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Jessica stared down at the spiral mass of fur below. The metal walkway was cold against her fingertips, clutched so tightly her unpainted fingernails turned white.
Anna strolled up and joined her. “You’re really into this.” She tossed her blonde ponytail over one shoulder, the epitome of pumpkin spice and late fall exuding with every movement.
“Turns out, they like the gelatin in marshmallows,” Jess answered absently. “They let me toss some.” Her eyes were glued to the swirling vortex twenty feet below.
“Hmm.” The blonde tail streamed between the girl’s fingers. “So, you about ready to move on? My nose is getting cold.”
“No. The lady said I get to go in with them if I wait.” Jess felt the bridge vibrate under her feet, but couldn’t help her bouncing.
“Jess.”
“Hmm?” She deliberately echoed Anna’s dismissive tone from a few moments before. “Come on, we’re always doing what you want.”
“Jess.” Anna’s voice was urgent this time. She squashed her paper cup of liquid sugar with one hand until the lid popped off. It bounced off the walkway and the barking puppies chased after it below, a new whirlwind of black and grey and white.
“What? You could have hurt them with that, you know. You should be more careful.”
Anna looked at the teeth gleaming white below and shuddered. “Jess, those aren’t dogs.“
This weeks MOTE prompt came from Cedar Sanderson and was inspired by a visit to a wolf sanctuary. They do in fact like marshmallows, and had nearly 30 of them a few years ago!
“The puppies jockeyed for position, finally ending up whirling around the bowl like a small furry turbine.”
Check out the prompt I gave Becky here. Edit: Oops! Last week. My prompt went to nother Mike, whose story is over at the MOTE page.
Edit: Added wolf & wolf puppy pictures.
Fred whistled to himself, only half-paying attention to the green and brown surroundings. Oh, his mother had always warned him to pay attention on the forest path, but he was always alone amongst feathery pines and dead and dormant branches.
No muggers lurked here, far from the city lights and shining asphalt. Here the path was cold dirt and barely discernable under a soft carpet of dead leaves and rusty dropped needles years in the making. It was the way home, and he knew it well, and he did not need to see.
And yet – there was something over there. A red glow, but not the glow of fire. And there, a flicker of green, perhaps a glimpse of yellow. How had a traffic light managed to wander into the forest, this far from a real road and into the woods?
His feet drew nearer, and Fred realized the lights were on all at once. And within the glow, shadowed movement.
He watched, bewildered, as a shaggy, smooth-needled Eastern pine shrugged its limbs and shucked a mixture of Christmas lights from its boughs.
“That’s better,” a low voice grumbled. The limbs sloughed away the holiday trappings with a final shake and shuddered, as if the ornamentation had itched.
“Ah, hullo,” Fred ventured to the plant man. The pine stiffened, and turned around.
It was not a face, per se, but shadows that emulated a face. Fred was sure the tree-man was glaring at him.
“It’s too early for this nonsense.” The plant’s voice rumbled. A branch swiped at the pile of lights and knocked the pile under a bush.
Fred nodded, uncertain what else to do.
“You’d not believe the audacity of some people.” The great needles rose and fell with a sigh of shrubbery. The pine turned and lumbered into the forest, shallow roots easily torn from the earth with each step. “Not even Thanksgiving yet.”
If you’re ever in Pennsylvania, Eat’n’Park is rather a cult classic diner. And in the 80s, had this wonderful commercial that inspired the story when I wasn’t quite sure what to do with Nother Mike’s prompt.
It was a long one for Odd Prompts inspiration this week: “Prompt: Walking along the darkened path, he noticed there was something glowing behind the bushes beside the walkway. He leaned over, and saw a red and green glowing something, apparently tied with bright yellow ropes, just as it struggled free… (inspired by a game commercial … feel free to make the critter in the ropes anything you want!).”
Bessie planted her feet and glared at Daisy. “We’re late. And it’s your fault!”
Daisy tossed her head and snorted. “You wanted that grass just as badly as I did. More. You dreamt about it.”
“Did not.” She felt her face flush. Even the memory of the lush greenery made her mouth water.
“You talk in your sleep.” Daisy took a dainty step forward, her hooves crunching delicately on the gravel path. “Look, just act casual.”
But it was too late. A strange, multicolored apparition was near their home. “There’s a car! A car that looks like us!”
