Daily Excerpt - November 11th

[alison-sky.livejournal.com]

POST YOUR NOVEL EXCERPT HERE!!!!

Please keep it relatively short, and only in this thread. Thanks!

No more than 4000 words, and please no multiple posts!


Also! Need help with a plot point? Want something to do while you procrastinate? Please utilize the Weekly Plot Help thread to get and give help!

Comments

[telscha.livejournal.com]

He watched her face tremble, her bottom lip quivering before she bit it hard. He moved over to her as she started crying again and wrapped his arms round her. “Come here,” he whispered.

Nicole stiffened for a moment as his scent and arms surrounded her, then felt the dam within her break and leaning into him, sobbed.

Jem stood there and held her. Then as the crutches fell to the floor and she gripped him tightly with her hands, he took her entire weight. “I got you,” he said gently. “Everything will be okay.”

#-#-#

Ten minutes later he still stood there. He moved his hands gently down her back, comforting her. Then he slowly raised her face to his. “I promise, it’ll be okay.”

Nicole looked at him, seeing him in a totally different light. Things had changed. Life was short. She knew what she wanted and who she wanted. And right now the man she wanted was standing right in front of her. “I’m sorry Mr. Anderson-”

“Jem,” he said looking at her. He raised a hand and brushed the hair from her face. Her eyes were red, her face swollen, but in his eyes she’d never looked prettier. “I think after crying all over me, you earned the right to call me by my first name.”

“Jem,” she said, his touch bringing her out in goose bumps.

“That sounds good,” he said relishing the way his name sounded when she said it.

Nicole looked at him. “And I’m Nicole.”

Jem looked into her eyes and smiled, his fingertips still touching her face. “Nicole,” he said. “You should sit down.”

She tightened her grip on him, her proximity to him, making her knees weaker than they were. “Maybe you’re right.”

He smiled at her, noticing how that seemed to make her lose her balance even more. He bent down and picked up her crutches. “Then how about you sit and we talk a bit?”

She reluctantly took the crutches. “Sure. Kitchen’s this way.”

authors note: he's not meant to kiss her for another 30 pages ;-)

[rona-dolvi.livejournal.com]

(Overview: Humanity morphs some animals into humanesque types to work as slaves and in the military. This takes place 60 years after a huge war that leaves humanity near extinction... the 'Hum-Animals' however, are flurishing.))

"Did it ever occur to you that these GCP may be right?"

I even stop and look at the mouse standing there on the desk, "What?"

"I mean, just get on their side of things. They were the dominant spieces, and we all know that humans are greedy, corruptive and think that they are worthy of more than they have... They think that we are taking over..."

I stop her, "Makojin, most humans are sterile anyways. They are dying off..."

"I know that, you know that... I think that these humans, as ignorant as their hate is, would rather have themselves die off alone than have something they created take over."

"I'm not following." Luke sighs, "But either way, I think we should head over to the Rally March and see what's up."

"Luke, that's a brilliant idea." I say sarcastically. "A couple of Hum-Animals going to a pro-Human rally, not only that, but a GCP rally!!! What do you want on your tombstone? 'Here lays Luke... Not laying you?"

He gives me a death glare and I duck the pen that flies towards me, and I stick out my tongue at him.

Makojin shakes her head. "Children, that’s it, children. I work with children."

[puffingnoise.livejournal.com]

Crisp; the cool morning air pressed its fingers against my skin, and the hair on my arms stood at attention. Autumn had rolled in gently with the warm orange-angled sunlight whispering over the grass. Between the quiet rows of apple trees, the soft rumble of apples rolling into wooden crates will always remind me of him, having picked apples side-by-side for two months.

The quiet of an apple orchard allows two people to know each other more intimately than even traveling with them in a boxcar across the country. The miles rolling by and the clatter of the wheels had always distracted me from getting to know him, from fully trusting him. Trust had come at first as a necessity rather than willingly, as his original persistence of traveling with me had my defenses at alert. But months later, it was different. The security of having someone familiar near, the comfort of a familiar voice shushed by the reverence of the air around, soothed and calmed me.

We listened to the birds, the light snap and rustle of fruit being pulled off branches, and the barely audible thunder of apples rolling into bins across the orchard.

"What do you want out of life," he asked me from his ladder balanced carefully on the branches. His hands palmed a number of apples, and I watched his careful fingers drop them into the canvas bag slung around his neck.

I sat back against a branch on the inside of the neighboring tree. A cluster of leaves blocked his face from my view, but I still watched his hands. I'd taken to doing that over the past couple of months; watching him picking apples, adjusting his hat, buttoning the clips of his overalls in the mornings when he emerged for breakfast. His fingers were long and lean and seemed to be at once strong and careful.

"To feel secure," I said carefully. "That's what I really want. It's all I want right now." Knowing we'd be out of a job soon at the end of the harvest, and back into the uncertainty of riding the rails had me on edge, my mind swirling.

