange in ever shifting patterns, and aglow from beneath, as the nodestone glowed, only this the soothing orange glow of a fire succumbing to hunger, slowly…

She examined her creation, and saw that it was, indeed, very good, and perhaps, just what was needed.

She rested, then, and, when she was recovered, set herself to create a forest of the spores, so that she would not miss the next place where the Trueborn ceased her ravenings….

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The Gift of Snow – Spontaneous Flash Fiction

“Nestyn!”, I neighed, my voice broken and shrill, tearing into nothing as the wind rent it, mixing the shreds of it with the husks of the late autumn leaves. Still, I neighed again, and then again.

“Nestyn! Sweet One! Where are you?”

But my filly did not answer, and skittering fear trembled my muscles, tricked my senses, and sank into my soul, overpowering caution and instinct, and making my legs feel as inept as when I myself was newly foaled.

My baby – her legs had only grown strong enough to carry her at the last fullmoon – we had been running only a moonrise later, scarcely without rest.There could not be – the brown of leaves and dulling greens did not hide our glowing coats, nor our horns.

And men wanted those, or else us.

I knew – we all knew, had always known, although we did not know why.

All knew the stories of the trapped and the murdered… Like Alyn my mate, who was killed before he met his daughter, his Sweet One, and the men had been looking for us, greedy for more.

My voice was nearly gone, when I felt the first flakes of snow, a sudden gathering, building to a blizzard – and the sounds of the men and their dogs faded, leaving only  the softly chittering redbirds…

And there was Nestyn, by a small brush, nestled safely into the salvation of  snow.

 

From an anonymous Internet source….lovely magical muses!

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Life, Death, and Gratitude -ROW Update #6

If you enjoy this post, and are so inclined, please leave something you are grateful for in the comments…I love knowing the little things that delight others.

Excerpt from July 25, 2012 75 Words entry…

I have been gearing up to write the flash fiction versions of the points for my Blood and Breath story arc. These will, I hope, form the basis for each chapter, with a built in sense of urgency due to their beginnings.

But today is July 25, and July 25 marks the end of Elijah’s Days.…the 12 days that encompassed the entire lifetime of our second child.

I have been living twice, at once, today. I am in the here and now – and I have sunk simultaneously nine years back in time, to the day in 2003 when our baby boy died….peacefully, without fanfare, simply slipping away forever beyond our reach….where we knew his soul had already gone….

A Pegacorn curled in her egg….

Today, here, live a girl who just turned 8 (a mere five days before Elijah’s Days commenced), a man who nearly died on the eve of his last birthday when a deer collided with his motorcycle, a boy who will be 11 in a bit more that five weeks, who was only 22 months old when his brother came and left so quickly, and who still carries his own memories of that time.

And me. In four days, I will be 43 years old.

My own day of birth is so close to my son’s day of death, that the two are inextricably linked in my soul; just as Annalise’s birthday, five days short of a year after that of the brother she never met, will always be inextricably bound up with his birth, and death….

If Elijah had lived, there would be no Annalise.

It’s been 8 years since she got here – and she is hugely here. She is a robust girl, interested in nature and genetics and anatomy and storytelling and fashion and horses and art…and a great many other things, as well…..

She is so very here, it’s hard to imagine a world or a life without her.

We would not be who we are, as a family.

I would not be who I am, as a parent….

Or as a woman.

There is a part of me that needed a daughter. Maybe always, maybe only after the traumatic experience of loving and letting go….of a newborn.

There is something in me that only awoke after I was the mother of a daughter….a part of me neither Jeremiah nor Jim have ever needed.

I think it’s the root of my femaleness, and hers; a way of embracing it, championing it, protecting it – without acting as though femaleness is superior to maleness.

Because, of course, it isn’t.

But neither is it worse…..

I have learned to let go of many many things since Elijah died, and I had little choice but to let him go, to let go too of the fantasy of a perfect and complete family…

As we were, three years ago….

We are a complete family, and yet we are not.

There is this fracture…..like the eight ribs that Jim fractured when he collided with the hard surface of the road, 100 feet from where he had been…

We’ve healed….we are healing, over and over, and yet that break remains.

A life was severed from us, and all the possibilities that life held.

Elijah lived only 12 days. The entirety of that life was spent in St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany, NY. Most of that time was spent in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

There aren’t many memories to console ourselves with, to hang tightly to and treasure….

And maybe that’s a blessing. Maybe, in some sense, it is what forced us not to remain there, remembering and grieving, but to reach into our future, to remake our family, to remake our lives…

I have said, but seldom had it understood, that Elijah is the impetus behind our unschooling, although it was another five years before we even began to move in this direction.

Sadly, and perhaps unavoidably, considering where we began, we needed to live through several more years of controlling and forcing and punishing…..and those too-frequent outbursts of rage, directed at my children, that were the inheritance of my own childhood, by nurture and nature….

But, where I had accepted, before Elijah, that I needed to be in control in order to be a good parent, his death plunged me into a deeper place. I began to wonder why so much of mainstream parenting was about manipulating children to suit the adults “in charge”, and to wonder how this might tie in to people who see nothing wrong, as adults, in doing to their children the same things they KNEW were unfair, when they themselves were children.

Tiny Tiger, age 8 days.

