Monthly Archives: December 2011

SILENT DECEMBER: Trifecta Week Seven Challenge

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Snow and wind shook at the shutters of the University with a relentless force that December eve.

“It’s a New Year tomorrow,” Jared said in too cheery a voice as he packed away the last of his things by his bedside.  He straightened and gave a blinding smile.  “A fresh start!”

But Lorne was silent and sullen as the snowbanks outside as he strung his satchel to his back.  Jared, with his close knit family, could never comprehend his situation.

Lorne’s mother was murdered.  His sister was left alone with their father, and he didn’t trust him to take care of her for a second.  Their father was a drunkard who threw away the household money and all his responsibilities. A once proud, noble family, they now shamed their own people.

Lorne stared at Jared, his eyes dark pools as they always were when he was angry.

“You can’t skirt around what happened forever, you know?” Jared said, his amber eyes filled with concern.  “It’ll do things to you, if you keep it bottled up all the time.”

Lorne knew full well what bottling up his emotions would do.  He could feel the rage inside, just simmering under the surface, but he ignored it.  “Emotions are a Human luxury,” Lorne muttered as he opened the door and stepped into the snowfall.

“Don’t be like this, Fox!” Jared called, the old nickname slipping past his lips.  “Don’t push away everyone you care about!”

Lorne paused, anger rising, his pale hand on the door as he turned to look at Jared one last time.  “Who said I cared about any of you?”

Now Jared was silent as a memorial stone for long gone kin.

Lorne went out, without a mother and without empathy.  He bit his tongue just to feel something.

The world was filled with injustices and the dead.

He caught a falling snowflake on his aching tongue, and it chilled his heart back into bittersweet indifference.

~*~

This short is based on characters and situations from my original YA fantasy series, “Ebony”, which is currently in the process of being submitted to agents.  This was also in answer to this week’s Trifecta challenge:

“The prompt is the third definition of the word Skirt:

skirt (verb)

1   to form or run along the border or edge of

2   to provide a skirt for

3   to go or pass around or about; specifically : to go around or keep away from in order to avoid danger or discovery

Please note: we are asking for the verb form of the word skirt.  As discussed in our instructions, responses that use the noun form or a different tense of the word will be disqualified.”

Indie Ink Challenge: Deluded

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sunset in bucks countyShe was a lone white figure on a vivid green hillside, wandering as freely as the clouds she stood beneath.  Questions buzzed through her head like bees, and a lone voice sought to break through, sounding every bit like the father of her child.

Why don’t you want to leave this town?

She had grown up here, she reasoned.  Twenty-odd years in a place had to mean something.  She knew every cobblestone, every face.  Every mountain peak.  She could tell every trail through the woods, and where to find the best herbs and where to bathe in the coldest streams.  The summer festival actually meant something to her.  Such traditions of evening bonfires and Gypsy caravans made the months fly by easily.

Again, her lover’s critical tone.

But you don’t even like it here.

I do, she argued with the voice in her mind.  Of course I do.

But she didn’t.  She knew it, even as she thought it.

She was fast becoming an outsider.  Too beautiful for the liking of the other village women and too sickly to be much use.  She had grown up there, yes, but she was always a bit too smart.  And the friends she kept…she recalled the gossiping wives now, their harsh whispers as she and her lover walked past.

She approached a hillside shrine and the scent of its cloying incense and floral offerings filled her nostrils.  Meddling…the gods are meddling, she thought to herself.  It was because of them she woke up every day longing to be free.  Why she felt the need to leave everything she had ever known.  If only she could have remained blissfully ignorant of the world outside the confines of her village.

She couldn’t pretend she understood their motivations.  Some town preachers talked about the will of the gods…well, whatever their will, she didn’t care.  She still left the shrine gods an offering of an orange from the South though, its flesh prickled with fragrant cloves.

Just in case they were listening.

She returned from the shrine, walking in silence, every breath taking in the aroma of the North Mountains.  She could go over them, into Northwilde, into the unknown new territories that so many were starting to call home in order to be safe from the Fae.  To start fresh.

But was she really so deluded as to think anywhere else would accept her with a babe born out of wedlock and, gods willing, a Mage for a husband?  Could life be that forgiving?

Probably not, she reasoned.  Everyone would be just as small minded as the townsfolk here. They turned their soil and planted their crops and knew simple.  Simple was good, and welcome. Not like the complexities of her life.  Living outside of the gates wouldn’t be any different.

And yet…she thought.