“Shuddup!” Daisy nudged the mottled vehicle with her nose. “Just like Farmer Bob’s. Nothing to worry about. Now keep your voice down.”
“But why’d they paint it like a cow?” Bessie couldn’t tear her eyes away. She didn’t look up until Farmer Bob’s voice broke in.
“Officer, they’re just gone. I came to milk them and those cows were -“ he froze.
Bessie batted her big brown eyes at him. Daisy tilted her head, the very image of bovine innocence.
The man she didn’t know closed his notebook and smiled. “I think they know where home is. But fix your fence, Bob.”
EDIT: The original name of this post, “Innocence,” was chosen when I frantically remembered it was Tuesday and wrote the above on my phone. Apparently that title was a great way to get a bunch of p*rn spammers. To all y’all in that category: Bugger off.
Cynthia wedged her tongue between her front teeth and kept typing, ignoring the sharp prick of a crooked tooth. Her jaw was set and grim. Legal briefs waited for no woman, especially when the client offered a substantial bonus for getting it done a month early. Especially when her boss accepted the early deadline with eager, grasping hands, greedy to get the firm the prestige and commission. Never mind everything else on the schedule or the deadline still weeks away. Never mind that Cyn had been just outside, eating a bland turkey and cheese sandwich, enjoying the sunlight and blissfully unaware of the pressure cooker her life was about to become. Why would she need to know?
She bit down again, trying not to think about the delay in getting to what brought her alive, away from boring tweeds and cardigan sweaters in neutral colors. The tip of her tongue jolted with bright pain, but kept her from thinking of garlic and parmesan. Cyn didn’t know what she’d do when this trick stopped working to keep her focused. It’d gotten her this far, but didn’t seem to work as well as it had in college.
Legal words and Latin phrases flowed from her fingertips. These words were the boring ones, the eat-your-vegetables of writing for a living to make sure the bills were paid and her sweet Shelbie was kept in kibble. If she wasn’t careful, the words would jumble together, a salad of nouns and verbs, a dressing of adjectives, croutons of propositions that crunched dry against her tongue. Never mind that they needed salt and garlic and parmesan to come alive, to tell a compelling story. The law required both format and propriety, even if her jumble made more sense to the layman.
They’d tried to label it dyslexia, but it wasn’t. not when there were no issues with the words that poured out at night, the words she wanted to write. She was a veritable chef, the words bursting with flavor, all as part of a well-composed meal.
She’d even taken some advanced cooking classes, just to make sure she had the balance down. Sensory details about the environment were salty and popped against her tongue. Salty words brought the scene to life, made the description on the page flow just so, just as salt in real life made food taste more like itself. Careful selection was imperative. Too much, and the dish was ruined.
Emotion, though, emotion always rolled sweet across her tongue. The gooey tang of lemon curd and stiff meringue blended with a shattered crust of grief and loss. New love tasted like sweetened vanilla cream, whipped by hand until soft peaks stiffened into spoonfuls easy to share with a lover. Oh, and heartbreak; heartbreak was bitter coffee, and lessons learned, the end of a relationship just as it properly ended a meal.
The feast of words would have to wait once more. Her tongue throbbed, painful and tasting of copper from the bite Cyn had clamped down upon it. The distraction wasn’t helping again. She’d have to find something new. Enough to get through this one last brief, with a quick bonus, and then to find a job that let the words flow into a regular banquet. What would it be like, no longer having to starve when a feast was readily available?
She sighed, and studied the blinking cursor. She reached out a slim finger and leaned on the backspace key, as her flavors disappeared.
***
This week, Cedar Sanderson challenged me with “The words came out all jumbled together, a salad of nouns and verbs with a dressing of adjectives and croutons of prepositions.” Nother Mike turned out to be the Viking I proposed he write about this week, and may his experiences next week be less eventful.
Also, I don’t know anyone with synesthesia, nor do I have it myself. I’d love to be corrected if I got this wrong.
Darkness never bothered me. Why would it? Darkness is what lets me see the color of the metal, white-orange hot and ready for tempering, molding, shaping to my will. The forge is my life, and I live in the shadows.
Darkness is what lets the light shine bright and sweet, upon the face of a woman or a child. I have brought plenty of shadows to this world already. The look they give me is the same as when they face the darkness, and fear the shadows.
