Three Word Wednesday: Adversity

scooch, janky, conniption

“Scooch,” Marcel said.  He sat without preamble, pushing Jonas across the plastic bench and sliding his tray after him. 

“Hey,” Jonas said, catching his apple as it threatened to roll from the tabletop. “Don’t go throwing my crap around, Marcel…” 

“You want me to sit here,” Marcel replied, his hands full of the plastic wrapper of the Twinkie which appeared to be the entirety of his lunch.  Jonas sighed and rubbed his apple against his shirt sleeve before settling it back on the tray. 

“Why?” he said, rolling his eyes slightly. The Twinkie in Marcel’s hands exited its packaging with a squeak and leapt a few inches into the air before Marcel caught it again. 

“Because,” Marcel said, eyeing his prize as he cradled it between his fingers, “Jenna is on a rampage and today, you’re its target.” 

Jonas blanched and hunched his shoulders so his platinum blond head ducked closer to the table. 

“What!” he hissed, scrabbling for the hood of his jacket before he pulled it over his distinctive hair, “What’d I do?!” 

Marcel grinned at his Twinkie and inserted one skinny black finger into the front of it before he answered his friend. 

“You talked to her.” 

“That is not a crime!” Jonas whispered, trying to spot Jenna before she saw him. 

“No,” Marcel acquiesced, “it’s not. What is a crime is writing about it and then Tweeting the link.”  The Twinkie divested itself of its innards under Marcel’s careful ministrations and he grinned at it. He turned to Jonas, the smile falling slightly and real concern creeping into his tone. “What were you thinking, Jonas?” 

Jonas groaned and put his head down on the table. 

“It was a great story,” he mumbled into the plastic lunch table, “I couldn’t help myself.” 

“Yeah, well,” Marcel took a bite of the now empty Twinkie and spoke with his mouth full, “I hope it was worth it.” 

“It was,” Jonas said, his face still pressed to the table. “Did you see the metaphors? The turn of phrase? She might be a bitch, but the words just flow when I’m writing about her.” 

“I was particularly fond of, ‘her janky-ass Mustang sped down the street like a dying tortoise’,” said a voice behind Jonas. It’s syllables were clipped, precise, and incredibly angry. “Great imagery, that.” 

“Jenna!” Jonas said, sitting up and forcing his hair flat in the same motion he used to push his hood back, “I didn’t see you there!”  

“Obviously,” Jenna said in a prim, British accent dripping with derision. “If you had, I imagine you would have gone on in the same vein. What’s next, Jonas? ‘The shrieking harpy assailed him, buffeting him with her wings until he felt as if he were caught in a whirlwind’?” Jenna’s arms were crossed across her chest and she was staring at him as if she very much wished for him to catch fire. 

Jonas caught his breath at the beauty of the sentence and had to clench his hands to keep from scrabbling for a pen. A harpy. He didn't know what it was. Maybe some kind of giant vicious bug.

"No," he said, leaning against the table to adopt a pose of what he hoped was casual negligence. "I probably would have said something nice about your eyes." 

Jenna rolled her eyes and did not move. 

"I expect if you were inclined to, you would have said something nice about my eyes in the other 900 words you used to describe me driving you home."  

Marcel, Twinkie conquered, cocked an eyebrow at his friend and mouthed, "she drove you home?" without any subtlety whatsoever. Jonas blushed, the red fierce against his cheeks. 

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you want everyone to continue to think that what happened yesterday was correctly interpreted by your ridiculous story?" Jenna was nearly vibrating with anger at this point, her ramrod posture apparently the only thing keeping her from ripping Jonas' face off. "What was it you said? 'Her rosy lips parted in anticipation, like a brazil-nut recently cracked'? Rubbish phrasing, ridiculous metaphors, and incorrect information!" 

"I...I liked that one!" Jonas said, standing and attempting to use his superior height to keep Jenna from killing him. It did not appear to be working. 

"Nonsense! Your writing is infantile and derivative! Your characters are one-dimensional or such obvious caricatures it's laughable! How dare you associate me with that?" Jenna appeared to be ready to catch fire, such was her anger. She poked Jonas in the chest with one finger, her chipped nail-polish flashing in the lunchroom light. "Remove it immediately!" 