I began to question…how does love laced with pain affect people? Are the people we call adults infallible? Are they always grown? Is surviving childhood enough? If my remaining children died tomorrow, what regrets would I have?

And those questions began to lead to a new and gentler way of being…..I am still learning, and growing….

And so, in some odd sense, so is Elijah….

 And now, for my ROW80 goals….

WIP Novels:

Trueborn Series

  • Trueborn:
  • Reread current rough drafts from 1998-9ish and 2000.
  • I am currently on Chapter Forty-Nine, page 196 of 240, still jotting notes and impressions as I reread.
  • Triage existing research.
  • I have begun moving the raw research to my work space, which I will be sharing with Jeremiah as he moves through his testing process. We’ll see if that means I wait to sort until later, or if we can work side-by side…
  • Blood and Breath:
  • Create a flash fiction piece for each story arc point.
  • I attempted to write the first flash fiction piece, and had trouble finding my opening point.
  • Instead, I wrote some sketchy backstory and plot elements. A few pieces that had not quite fit fell softly into place, and,when I begin to write again, I think I will find it far easier and truer.
  • Use Scrivener to compile into a pre-rough draft.
  • I am going to change this goal slightly. I like Scrivener, but, on more than one occasion, some of my files (files I know I saved) are not available to me, later.
  • I am therefore going to experiment with another program I have learned of, yWriter. It’s free, so I will explore it for this novel, and keep using Scrivener for Chameleon’s Dish, at least for now.
  • Chameleon’s Dish:
  • Finish inputting into Scrivener ( completed during break).
  • I did finish this – but fifteen chapters seem to have gone missing. I will be reinputting them as I edit them, and, if Scrivener loses them after that, I will stop using it.
  • Complete basic research based upon library books and websites; looking for information to enhance later digging and prevent hugely obvious gaffes).
  • My research reading has been going well.
  • Hamlet and Shakespeare: His Work and His World have been completed.
  • I am on page 120 of 128 in The Colonial Cookbook, and may copy several recipes to try later – tactile research, you might say, or fertile play.
  • I am on page 80 of 252 of Shakespeare’s England. I am reading for impressions rather than note-taking.
  • Experiment with removing Tisira’s story as a YA novel, with a potential optional add-on of the fanfic elements….not sure how this will work, exactly, but I think it might be the best approach to have something marketable without sacrificing my vision.
  • I think I have at least the beginnings of an idea on how to separate the stories, without losing the flavor of either, or of both, together.
  • I have begun, in a tiny way, to explore this, while re-inputting and editing the first scene, which involves only Tisira.

Jeremiah made himself three kinds of eggs!

Homeschool Administration Ad Infinitum….:

  • Standardized Test for Miah (due Sept.1).
  • On Tuesday, Jeremiah and I had a mom/son date, and bought his pencils and an electric pencil sharpener with a cord,
  • When we got home, Jeremiah set up his work area in my office…we will share the space so that he has a dedicated place to do the testing.
  • Wednesday evening, I ordered the PASS test – it is specifically designed for homeschoolers not familiar with taking tests, and will fit into our lives rather than causing stressful disruptions in it.
  • The test should be here by midweek next week. We have four weeks to complete it, so I am thinking we will start slowly, unless Miah wants to dive in.
  • IHIPs for both children (due four weeks after receipt of packet from school district).
  • The rough drafts of both IHIPs are completed.
  • I plan to let them rest while I return to the fourth quarter reports, and return to them when I finish the report drafts or want a break from them.
  • Begin setting up portfolios for both children – invite them to be a part of this process! =)
  • I took a few more photos, and sorted a bit more art for this project.
  • Relax, enjoy, learn, grow, laugh, and … BREATHE!
  • Check. Jeremiah and I enjoyed shopping together, doing a half-mile on the track at the Y (we had been planning on t’ai chi, but he wasn’t up to the newness of it, and I was a bit concerned about my knees. We had lunch at Bruegger’s, and thoroughly enjoyed our time.
  • Meanwhile, Jim took Annalise to my parents’ house, because my mother had stopped on the way home to tell Annalise she had a gift for her. They also enjoyed watching ChoBits together.
  • Both children are growing – physically, mentally, and emotionally. This has created some turbulence and disequilibrium, which seem to have coincided with Elijah’s Days, and the ebb in my energy cycle….
  • We’re all doing what we can to ride the waves with as little soaking as possible, and this does seem to be a less threatening degree of turbulence than we’ve had before…
  • Last week’s creative torrents have slipped into this week’s mellower, more sedentary pastimes…but Miah cleaned the guinea’s cage and learned to use a compass (the kind for making circles; he already knew how to read a compass), while Annalise detangled her own hair, and took a solo road walk. There’s been reading, TV, and gaming – and lots and lots of connection and flowing conversation….and we are finalizing plans for their birthday party! =)

Pegacorn hatching…..