Sweat drips down my face as I strike the mallet against a bar, branding hot, flakes and chips shattering into the forge with each strike. Sweat means heat, means life, and each flex of tendon and muscle in my wrists guarantees an existence. I will never freeze again in this heated environ; no snowy, stiffened days where I can barely move my hands to grasp a hammer. No longer am I desperate for a bowl of soup or a scrap of bread stolen from a windowsill. No longer am I driven to desperation and the darkness.
The irony does not escape me. I learned a trade and left the shadows, only to live within the shadows. I remain on the edges of the world, dusted with soot and charcoal. I would not trade it for the limelight, or even for the sunshine. I know where I, and everyone else, is comfortable where I remain.
Looking respectable increases the irony. The past was always destiny-bound to arrive on booted feet, spurs jangling with each step, swirling darkness in his cloak. It’s why I told that woman to stop pushing her wiles on me. She doesn’t want the chill of shadows. She imagined strength, when I saw only prey. I was once and always quick to anger, quick to the fight, quick to the draw.
I survived, and you know what that means. Just because I learned self-restraint doesn’t mean I lost the instinct.
I hear each deliberate thud and know it’s time. It doesn’t matter who’s here to call me to account at last. It’s not in me to give up a fight, as if a gunfight at midnight is a disadvantage. If I win, if I lose – either way the darkness reclaims me, as it was always bound to do.
***
Leigh Kimmel and I traded Odd Prompts this week. She provided the weirdest music video I’ve ever seen as inspiration. After blacksmithing this past weekend, which option could I choose but the smith preparing for a gunfight? I challenged her to write about a joyous feeling she (or her character) would never want to experience again.
Lynn grinned as she dug through the trash. Oh, it smelled terrible, that was for certain. Why a farmer’s wife hadn’t composted and separated the dry trash rather than tossing everything in a single midden pile was beyond her capacity to fathom. But she’d already found quite a few treasures.
Whether or not others would think her new ceramic chicken was a treasure was irrelevant. For her, it was worth the work. She glanced up at her friend. Arti looked less pleased about their current adventure. “We have to do this for how long?”
“Until we find the promised mason jars,” Lynn said. She tried to be less obvious about her glee in the face of Arti’s pitiful gaze and failed. “Those antique blue ones are selling like hotcakes. Even if it’s broken, we can turn it into one of those mosaic garden tables.”
Arti rolled her eyes and held up what looked like a dented bowl in one gloved hand. She dangled it from a single finger, and made a face before tossing it aside. “Only you would be this excited about garbage.”
Lynn shrugged and rubbed an itch on her chin with one shoulder, since her hands were covered in muck. “It’s repurposing. And only you would be bored enough to help me. Plus, we might get a few coins out of it.”
“Maybe a lot of coins.” Arti went still, except for the breeze blowing her shoulder-length dark hair.
She sniffed and regretted it instantly. Dried late autumn grasses surrounding the midden were not enough to overwhelm the scent of rot. “Not if you don’t keep moving.”
“Did these people kill off a goose?”
Lynn stopped this time and stared at her partner in refuse. “Huh?”
“Look.” Lynn got off her knees, the wet denim clinging to her legs unpleasantly. She squished her way over in wellie boots kept for this and catching frogs. It would be a sad day when she grew up enough to hate catching frogs.
And a sad day when she didn’t recognize the value in something completely unexpected. “Golden eggs. You’re putting me on.”
Arti shook her head and picked one out of the pile. “A whole nest. You see the engravings? The dirt highlights them.”
Frowning, Lynn leaned over. “Those aren’t – no. These are puzzle eggs!”
“What’s a puzzle egg?”
“Like those boxes that you can’t open unless you move pieces in the right way.” She’d been hiding secrets from her annoying brothers for years in puzzle boxes. Anything she didn’t want destroyed, anyway. “C’mon, let’s grab these and go get cleaned up. Mrs. Murphy said we can come back anytime. I want to see what’s inside.”
“Shouldn’t we see if Mrs. Murphy wants them?” Arti frowned, hesitant. “Surely she wouldn’t consider these trash.”
“She left,” Lynn said, impatient. “She went into town. We can ask her when she gets back. After we solve the puzzle.”