"No!" Jonas said, finally just as angry. "It's my best work so far!  It might get someone interested in me!" 

"The only people interested in you are the garbage collectors and it's because they are wondering where their newest pile of shit wandered off to!" 

"Yeah well... you're a harpy!" Jonas liked it. The word had the ring of a good insult.

Jenna threw her arms up and turned around. 

"Oh heaven help us, I'm wounded! Never been called that before!" She whirled back around in an instant, moving until she was standing directly in front of Jonas and punctuating each of her next words with the promise of violence. "Delete that piece of refuse or I will run you down the next time I see you walking home in the rain."  

Jonas gulped and watched as Jenna stalked away. 

"Can you believe that?" Jonas said when she turned the corner. "She wants me to take it down!" 

Marcel frowned and tugged on his friend's arm until he was sitting on the bench again. 

"You're not going to? Do you think that's a good idea?" 

"Naw," Jonas said, a smile quickly spreading across his face until he was beaming. "I've got an enemy. Adversity! I'm a real writer!" He hugged himself and took a battered notebook from his backpack and proceeded to open it and scribble in the margins of its very full pages. "Her conniption's not going to keep me from prevailing.  It could be... a series!" Jonas looked up at Marcel, his pen suspended in the air. "Do you think Scholastic will pay me in advance?"  

Marcel groaned and took Jonas' uneaten apple. 

"I think you're going to be killed, is what I think."  

"Marcel," Jonas said, all business, his pen flying, "what's another word for nemesis?" 

"Murderer," Marcel said, and bit into Jonas' apple. 

You're serious?

Pic. credit: Gizmodo.com

Warp and Weft

A few months ago, some of my Family got together (as you do) to hang out and eat and drink and be merry. The night was a casual one, but some of them are blessed with the Gift of music-spinning and they had brought their instruments to the get-together with them. I'm not kidding when I say I couldn't not write something, I just wish what came from me was anywhere near as wondrous as what they created.

Following is what I ended up writing that night. Thanks guys. :)

October 22, 2010

He arches over his guitar, the neck cradled between his fingers as his other hand delicately caresses the strings across its belly.  His eyes are closed and he turns his head so his ear rests against the neck, the notes thrumming through his head to resonate against his soul.

She perches on the edge of her seat, waiting only for the right spell of notes to free her from the cage of wood and strings and set her flying against the ceiling.

It is so hard to capture the precise angle of his arm against the body of the guitar. The tilt of his head as the notes reverberate within its spaces. The distance he stares into while he weaves a net of sound. Above it, dancing on a wire of notes strummed tight and melancholy against the ceiling, is the weft of the violinist, an intricately woven creation that drifts effervescently in a cloud of its own making.

The music is spinning a spell of sound. Her eyes narrow in concentration, the impromptu symphony cavorting in whorls and leaps and minor keys around her head. She smiles, a terse lifting of her lips, but her eyes are ecstatic as she looks into the distance, the notes collecting in a loom of sound as she continues to play, her bowstring the shuttle that pulls a pattern from the hanging sheaves of notes.

It’s a spell of music they have spun, a pied piper tune calling you to dance. You too must create. Or perish.

Three Word Wednesday: Kelpie

Harmless, Moist, Yelp 

Nina began her routine patrol of the Outpost relatively unconcerned. Sure, there'd been the usual threats of night ghasts and one of the newer recruits had sworn that she had seen the shimmering light of foxfire dancing across the water of the marsh, but Nina knew that for what it was: wishful thinking.  Settling her quiver against her shoulder, Nina moved further along the path, following the dull gleam of the ward set up in a ring around the Outpost.  

"It's not like we needed anyone else out here," she muttered to herself, putting her feet down carefully against the spongy ground of the marsh. "We were getting along just fine without more mouths to feed." 

  

The new Marshall's sudden decision to expand the Outpost's forces grated on those like Nina who had been there for most of their lives.  The new Marshall, for all of his raw skill and supposed brilliance didn't understand that they didn't need more people. As far as he was concerned, the expansion of the Outposts around the City meant the Outpost at the edge of Faerie must be expanded as well. 