Reading:

  • Continue reading books for Bookmark Break Challenge – aim for 7 in July, 8 in August, and 9 in September, but these targets will be flexible – summer is prime traveling time for the kids and I and we have things planned and others we’re considering.
  • I have decided to let go of the official challenge, but not the reading. I will just set my own parameters, and read what delights me.
  • I am at peace with this decision, and I am grateful the Challenge was there to get me reading.
  • Guerrilla Learning – Completed.
  • The Mermaid Chair – Completed.
  • Container Gardening – page 120 of 256.
  • Shakespeare’s England – page 80 of 252.
  • Since I have decided to drop the challenge, I can count The Colonial Cookbook (cookbooks weren’t allowed in the challenge). I am on page 120 of 128.
  • I have completed 3 of 7 books for this month.
  • Read at least one book each month from my Kindle Cloud Reader, as a learning and experimenting process.
  • I am continuing on with The Digital Writer’s Guide to Blogging. I have completed 64% of this book.

Other Writing:

  • Play with flash fiction pieces as the mood strikes; aim for two submittable stories each month.
  • I played a bit more with my prologue scene (not sure it hasn’t left flash territory, though), and with the opening point for the Blood and Breath story arc, although I didn’t complete anything.
  • Play with essay ideas as desired; aim for three submittable essays each month.
  • I have written a few things in 750 Words that may eventually become essays.
  • I am still composting ideas, but I feel them bubbling up to the surface; stronger now, almost a boil…and they are winding their way into my fiction planning, too….
  • Use 750 Words for whatever – flash pieces, essays, venting, ranting, reports, book reviews, etc.
  • I played more with my prologue scene.
  • I made two exploratory efforts at Blood and Breath flash fiction.
  • Those attempts led to story stuff; and I have a deeper sense of the story than I did.
  • I wrote the beginning and ending passages for my last update.
  • I wrote a bit of a tribute to Elijah, on the anniversary of his death.

A future short order breakfast cook, perhaps?

  • Organizing/Tootling my Horn…
  • Choose a new notebook; input into Penzu.
  • Jeremiah chose my October/November 1999 Writing Practice Notebook.
  • I am on page 3 of 140.
  • Continue reading marketing and ebook publishing sites and articles.
  • I am in the midst of a marketing ebook (see above).
  • Draft a loose Mission Statement to guide me through the rest of the ROWnd, and carry me forward into the next.
  • More of this is surfacing from my deeps; I think I will be writing soon! =)
  • Set aside time each week to winnow email. Read items being saved for later reading, sort or dispose as indicated.
  • My Inbox is a bit full, right now, as I have been tending to other things and not reading much from there. But it is my intention to keep it under 50 messages, and there are still more businesses and sites I will be unsubscribing from as I fine-tune this tool.
  • Be bold and daring in commenting, sharing, and submitting. Declare myself, learn, grow, and sometimes do things that make me uncomfortable. Open and blossom!
  • Like so many of the other things here….I feel it coming, a grand upswell of daring and adventure. I don’t know yet what forms it will take, but I know that it will come, and I am quietly setting myself to flow into it when it arrives…

Pegacorn, hatched and celebrating life!

Celebrating Life!

  • Add some form of specific motion (t’ai chi, swimming, hiking, biking, skating, dancing, etc) to each week. Keep track of what, where, when, for how long, and how I felt during and after.
  • Monday was shopping with Miah, and walking and a bit of very light jogging on the Y track. It totaled half a mile, and, while my right knee caught several times, it was never the intensely painful locking it has been doing since May. I am looking forward to more time at the Y, hopefully helping the knee to recuperate.
  • I have done hometending and some weeding, and just a tiny bit of dancing.
  • Fill us all up with joy, and continue cultivating family peace.
  • I have been in an ebb phase, more inclined to quietness than exuberance. Still, the kids seem to be in a similar, hibernating place this week, so maybe that is the best energy to be having, right now.
  • The children have discovered that, if neither parent intervenes in their disputes, they can often work them out or just forget them. This has led to somewhat more conflict, but definitely more that they are resolving on their own, There is growth and deeper peace for us all in this, although it may take some time for both to equalize and absorb the new skills they are learning.
  • Spend time cleaning and beautifying my personal internal and external spaces each week.
  • I have worked some in my own room, and a little in my office.
  • I have gone deeper and more quietly into myself over the last days, as new things brew within me…
  • Embrace and be present in all my moments.
  • I am continuing to strive toward this goal, and I am seeing more grace, beauty, and sweetness in life…
  • Allow my emotions to be as they are. Practice expressing them calmly and reflectively.
  • The last few days have been calm and reflective for me in their nature. I am learning.
  • Tend kindly and sweetly to myself and others. =)
  • I have felt very tired, and maybe not as sweet as I might be. I am trying to make up for that when I can, and with the gift of my time and attention.

Annalise, then 5: Cameron, 9, and Jeremiah , 8.

So, it’s the day after the end of Elijah’s Days. The kids are in the midst of a South Park and Ruby Gloom session on Netflix.

I am bouncing between hometending, party organization, and reading, and writing.

The storms that were threatened…serious ones, with chances for tornadoes (not frequent, here, and we do not have a basement), have not yet arrived, although the hour or two before dark became progressively darker.

I am hugely pregnant with ideas and epiphanies, and, soon, I think, they will begin to break over me in crashing waves.

Annalise has an extremely wobbly top front tooth. Her milk teeth do not give up easily. The permanent tooth below is shoving it so far down and forward that we took to calling it Crazy Tooth two weeks ago.

We talked about the meanings of “imminent”, and “black market”, and Annalise and I discussed indexes, life in Shakespeare’s time, and colonial cooking.