Arti got to her feet and brushed off her jeans. She’d been fastidious about keeping clean, more so than Lynn. “Fine. But we’re coming back after to make sure.”
Lynn heaved a big sigh at her friend. “Let’s go already. Tuck them in the bag and we’ll bike back to my place.”
***
An hour later, both girls had damp hair and fresh clothing. Lynn’s mother hadn’t cared a whit for golden eggs, but she certainly didn’t want rotting garbage tromped all over her clean floors. Lynn herself wouldn’t admit it out loud, but she knew darn well she smelled better.
“I think I’ve got it,” Arti said, bare knees askew from where she leaned against the bed frame. She’d scattered the eggs across the floor, but Lynn had captured one that felt right to her and taken it into the bed to work on.
“Me, too.” She wrinkled her forehead. “Mine doesn’t have anything inside. Just this button.” She held it out to Arti.
“Mine, too.” Arti set hers down and propped herself up on her knees. “I’ll press yours if you press mine. Maybe it’s part of the puzzle.”
Lynn held out the egg in both hands. Arti reached out a finger with chipped grey polish and pressed the button.
Nothing happened.
And then –
“Do you see this?” Lynn murmured. Her bedroom, filled with the hearts and unicorns of a young girl whose parents thought she would enjoy appropriately girlish items, was gone. In its place was a garden, overflowing with spring abundance in flowers and fruit. Young girls dressed in A-line frocks and gloves milled around, some holding plates or cups.
“Cake!” Arti started to move toward the punch bowl.
“Stop it!” Lynn held her friend back. “We aren’t dressed for this.”
“Well, I want to get back. And if I can’t get back, cake sounds like a good option.”
Biting her lip, Lynn thought her friend was probably right. “Fine. But you answer questions about who we are.”
She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed to find that in this world, the girls were shadows. Arti’s hand passed right through the cake, the table, and the punch bowl. She’d needed to be restrained from doing it to the girls. “It’s rude,” she hissed, keeping her voice low.
“It’s fun,” Arti corrected, swinging around with an arm out. A girl shivered at her touch. “Hey, you see the lady in the green dress?”
“I know her!” Lynn yelped. “I’ve seen her in a picture. Recently, too.”
Arti went pale, and stopped struggling to dance her way through the garden party. “We both did. That’s Mrs. Murphy.”
Laughing, Lynn shook her head. “Must be her granddaughter or something.”
An adult woman entered the backyard from a sliding door, followed by a number of boys about the same age as the girls. The girls began cooing, clustering in groups. The boys stood their ground, but looked exceedingly uncomfortable.
“I think that one’s going to run,” Arti whispered. The groups began mingling, mostly huddled around the food table.
“That’s not…no. Can’t be.” Lynn frowned.
The adult woman was joined by several others for a few minutes before she broke away. “Jean,” she said as the woman approached the girl in the green dress. “I’d like you to meet Elliot.”
The garden’s edges blurred into a multicolored swirl. Lynn’s bedroom appeared. “I’m all stiff, like we were there for too long,” she muttered, and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
“Well, my knees hurt from kneeling here,” Arti retorted. Neither of them looked at each other for a long, silent moment. “Did you -?”
“Yeah.” Lynn kicked her legs. “Jean and Elliot are Mr. and Mrs. Murphy. I heard Mom call them that once.”
Arti’s voice was hoarse, and her hand shook slightly. “Where do you think the rest of the eggs lead?”
“When, you mean.” Lynn leaned down and picked up Arti’s puzzle egg. “You hold it, and I’ll push the button.”
***
A late response to last week’s More Odds Than Ends prompt from Sanford Begley: “Rooting through the old farm midden heap, looking for antique jars, you find a nest of golden colored eggs.”
My challenge to be inspired by an unusual color and holiday combination went to Cedar Sanderson, who did not disappoint!
“I’m naming it Bourbon,” Leila said. Her voice shone with triumph, but her hands were still and careful around the bundle of fur nestled in her lap.
I glanced over before flicking my eyes back to the wet asphalt, amused. “We didn’t even make it to the bar tonight.” I missed my rare indulgence, too. It’d been too long since I’d had a good whiskey sour. This place was all dark woods and bartenders who didn’t let you tell them how to do their job. They made their drinks the real way, with foaming egg whites and garnished with a gleaming luxardo cherry so dark you couldn’t tell it was red.