She held her stomach, her womb, between her fingertips, feeling the life inside her move at the touch, as tiny and fragile as the heather she stood above.  One of the small village children ran past, and she smiled at his unplaited blonde hair as it flew, wild and free, in the summer breeze.

And yet…she wouldn’t know unless she tried.

~*~

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week,  Michael challenged me with: “’When you begin each day by describing the looks of the same mountain, you are living in the grip of delusion’-Thomas Merton” and I challenged Fran with: “100 Word Challenge: Empty Hallways and Ashen Faces”.  This is for the week of December 26-30th.

This excerpt is based on characters and situations from my original YA fantasy series, “Ebony”, which is currently in the process of being sent to agents.

Music listening for this?  I highly suggest Solas’ “Lament for Frankie”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt7AzgKAk8c&feature=related

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100 Word Challenge: Empty Hallways and Ashen Faces

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He stepped, feet heavy on the ground, every boot click on the stone a reminder that yes, he was alive, was here.   He needed those reminders.   He had the heart of a god and the willpower of a man, but was unable to use them.  He felt hollow, and empty, like the hallways of home.  Those endless corridors that rambled on like miniature labyrinths, where he could walk for hours and never meet a soul.  The memories of the ashen faces that greeted him at the table, like white patches on an otherwise beautiful canvas.  These steps now erased them.

~*~

This excerpt is based on a character from my original YA fantasy series, “Ebony”, which is currently in the process of being submitted to agents.

I really wanted to exercise my brevity, which is nonexistent,  but the 100 word blog that I have linked on here hasn’t updated since December 6th.  SO I created my own challenge with the first phrase I thought up.  (What does that say about my state of mind, though?!!)

Anyway, more dark stuff.  I should really try to write something a little happier soon.

Thanks again to writer’s group for your input.

P.S. Feel free to link up your blog if you want to take this challenge as well,  but I only ask you link mine as well.  There will be no  contest or anything.  I don’t have the time to moderate that sort of thing, hah.

Trifecta Week 6: “January, 1500″

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“January, 1500″

The announcement came unexpectedly at the start of the new year, like the sudden January hail that followed a powdery snow December.

“Love,” she said, her voice a paper-thin whisper in the dark as she squeezed his hand until it was pale, “I am with child.”

He wanted to shout his excitement and his fears to the world, but his sticky tongue clung stubbornly to the roof of his mouth and he lost all sense of speech or reason.

He wanted to cry, knowing he had already stayed in this small town for too long, that they were worn down from the effort of trying to both raise a Rebellion and just simply be alive.

He wanted to keep the thin-ice hope that perhaps the King of the Fae didn’t know of their existence just yet. That the Dark God would remain sightless in their direction. That they would never find him or come looking for a Legend that evaded them like a pebble in a riverbed.

But they would. Sooner or later, they would, and he knew that if he wanted to protect his young love and his unborn child, he would leave, taking all of those things with him.

He would go, even if it meant breaking her heart. Because he loved her.

He envisioned them around the table later, with the Midwife and the Mage, laughing with one another about their good fortune as they toasted the New Year, and he knew the sharp pang of the loss he would feel when he would have to leave it behind.

He wanted to say all of this to her, if only his tongue would uncleave from its resting spot…

And instead, he smiled delicately, and took her tight into his arms.

“What shall we name him?” he asked against her hair, finding first words at last.

Her soft laugh was warm on his shoulder, and her voice muffled as she spoke.

“What makes you think it’s a boy?”

~*~

This excerpt was based on original characters and stories from my YA fantasy series, “Ebony”, which is currently being submitted to agents.

This post is also in response to Trifecta’s writing challenge, Week 6, December 20-25, which uses the noun “roof” in it’s 3rd definition, “the vaulted upper boundary of the mouth.”

I’m kind of glad this was the result. The first idea was pretty bad.

Enjoy, all! I will be submitting much more, very shortly!

And a new addendum: look up Jon Crosby’s “Having Part of You” for the soundtrack to this. I’ll be doing this a lot haha.

Hello world!

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Hello, and welcome to the musings of an eccentric mind.  Perhaps I shouldn’t say that in a first post.  Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

This is the home of fantasies.  Stand alone, prompt followed, you name it.  Previously existent only in my head, now on paper.  Of a sort.

You’ll get a taste and feel for the world of my series as well (if I’m doing my job right) without ever needing to pick up the book. Although I hope someday you will!

Read, enjoy, comment, critique, whatever!

JMS