We’ve discussed, the children and I, their guest list, party activities, and menu. The party will be next weekend, halfway between their birthdays, at an indoor play space they love, but which is a bit pricey to get to often.

When we come home, we will have my 12 year-old nephew, Cameron, who goes to school but wishes he didn’t, and who adds a “big brother figure” to our mix.

Ready for their close-ups!

Cam always wants to go to the state museum, and to the Y to swim. We’ve included him in other trips – to a local haunted house, to the neighborhood Aerosciences Museum, to our unschooling co-op, and to CMOST, which has a digital planetarium he loved.

Life will be swirly and maybe somewhat hectic, but largely in a good way…

So, just now, I am enjoying the lull…the quiet space of days between now and Sunday, when my own birthday will mark the figurative end of our July roller-coaster, and we begin moving outward into the world and bringing the world back in with us.

The lull before what is within me, building and growing, breaks wide open, and there is no cure for it but to write, and learn myself, and become, in the process, deeper and wider, so that there is always more awaiting its time to break loose, and more to be explored.

Hot , rumpled, and happy in Plymouth, MA, 2010

I am wrapped in a quiet type of gratitude -

  • for ebbs and flows,
  • for the taste of frozen grapes,
  • for Jeremiah making three types of eggs (sunny side up, over easy, and scrambled), just because he wanted to.
  • For the Pegafil (that’s a Pegacorn filly, of course – and a Pegacorn is a winged unicorn) who hatched in my backyard and asked me if I would own her.
  • For the many animals Lise sees in the clouds, and the tree that looks like a cascading firework.
  • For the fact that Jim took the car, and will be home before too long.
  • For the messy chaos of our lives, and the sweetness.
  • For all three of my children – the gloriously living, and the long-dead, who still lives on in my soul and makes me better.
  • For a dog who looks at me adoringly, and greets me each morning, shoving his nose up under my hands if I stop scratching his head too soon.
  • For the sound of guinea pigs purring.
  • For the sight of Margot the Manx out hunting at the edge of the brush that borders our yard, and the way she startles into perfect attentiveness when a young and foolish rabbit hops too close – but does not give chase.
  • For how she and the rabbit share a certain quality of shape and movement.
  • For a mind that stretches and a soul that delves, and the time for stretching and delving to unfold as they will.
  • For nights I stay up until past dawn, and mornings I wake to a peaceful and happy family who so often let me sleep.
  • For hot sweet coffee various people in this house are willing to bring me, because, while I love to drink it, I don’t love preparing it.
  • For good books that weave poignant stories, that engage my soul, and leave me weeping at dawn – silently, so I don’t wake the best friend softly snoring beside me….
  • For my chosen family, so far-flung, but so very much a part of my living.
  • For the growth of compassion, and the beginnings of being able to set to words something that I have longed and needed to say, but which must be said well, else not at all…
  • For the understanding that we each bring our own perceptions to the table, even when we don’t know it…
  • And for the much-needed, rejuvenating rain that has lately fallen on our parched little bit of earth….
  • And for all of you, reading this……

The Sweet Life! Annalise, 4, and Jeremiah, 7, after a trip to the New York State Museum.

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The Venom Club – Terrible Minds Flash Fiction Challenge

Below is my entry for this week’s  Flash Fiction Challenge over at Chuck Wendig’s Terrible Minds.  This piece was written during a sleepless writing night, when dreams and memory and fancy braid together….

I wrote it spontaneously,just after reading the prompt,  and went with what my mind tossed upstream-of-consciousness style, then let it rest a little while, then gave it a very light edit.

More asleep than awake, I really like it.  Maybe you will, too….

The Venom Club

Copyright 2012 by Shan Jeniah Burton

Some places are obvious about their purposes,. The Waterford Harbor Farmer’s Market, for example, looks like nothing else but a farmer’s market. It nestles up close to the bank of the Erie Canal, which looks exactly like – well, a canal, with a huge lock within walking distance.

The market proper is set up each summer Sunday on the wide walking path. The paved path is inlaid with a brick pattern – a pattern which traces the course of the Erie Canal – “from Albany to Buffalo“, as the song says.

If one looks closely, one might spot something else, there. There are two sets of unobtrusive tracks in the concrete…. a pair of bare human feet, and the track of horseshoes.

These are reminders of something that could be easily forgotten…once, this very path was a mule path, and many bare and hoofed feet traveled here..

The Venom Club, though, gives away nothing of its purpose in its appearance. As a matter of fact, you may have passed it yourself, if you happened down a certain winding road that still retains many elements of its beginnings as a farm road, unpaved in respect for the Holsteins brought across, twice daily, between the milking barns and the pasture.

Although occasionally there have been loose cows or horses, and there are occasional severe storms, and even a minor earthquake or two, it doesn’t seem like a dangerous place. The coyotes and hawks belong to the land; they pose only natural threats – usually to rabbits and wild turkeys..

Ah, but there is the matter of The Venom Club.

I’m warning you now, but you aren’t likely to believe me.

That’s because the members of club are consummate masters of disguise – they have to be.

Even a spitting cobra needs to get close enough to strike.

So, I am going to warn you, because I feel I need to – even knowing that you probably won’t believe me.

It’s easier, sometimes, to pretend all is just as it seems – in this case an inviting house set a little back on a pleasantly manicured lawn.