Her pout was evident from her shift in posture. “If we name her Bourbon, we never drink alone.”
I rolled my eyes and pulled into the apartment parking lot, glad the spot under the light was still open. The benefits of coming home early. “You and I both know she’s going to end up my cat. Eddie will finally come to his senses and ask you out any day now. Then I get left alone with this gorgeous calico.”
Bourbon let out a sleepy yawn as I snagged her off Leila’s lap. “Hey!” the larger of the pair protested. “She was my tiny heating pad.”
“And you’re hogging her.” I buried my face into her soft fur. No sign of fleas, thank goodness. “I suppose her eyes are whiskey-colored.”
We climbed the stairs to our second floor apartment, kitten in hand, and set her to exploring while Leila and I pulled out makeshift everything. A disposable baking tray I didn’t know we even owned filled with paper towels stood in for a litter box. And don’t get me started on how fast that kitten tried to scarf down an entire can of tuna.
“We’ll get her proper things tomorrow,” Leila said, and I suppressed a sigh. It was already clear she’d be picking out toys while I’d be talking to the vet. The money would be coming from my wallet, not hers.
I could have said no, I suppose, but the kitten really was adorable. Sweet, not feral. And when Leila’s future intended got up the nerve to ask her out, I’d be on my own. She might think I was joking, but I’d read the tea leaves and watched his gaze often enough. I wouldn’t be wrong.
Just like I wasn’t wrong that this tiny puff of multicolored fur had been sent for me.
An hour later, poorly made drinks from inferior liquor in hand, Leila and I watched Bourbon bat around a crumpled up paper ball. She was complaining about her boss again, and I listened with half an ear. The cat was the only new factor in this scenario.
Both of them had fallen asleep on the couch once her drink was finished. Me, I dimmed the lights and spent quiet contemplation time in the windowsill, cradling my half-full drink and staring out the glass into the darkness, wishing I could see the stars. Now that my familiar had come, the next week or so would be critical to determining my future.
If only I knew what that future would be. I leaned on my free hand and studied the glittering lights in the apartment building across the street and beyond until a faint noise distracted me.
Leila still slept, but Bourbon stalked a dust bunny my roommate had missed with the vacuum. Again. I took a drink and smiled.
The kitten batted the dust bunny into oblivion, rolling on the carpet to ensure it was trapped between her paws and dead. She arched and hissed at the empty corner, fur electric and enlarging. The smile wiped from my face.
To go through life without the bond I already felt growing between us would be abhorrent. And yet – I was unsure. Guardians didn’t have long lifespans. I’d never been much of a fighter. The single flight of stairs up to the apartment was the closest I usually got to working out.
But familiars were never wrong.
It would have been nice to keep the calico disguise for more than a few hours, though. Leila hadn’t drunk nearly enough to explain how our tiny kitten had become a mountain lion cub overnight.
***
This week on odd prompts, my challenge went to nother Mike: “With this ring, I thee wed.” Grinning, she slid the ring on his finger, looked up, and…
I received “The kitten arched and hissed at the empty corner” from Cedar Sanderson.
Join the fun!
Char perched in the window of the stone ruin, ready to leap to the battered floor at the first crumble of unstable mortar. It felt reasonable under her rubber-soled boots, and she settled into her current guard position, hidden behind an ivy curtain that covered half the open window.
Well, behind something that looked like ivy to her eyes, at least. Orb X57 reminded her of Society, her home planet. Training let her automatically categorize the most evident differences – ground covering a silvered grey rather than green, the dominant harvest plant color maroon rather than the vivid orange she remembered.
She shifted in her perch and adjusted her grip on her weapon, scanning the dull grey horizon and treeline. It wouldn’t do to get careless, thinking she was home. Not with most of her squad downstairs sleeping.
And not that home brought fond memories. Char rolled her shoulders to ease the tension creeping into her neck. Society was long behind her, and this wasn’t her planet. Orb X57 was the planet they were checking for colony viability. So far, it seemed promising.