Nina barely left any footprints in the loamy ground of the marsh as she moved along the Eastern edge of the ward, stopping every few feet to double-check the spellwork, bending slightly in order to undo a fairy circle. By the time she was rounding the Northern end of the Outpost's land, her hands were glimmering with a faint tracery of blue dust.  Nina huffed and wiped her hands off on her pants. 

"Absolute nonsense," she muttered again, moving to sit cross-legged on a fallen log that afforded her a good view of the entirety of the swamp. Pulling a piece of twine from her pocket, Nina twisted it in her hands creating intricate shapes between her fingers. Her bow lay at her side, her quiver propped at her feet. The night was moist and still, if chilly, and steam rose from the marsh to curl around Nina's feet like a contented cat. 

"Why wouldst thou discount something of such pure possibility, Child?"  

The voice came out of the very air behind Nina and she started but did not turn, one hand slipping down her leg to grasp the knife concealed in her boot.  The voice clucked once, a sound of amused disapproval, and the knife was suddenly spinning through the air to disappear into the mist. There was silence for the space of a heartbeat then the splash of the knife landing in the marsh below. 

"Wouldst thou threaten the very air, Child? Or wouldst thou turn and face me?" 

"I'd really rather keep my eyes in my face," Nina said, concentrating fiercely on the string in her hand and keeping it in motion: a twist of the fingers for a ladder, a turn of the thumbs to show a bird imprisoned in flight.  

There was a swirl of air and then the log inclined to Nina's right beneath the weight of whatever had chosen to sit there.  

"Tsk, Child. Why wouldst I come to harm thee if thy wishes and mine align?" 

"Oh?" Nina said calmly, the string in her fingers taking the shape of a broom before she pulled it apart and began again, "And what do you know of my wishes?" 

"More than thou couldst ever imagine," the voice said calmly. "They think thee a harmless fledgling, do they not? The lofty one in his tower, playing Lord of the Marsh with no true understanding."  The voice sighed and the log shifted slightly as if the figure had reclined. "He darest not utilize thee and thy true potential. He hath no true relation with the Marsh, how couldst he? Sent from afar with nay a torch to light his way..." 

"The recruits have been seeing foxfire," Nina said with a shrug, "What have you been playing at, Kelpie?"  

The voice laughed, the sound  cold and humorless. 

"Thou hast guessed my true form well enough. But come, Nina. Why dost thou turn away, playing with thy string like a lost thing?"  

"I am a lost thing," she said lightly. The string between her fingers flashed a bright orange briefly, casting deep shadows across Nina's face before dying as quickly as it had come. "If you know so much about my wishes, you should know that, too." 

"Thy wits are as quick as thy fingers," the voice said approvingly, "But come, Child. Thou hast played the dutiful soldier long enough. Reclaim thy heritage." 

"No, thank you," Nina said. The string curled to form the face of a cat then shifted again, a complicated weaving that spanned both of Nina's hands.  The voice hissed and the marsh beneath them roiled in answer. 

"Thou wouldst deny me? Thou wouldst deny thyself?" The log surged beneath her as the Kelpie stood, the marsh mist swirling around its legs. Nina raised an eyebrow but did not look up. 

"I swore fealty to the Marshall. You know as well as I do that oaths must be kept." 

The kelpie sat again and its voice was quiet this time as it slid across the log to press against Nina's side. 

"But thou art miserable, Child." 

Nina felt a rogue tear slip down her nose to splash against the string she was still manipulating. 

"That's not the point," she said, her voice betraying no sign of her distress. "An oath once sworn is binding." 

The kelpie stood and the sound that came from it was one Nina was not sure if she ever wanted to hear again.  

"An oath sworn is not binding if thou dost perish in thy line of duty." 

Nina forgot where she was, who she was speaking to, and looked up, meeting the kelpie's eyes for the first time since it had appeared from the mist. It was a terrible thing to behold, a fierce beauty barely contained by the shape of the horse it had donned. The eyes glimmered with their own fey, golden light and Nina yelped with surprise as she was swept onto its back, a raging roiling movement that left her gasping for air.


The marsh water closed over their heads with barely a ripple to announce their passing. 

On a log overlooking the marsh, a curl of ash traced the place where before there had been a twisted piece of twine.