I know – it looks peaceful and embracing. I see you shaking your head, and the doubt in your eyes. You see what you see, after all, and the people in that peaceful looking home seem friendly enough to you.

I wonder if you know how clearly your face says that you think I am out for vengeance, or, maybe, just paranoid.

I know you’re going to wait until I go away, and then you’re going to walk up those inviting steps, and you are going to knock.

I knew you’d see only the surface, and miss the eddies and swirling whirlpool currents of the depths….

You will believe as you will, and choose as you will. And, for a while, all will seem well….

But, whether you believe it or not, it IS The Venom Club, and you are in grave danger the instant you relax your watchfulness.

It is The Venom Club, and its specialty is to lay perfectly camouflaged ambushes….

You won’t see it coming, and I won’t be there to give a warning you wouldn’t want to here,anyway….

But I know.

In the most pleasant of houses, poison lurks….

I know.

I grew up there.

by

The Pickle Barrel Incident


The Pickle Barrel Incident

copyright 2012 by Shan Jeniah Burton

Ella half-dropped, half-fell into the chair, sending an uncomfortable heavy jolt into her back, to join the dull, insistent pain that had been with her for the past three days.

She wasn’t at all sure she wanted a sandwich anymore – she had wanted it so intensely she could almost taste it, only a few minutes ago, but now that she was in the cool but crowded little deli, occupying a chair right near the door at the only available table and smelling aromas mixing and coagulating all around her, she felt disoriented and slightly nauseating.

The place was packed – it was Labor Day Saturday, and everyone, it seemed, had plans to be somewhere – and, maybe, the Pickle Barrel was the perfect stopping- off place for many of those plans.

Ella had always been a little overwhelmed by too many people, too many conversations, in too small a space, and, now, she was acutely aware of how the snatches of conversation wove and wound through one another, a whirling calliope of noise and ideas and laughter and edginess that made her feel oddly dizzy, as though she should be able to take it all in and understand it -

But she couldn’t.

“And so I told him he was grounded for a week, and he YELLED at me – “

“I’m thinking of dying my hair blonde and trying Botox- maybe THEN he’ll notice -”

“She wants a nice house and a Lexus, then she bitches that I never spend time with her and the kids -”

“I’m not dead yet -”

The noise becomes a droning, irritating constant, meaning nothing, and Ella wondered why they’d come here, why she insisted to Mike that they needed to stop walking out in that damned Montana heat, and go into the deli, “where it’ll be cooler, and we can just sit and take it easy for a while.”
He stood at the counter, now, not looking back at her, because he was focused on the matter of procuring food…

Food she no longer wanted.

Ella felt herself shifting, away from the physical plane of empty conversation just meant to fill in the space between bites, and the mundanity of buying and eating food. It was just background, meaningless, punctuated by the occasional nuisance of someone passing by her chair, which was almost in the flow of traffic – the other tables were all full when they came in, and moving was too much of a bother, now that she was sitting at last.

That dull pain in her back sharpened – although she had known it would, Ella gasped at its power, then stared around the room as the band of pain tightened and wrapped itself hard around her belly…

She was sure everyone must be staring, and know that she was having a powerful contraction. She felt naked and raw and elemental, as though she were a wild animal, there in the deli, and surely everyone must be as held in that primal, seizing grip as she and her baby were…

But no one seemed to even notice her; so busy with their empty chatter and filling bellies -

The baby, as if protesting this forcible eviction, shoved a knee up under her rib, and Ella bit her lip to keep from crying out.

Suddenly, this seemed far too strange and public place to be, and Ella wanted to jump up and tell Mike they needed to get out of here, right now, and go back home, where their midwife was waiting for them.

But she couldn’t. The pain – insistent, indescribably powerful, and somehow, paradoxically, pleasant – would not allow it. Her mind was turned inward, and her energy was precious, being conserved for the birthing to come -

Mike had the sandwiches now, as the pain hit its peak, and was turning toward her, with a smile to see that she had found them a place.

As he began threading through the closely-strewn tables, Ella felt a gushing and a release of pressure, and the chair beneath her became very wet…
She was panting, now, and sweating, and, although Mike was saying something, she could not make out his meaning. she felt an instinctive need to curl herself around her middle, to bring all of herself to focus on her womb.

“Here’s your sub, Honey- I’ll go back for the drinks – “

“Ma’am, I think you spilled your -”

Both men stopped; Ella didn’t have the focus, now, to answer either of them, as they silently stared.

The pain was subsiding, but, almost at once, another rolling wave built, and crested, hardly falling off before gathering again, and again….

Ella slipped from the chair, no longer caring who saw, and used it as a brace, and was barely aware of the exclamations and questions, as she shoved her shorts and panties down, and crouched right there, holding to the wooden chair for support.

There was nothing else but this, this compelling need to push, to bear down, to help the child make this first, most important journey….


by

“The Huntress in Moonlight” – Flash Fantasy

The Storyteller Writing Challenge

*    *   *
Are you a Storyteller? What inspires you?
What stirs you to pick up your pen, open your word doc. and write?
I offer TWO prompts for you to CHOOSE from:
 An Image prompt and an Other prompt. 
1. THE Image PROMPT
For this weeks image prompt, tell us what is evoked by this image.
What is this haunting environment? What story tumbles from your imagination?
Why is she there? Who is she?