At the sound of a bootfall, she relaxed further. Two solid months of training let her identify the sound as her squadmate John without turning. He was slowly patrolling the tower’s south side, marking a crescent between east and west with his tread. Sam was at the bottom of the surprisingly well-kept ruin’s stairs, guarding the only entrance and their only exit, carefully camouflaged with local foliage. Char was overwatch for Sam until they traded positions. Without the shuttle, they’d be stuck on this planet until Command could afford to send someone to get them. It was worth the tradeoff to protect their only escape route.
“Nothing to report, boss,” John said in a low baritone. It would carry less than a whisper. “No signs of current habitation.”
She nodded. “Mist starting at the edge of the forest, there. Keep sharp.” Orb X57 so far had been damp, chill ground mixing with warm northern breeze. Perfect fog conditions.
Char studied the forest. The dark green trees with pointed tops looked like they’d keep their coloring throughout the coming winter. Her briefing packet identified this as a planet with a long, warm growing season and a light winter. Command thought this could be one of the original lost colonies, sent millenia before to increase humanity’s presence throughout the galaxy.
The histories called Old Earth’s plan to seed likely planets self-sufficiency. Char called limited scientific surveys and no supply chain both stupid and doomed to failure.
“Contact.” Her fingers had moved automatically to depress the comm button before she’d consciously realized what her eyes had seen. “Contact, moving fast. Northern forest.”
“I see it.” Sam’s voice was smooth and calm in her ear. “Estimate about five minutes away at current speed.”
Two clicks on the comm meant the group below was up and readying for action.
She trained her binoculars on the blurred, moving figure, careful not to flash the lenses in the dim morning light. A horse and rider emerged into her view. The pair stumbled out of the northern forest, staggering away from the mist’s grasping fingers.
Char blinked. What flight of fancy was this nonsense? And yet – she could have sworn the horse reacted to the fog, jumping away.
She increased the magnification and focused on the chestnut. It had magnificent lines, but yes, blood streaked both croup and hock where the mist had reached for the creature. The rider was slumped over the saddle, face hidden. “Probable confirmation of lost colony and continued habitation. Horse and rider. Both injured or exhausted, no visible weapons.”
Char kept the binoculars up and trained on the mist. She heard John’s footsteps behind her on the stone floor. “Nothing from the other directions.”
“Take the risk. Prepare for action to the north.” Char felt her jaw harden against her indecision and wondered if being in charge always meant making it up as she went along. “Something weird here.”
His laugh rumbled low behind her. “New planet always has something weird. Gris reports everyone downstairs is up and prepped for action. We’ll be fine.” He took a position next to hers, on the other side of the window, weapon at the ready.
John’s reassurance helped her first command jitters, if not her decisionmaking. Binocs moved smoothly in her hand to the slowing horse and rider.
Just in time to see the mist lunge for the horse, to watch the chestnut mare scream, her head up and eyes wild. The rider came to life, sliding off the horse to collapse into a pile of leather rags on the ground, silver-grey grasses covered in the first dropped vermillion leaves of autumn. The figure crawled for a few frantic moments, dodging frenzied hooves before lurching to two feet and beginning a faltering run.
The mist withdrew a few feet, air pink with aerated blood, momentarily satiated. The horse collapsed to the ground, squeals evident even from a distance, unable to rise.
Char dropped the binoculars around her neck. “Evac! Evac now. Everyone to the shuttle.”
She made frantic hand motions at her second in command. “Now!”
John stared at her unblinking for a brief moment before he bolted down the stairs. His baritone bellowed down the tower staircase. “Evac now, evac now, grab your gear and go!”
She looked one frantic time at the deepening pink mist, now enveloping the horse up to her withers. Char turned and ran down the stairs, grabbing her pack as she slid across the tower’s polished second floor. The others were already ahead of her, running in a diamond formation.
Sam waited for her at the entrance. “Took you long enough,” she grunted. The two women bolted after the others, all traces of stealth abandoned.
The shuttle’s engines started with a roar. Char risked a glance over her shoulder at the figure now chasing after them. The androgynous figure put on another spurt of speed, mist looming large and sanguine behind it.
“Sha’eka,” Char spat, and ran faster. She could barely breathe by the time she reached the shuttle. John reached out a hand and yanked her on board by her pack.
“You’re the last.” The airlock doors were open, its single crew cycle unused until returning to the ship. He bodily shoved her past the second door and leaned back to close the main door.
Char coughed, wheezing. “No, I’m not.”