The Talented Artist this week is - Artist: Agus - http://psdholic.deviantart.com/

“The Huntress in Moonlight”

Copyright 2012 by Shan Jeniah Burton

She seemed to have forgotten  I was there….

I sat on the wide  branch, my back pressed into the trunk – cushioned and cool where the  mosses caressed my shoulders; rough and warm where my lower back pressed against bare bark –  watching her.

She never seemed to  notice her  beauty,  yet she wore it naturally, with  ownership  I had never seen before.  I couldn’t pinpoint  what differed  from the beautiful, petulant queens of the high school court…Shirana,  Beverlee, and Aspen, who made the boys slobber over themselves like fools, and dismissed the rest of us with something that might have been contemptuous if they didn’t look at  walls and teachers  the same way…

~~ Perhaps  those girls believe  their appearance entitles them to privilege.  I find that attitude most – illogical.~~

I clutched my head,  nearly falling. “H-How —?” I asked, pressing myself backward, as if Tisira was going to attack.

I felt her, now. She was amused – and concerned that maybe she had lost my friendship.   She found me enjoyable and interesting.

She walked a little away, her tank top revealing just a bit of a midriff that was slender and muscular. Her long skirt swayed  with her, and she bowed her head to study her toes, making her short, shiny black bob fall across her face…

She was silhouetted by the enormity of the full moon, which leaning in  as if to tell Earth some wonderful secret….

A sceret about Tisira, maybe……

Without  warning, a small flock of birds winged straight at us.

I yelled, and this time I did fall out of the tree- well, half fell and half rolled, but, still, I hit the ground with a rattling, graceless thump.

When I looked up ,  Tisira  had a small, hawkish raptor  perched upon her shoulder.  She was whispering to it, and the bird seemed to be listening. The rest of the flock circled, then landed in several trees around the edges of the clearing.

“I am not a human high school student,” Tisira said. Although I hadn’t seen her move,  she was  offering me a hand up, which I gladly took.  Hers was calloused and strong, and I noticed a long, fine scar running from the back of her hand to just short of her elbow. “I am a Tacivaarii Huntress.”

In my mind, there was a sense of what that meant, but I could also tell that there was more – much more than I could ever understand.

“You read my mind, and command birds of prey.”

She steadied me as my knees threatened to collapse.

“It’s not reading your mind, exactly.  I could, but I wouldn’t.  I share the strong thoughts and feelings you project outward…..Father says that I always will, no matter how hard I attempt to shield myself. I’m sorry it troubles you.”

She helped me to sit  on a low stump where, hopefully, I could keep from further embarrassing myself with my clumsiness.

“As for the bird, I don’t command her. We have a symbiotic relationship. We share information about prey, when there is mutual benefit in doing so.  And we share feelings, sometimes.”

“Tisira – I don’t understand. About you, about this huntress thing; about reading my mind – or whatever the hell it’s called; about that bird. But most of all, I don’t understand why you’re telling me this.”

“There is something within you that needs to know, Sarah.  You care, and feel, and seek.  We are kindred, in ways that language can’t express.  You’re ready for what I am, and what I have to offer –  a symbiotic relationship of our own.”

That made me nervous. We were a long way from help – there were no houses for at least a mile in either direction. No one to run to for help, no one to hear me scream -

Tisira looked at me with glowing eyes, as the bird cried into the night….

And suddenly, a lynx crouched where she had stood…..

For a moment, I stared, and then a shaky  whisper emerged.

“Wh- what do you want with me?”

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Story a Day May #2 – “After Supper”

“I will harbor it, and shelter it, as the shrub outside my bathroom window harbors the sparrows and chickadees and cardinals that take refuge there…..”

“I don’t even know what that means,” snapped my mother in irritation, and her lips tightened and thinned as her jaw set. Her teeth were clenched when she spoke again. “I know what will happen. You will end up forgetting it, and leaving it somewhere, like outside, in the rain. I am NOT paying a hundred dollars for some damned book about Shakespeare. You’ve got plenty to read, right here, and, if you want more, go to the school library.”

“Neither of them have this book, Mommy.” People have told me all my life that I am a born optimist, like my father – but i never met my father, so I don’t know whether that’s true or not. But I figured calling her Mommy might -just might – get her to allow me to use my own income, garnered from watering a neighbor’s collection of fowl, from babysitting, from a summer job I would soon begin, and from cleaning my grandfather’s house – to buy the book. “And the book isn’t just about Shakespeare. It has ALL of his plays, all of the sonnets, and a lot of history. It’s a book I could treasure for the rest of my life.

“Besides, I don’t want you to pay for it. I just want permission to use my own money to – “

CRACK! I registered the drawing back and surging forward of her hand too late to do anything at all to avoid the backhanded slap that rocked my head and, although i couldn’t see it, a fire-red, heated imprint on my right cheek.

“YOU don’t have your own money, you ungrateful little BITCH! So long as I feed you and pay for your clothes and put a roof over your head, I am entitled to decide what you get and what you don’t. And you are not getting some stupid book by that idiotic Shakespeare. Besides, you would just sit there, sucking your finger and twisting your hair, reading THAT BOOK instead of doing your homework. And you are supposed to be so smart! HA! You’ve got no common sense at all.”