“Boss, you’ve got to be kidding.” John gave her another split-second stare of disbelief. “Right. Closing inner airlock door only.”
“There’s room enough in there.”
“On your head be it.” He shook his head. “Pilot, takeoff in twenty seconds, regardless of how crazy the boss is.”
Twenty seconds later, the outer door was secured, but she was out of time to strap in. She slid to the floor and braced against the thrust. Her weapon would be secure enough in her lap for now, with her arms looped through the emergency straps on the inner airlock door. She gripped the stock and with her free hand, Char double-tapped the comms button to reach her superior officers.
“Command, Squad Leader Charlotte Merikh, emergency squad evacuation of Orb X57, all crew on board. Shuttle is inbound for Aquilon. We have likely confirmation as a lost colony.”
“Squad Leader, Command, explain.”
“Command, the planet has horses.” No one had found their like originating anywhere across the universe outside of Old Earth, but most early colonies had carried embryos and the short-term means to birth a diverse herd.
“Copy. Continue debrief.”
She closed her eyes in relief and pressed the back of her head against the cool metal of the shuttle. The voice didn’t sound unhappy about the early evac. “Command, planet appears to have hostile carnivorous intent. We are unable to proceed without additional protection. A mist…ate the horse.”
“Copy. Anticipate hard decon upon arrival.”
Char winced. No one sane liked hard decontamination. She ignored the thumps and unintelligible but increasingly high-pitched gibberish coming through the window just above her head. “Command, complicating factor in the airlock…”
***
Catching up after a few extremely hectic weeks! Week 39‘s Odd Prompt came from Cedar Sanderson: “The fog was an unnatural cotton-candy pink as the sun rose. As the light hit it, it glowed, but there was a moving shadow in the heart of it. What emerged…” My prompt went back to Cedar; “Don’t wake up the computer. It’ll bite.”
Hesitation and numbness are the predominant sentiments I remember from when she passed. Oh, not that those are emotions, exactly. But when grief overwhelms, and becomes too great, every decision is hesitation, every feeling vaguely numb.
When the matriarch of a family dies, there are so many decisions, so many feelings. Never mind that most of the decisions had been made a decade before. Each step is part of the process, laid out before us. We proceed as expected because it is simply what one does during these times.
Family rarely seen and unlikely to congregate again once dispersed, this final concluding time, held together by the stories of 102 years.
Someone always had just one more tale. Even Shorty herself. She didn’t us she’d been an inadvertent rumrunner during Prohibition until well after she’d passed a hundred. The beer in her hand might have helped the story escape.
Even laughter only leaves one exhausted, carrying on because that’s what you do after someone leaves. Our rock, our center, had left us behind.
Exhaustion carries you through the whole process. The only time it lifted was when we’d walked into the funeral home, a group of mourners, and heard her voice. A mistake, I’d hoped, and knew it was futile even as I yearned.
When you’re old, you see, the Library of Congress takes an interest in your stories, and records them. I still can’t bring myself to listen, refused to pay attention to her digitized words. My copy remains unopened on my computer’s desktop. The thought of hearing her voice again causes a permanent hesitation.
And now I find myself standing in front of her secretary, the antique-style reddish wood shining under yellowed light. Inside I know I’ll find her spidery handwriting, legible and perfect, the product of Catholic schools and her own experience as a teacher.
My hand is on the handle, and still I pause.
***
Shorty was my grandmother, who passed several years ago just shy of 102. She lived all of five minutes down the road, and remains one of my favorite people. Wherever she is, I fully expect she is ballroom dancing.
The Library of Congress program is called StoryCorps. My mother did play the recording at the funeral home, and forgot to warn anyone. My brother and I both heard the recording, decided grandma was a zombie, and freaked out.
I still can’t bring myself to listen to her stories. They’re waiting for me, when I’m ready.
Thank you, Becky Jones, for letting me share a small bit of her with you for this week’s Odd Prompt. “She stood in front of her grandmother’s secretary (the furniture piece, not the person) and took a deep breath. There was no knowing what the old lady had stashed in there. Reaching out her hand she grasped the handle and pulled…”
My prompt of “Failure is a powerful motivator to learn. But sometimes…” went to Cedar Sanderson, who wrapped up the perambulating hatrack this week in a fantastic climax. I can’t wait to see it published!