She stalked away, and I thought that might be the end of that – but, before I could draw two breaths, she was back. “Now, clean up this kitchen, take out the trash, and do the laundry. Then get your disgusting little self clean, and DO YOUR HOMEWORK, and go to bed. I don’t want to hear another peep from you until morning…..but I know how you like to run your mouth and act like you’re smarter than everybody else, with your fancy Shakespeare, so I’m going out.”

She said it like it was a surprise. Like she didn’t go out every night. Like she hadn’t been wearing that slutty scrap of fabric she called, “my little red dress.”

I didn’t say anything, just put my head down and started cleaning up the half-burnt Hamburger Helper pan, and emptying her ashtray. She would want it to gleam like crystal when she got home, as though her ashes and butts must be cradled in luxury.

When the door slammed behind her, I counted to a thousand – better safe than sorry – before I allowed myself to whisper my thoughts very softly. “I’m pretty damned sure I’m smarter than YOU, you bitch.”

I had long ago developed a system to get the work done as quickly as possible. I flew about quickly, tending to all that she had asked, making sure everything was just as she expected it. I made sure her bourbon and glass were set at her place at the table, so she could have her “liquid breakfast” when she got back – long after I was in school, usually, and then she would sleep until just before dinner, the one meal she insisted on feeding me. I thought she did it just so she could complain bitterly about it until she left again….

It only took an hour and a half, and then I went to my room, where my laptop sat. It had been a prize in a local poetry slam, and Mother liked to brag about how I had won it – not to me, but to the other barflies and whores she hung out with. She even paid for the Wi-fi, just so she could tell them all what a generous mom she was…

And, best of all, she never touched my computer; she didn;t even know how to turn it on.

I went to the site I had found last night, my fingers trembling and an excited sweatiness shivering over me.

I had already drawn up my profile; and used my webcam to take a few shots of me in what I hoped were “fetching” poses.

Now, I opened my file – and saw that I had been searched six times, already.

And, fifteen minutes later, I was slipping out of my window, past the bush that sheltered the songbirds my mother never noticed, my backpack filled with my few precious things…..certain I would find joy and peace at the other end of my journey.

As I looked up at the night sky, a star fell….

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V is for Vision

500 Words On….Vision.

Nockatee was with him – and then, all at once, she was not.

Her eyes were still turned toward the makeshift stage made of the White Hart‘s wide porch, but he could feel that her vision had turned far inward, to places within her awakening memories that made no sense to him…

The part of her that needed the life she had known before he found her crumpled upon the forest floor worried at the scrap of dialogue that had set the swirling energies of that life once more to life within her….

She was sitting beside him, but she was elsewhere.

The words echoed in her mind, and images and feelings and thoughts gathered around them.

“Doubt thou the stars are fire.”

And, although it was, as Horatio had said, “wondrous strange”,  she -  felt - that it was true. She knew the fire of the stars,  within  Everdeep.  She was unafraid, there, and cherished the sight of starfire streaming past the bow of…..

She made a small, gasping, sound, and her fingers groped for his, clutching with that desperate strength that had so frightened him when first they  met.

Her breath was coming fast, short and sharp, and, within her mind, the pain gathered.  She could feel the stars; she could feel, too, her mother, whose arms and breasts and scent meant comfort, whose voice was always, it seemed, at the edge of song. and whose laughter was a tickling delight in her soul…

And, of course, Father was there, quiet, kind, endlessly patient, answering all the questions her mind could ask – she was, in the memory, too young to speak – in a way that made sense and gave her always more to wonder upon.  Father, whose gentleness was endless, who did not hunt or eat meat, and who held her upon his lap to read old stories, for as long as she chose.

The memory was clear, and sharp, and for a moment, Henry could see their faces, and knew them with her same infant love.

And the loss of that struck her to her quick, sharpened the hurt he could not take from her….

All he could offer, against her mourning, still sharp and fresh, was himself, and what they shared between them.

~~I love you, my wildling.~

He sent the thought to her, along with all the waves of what he felt for her.  He opened to her in a way he never had with anyone, offered himself as the shelter for her pain and sorrow – and even for her rage that all she knew had been taken from her….

But she could not take his offering of love and devotion, not yet. Once her vision fixed on her past, she could only strain to know, to understand, to find her way back to the life she had known.

She exerted all her effort, her body taut with the struggle. Her short, blunt nails dug wounds into his palm; Henry bit his lip to keep from crying out.

Sweat stood on her lip, and her jaw was set tight, but as nothing to the tensing in her mind, and in their bond.

And then, she relaxed, and she flowed into him, joyously, another piece of her jigsaw memory returned to her.  She did not try to understand, only reveled, for now, in the knowing.

Her eyes glinted with truth as they claimed his.

~I come from the stars, and their fire.~

I had no idea I was going to write a flash fiction piece for this one. I couldn’t find a way to begin an essay on vision; maybe I’m not quite ready for that.

Everything I wrote felt like lecturing.

So I deleted, and it occurred to me that what I was meant to write about was Henry and Nockatee.

And that is what I did.

Every time I write one of these little pieces, I connect more fully with the characters, and in a more visceral sense.

Maybe it’s because so much needs to be accomplished in a very small space. Maybe it’s because I’m not trying to create an entire novel, just to create a vignette.

It occurs to me that doing a slew of these before starting a novel would give me a much better sense of the characters and their interactions and motivations.

OOOH! I want to do some of these as the basis for each scene in Blood and Breath’s missing chapters…

If each scene is an embellishment of a flash fiction story, there will always be a degree of conflict and resolution, and probably tautness, too!

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“Watersdeep’s Edge” – A Storyteller’s Writing Challenge

The Storyteller Writing Challenge

Are you a Storyteller? What inspires you?
What stirs you to pick up your pen, open your word doc. and write?

I offer TWO prompts for you to CHOOSE from:

 An Image prompt and an Other prompt. 

1. THE Image PROMPT:

Source within the picture.
For this weeks image prompt, tell us what is evoked by this image.
Where is it? What story tumbles from your imagination?
What is she doing? Who is she?

You decide.
—————————————–

“Watersdeep’s Edge” - copyright 2012 by Shan Jeniah Burton

The stench of the pyres – for her son, her sire, and so many beloved others, caused her to retch each time she was minded of them, seared her each moment she left herself unguarded.

They twisted into the burning of her chosen Solemate, lost now to her, somewhere in the vastness of Everdeep.

To him, now, she was only madness…

She was stirring the huge stewpot, in Osiraan’s greatroom, bursting with a jumbled mass of Tribed and untribed, – so many faces blank, such a stench of burning and pain.

Shinjao took the ladle from her hand, and added stew to the handful of herbs in a wooden bowl. .

“Eat, Huntleader.”

She shook her head, trying to hide the dizziness. “Others have greater need.”

“You are three days past birthing, Huntleader. You ARE Huntleader, and Kai, and needed. If you don’t eat, I will sit on you and force you.”

She offered the bowl, but Jeniah didn’t move.

Shinjao drove her down and away from the cookfire – thick furs beneath her; Shinjao’s weight above. The spoon forced past her lips,and she spluttered, then swallowed.

The stew was laced with arytana nectar, and piqued her hunger. She allowed Shinjao to feed her, taking the spoon greedily, and the other woman chuckled. “You are a fine Huntress. There is more than enough. Of stew, time, support, and sleep….”

The words were like new fog. “Sleep?” She recognized the subtler taste of nightbalm, and knew she had been fooled….”No – the fires….”

“Will be there until you find healing. Sleep, dream – and begin to heal.”

~~She was standing on a rocky promontory, waves reaching almost to her shod toes. The seabirds cried raucously, tossed and wheeling in the stiff wind.

 

The reeky,  fertile scent of Watersdeep filled her nostrils, scrubbing away the char of death…

 

She was in garb more useless than any Mother would have demanded she wear, even when she most wanted to impress her Court. One of those new contrivances meant to keep rain off was in her right hand….and, in her left, the cast iron keys to the Kai’s Courtyard- Hallii’s killing grounds.

 

Grief constricted her soul; tighter than the laces that entrapped breath. She was apart from all of life, bereft. Liacivaar dead; Tacivaar – so many others.

 

All pointless… the damage Kaitiiraan and Tacivaar had birthed.

 

What profit had it been? Mother had poisoned her, and lost her throat…. Jeniah could still taste her blood, curdling, and she retched, gasping for what air she could draw into her compressed lungs.

 

Her breasts throbbed, and her milk let down suddenly, soaking the bodice of the dress, meant for the child who would never suckle. Her womb clenched, its emptiness tearing into her soul.

 

Tacivaar  had asked, cajoled, manipulated, and finally forced her to conceive his Truestborn.

 

It had taken longer for the old Huntleader’s machinations to kill him, but they had, as surely as Mother’s.

 

And my child, too – “Liacivaar,” she cried, to Everdeep, to Watersdeep…..

 

She yearned for her child, for her Chosen.

 

The wind whipped the long, spray-damped skirts; hobbled her legs.

 

All gone – freedom, Huntleader, child, sire, lover – all gone with nothing left but duty she hadn’t chosen, and did not want.

 

She felt something welling up from her depths, and she did nothing to stop its coming. “Sima garo provides…”

 

The screaming arched her back, drew her tight against the bones and lacings. She set her legs wide despite the layers of sodden cloth and ill-suited shoes. The seabirds cried answer.

 

Huntlust broke loose, and her arms swung out. The keys vanished beneath the breaking waves; the umbrella bobbed wildly, attracting the birds.

 

She clawed and tore away the clothing, until she stood naked on the wet rock, at last only herself, and nothing other.

 

And then she dove, sobbing, into the sea, letting the salty waters close over her.~~

“You will be fine, now, sisterkin,” Shinjao whispered, as she crawled into the furs to stroke Niah’s quaking back. “You have found your tears, and can cleanse now for healing.”

OR

2.THE Other PROMPT

TIMED WORD ASSOCIATION: Heat, Car, Longing.
Write whatever springs to mind from these three words, in 3 minutes:
No cheating or editing! Lets see what happens.
—————————————–

We are parked at the drive-in, a movie neither of us wanted to see, at least not really, blurred through the heat-fogged car windows.

Heedless of nothing but longing, not even the treacherous gear-shift, we do not realize we’ve dislodged the  shifter –  until we hit the police car parked behind us…..and we’re still tangled in our clothes as he approaches, his light a neon sign of our shame –  and then my elbow hits the car alarm button on my keys, as though to seal the legendary nature of our dalliance.