I saw his hands pause, lift up to a rung of the ladder, his fingers wrapping around it carefully, and then his face appeared between the leaves. His blue eyes were sympathetic and full; full of more than I had seen in them when we first met and he'd unsuccessfully tried to woo me across three states.

My stomach began to flutter before he nodded once, and then his face was gone again, his back straight, his hands working once more.

"Me? I'd like to see you in a dress," his voice asserted, and I dropped a perfectly good apple. It cracked in two on a branch on the way down, and I searched through the leaves for his face.

"That's what you want most out of life?" I asked, reaching for an apple above my head.

"Mm-hmm," he hummed, and I peeked around the leaves again to see a smile on his face.

More apples tumbled into a bin a few rows over, and I went back to work, catching up to earn my pay for my day's work.

[ruth-the-sleuth.livejournal.com]

I love this. Is it set during the Depression? It reminds me a little bit of Sullivan's Travels.

[puffingnoise.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :o)
Yup, it's set during the Depression.

[mlleraquel.livejournal.com]

The exact moment Trevor had realized he wanted Daphne for his own was easy to pinpoint. They had been on their way through Coney Island, down on the West End near Norton’s Point, when he spotted a young boy reaching to pickpocket her. As he had moved to stop him, he halted abruptly. She had, in one fluid motion, grabbed the boy’s arm and placed a blade against his throat. A smirk spread across his face as he watched the boy stammer, apologizing, staring up into her blue eyes which were darkened with anticipation.

“Get away from me,” she had ordered, pulling her knife away, letting go of his arm as she shoved him away from her. Without a glance back he went darting through the crowd.

“You are,” Trevor had stated as he watched her put her knife away, “my kind of woman.”

[usedusernames.livejournal.com]

"Get any God damn thing you want,” George reiterated, his voice instantaneously made calmer. He sat on the stool to the left of Lennie.

Lennie nodded. He smiled at the waitress. "I can get any God damn thing…" he swung about to look at George. “What’s them things with the bread an’ the, an’ the meat?” he used his hands to make something of substance out of the nothing of air.

“Sandwich.”

“Naw, it ain’t, George. No it ain’t, neither.”

“If you know what it is, get it for God’ sakes.”

“I don‘ remember, George.”

“Hamburger,” George guessed again.

“Tha’s it! That’s it, George!” Lennie, with a wide smile, turned triumphantly to the waitress and asked for a hamburger.

George smirked briefly. “You’d be a hell of a lot easier to deal with if there weren’t no pro’bition,” he said, shaking his head in fond bemusement. Lennie turned to look at him and asked ’What you say, George?’, before whipping back around to try and tell how his order was coming. George said nothing more; he opted instead to lay his face against the countertop. Half-lidded and vision partially blocked by the counter, he watched Lennie as vigilantly as a blind man could.

[youfeelittoo.livejournal.com]

Very, very intriguing.

[usedusernames.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :)

[youfeelittoo.livejournal.com]

No problem. Got me interested that's for sure.

[puffingnoise.livejournal.com]

Is this like, a spinoff of "Of Mice and Men"?
It's good, though.

[usedusernames.livejournal.com]

Kind of like the prequel to it, taking place from where Lennie's Aunt Clara died to the start of the novella.

Thanks.

[puffingnoise.livejournal.com]

Ah, ok. Cool!

[imaginepageant.livejournal.com]

Someone dared me to write a scene with sprint mod callita623 dancing naked in the rain... and this ~dream sequence~ was born!

The rain, although relentless, was falling gently, a loving caress against her skin. It bathed her in purity, washing away her mistakes and her misgivings, freeing her of her sins. Within seconds the outline of her body was visible through the white cotton dress that had become translucent, and her hair, a rich brunette when dry, had blackened with moisture and plastered itself against her forehead and the nape of her neck. She lifted her face and her arms to the sky, and closed her eyes as she began to turn, once, twice, and a third time, swaying in rhythym with the sheets of rain that shimmered in the air.

He watched her from a distance, wishing he was close enough to see the droplets collecting in her eyelashes, close enough to feel the slick texture of her skin as water cascaded down the hills and valleys of her body. He could not remember ever seeing anyone so beautiful in his entire life, and every nerve in his body seemed to be reaching out towards her. He was absolutely sure that if he could experience her sort of purity and innocence, he, too, would be washed clean. He ached to kiss her, to see if she tasted of forgiveness.

When the downpour tapered off into a slight drizzle, she opened her eyes and turned them towards him, beckoning him with the tilt of her head, the curl of her lip. He counted the raindrops that touched his face as he closed the distance between them, each second passing almost too slowly for him to bear. As he drew closer, he realized her skin was incandescent, radiating a light that seemed to dim as his hand reached out to touch her. The moment his fingers grazed the slope of her neck, her entire body dissolved, becoming the water that had bathed her. It cascaded to the ground and pooled around his ankles. He peered down into the surface that was still but for the rippling disturbance of the last raindrops. He looked for his reflection, but saw nothing but the dark, billowing clouds above.

[puffingnoise.livejournal.com]

This is so beautiful. I got all teary at the end. How sad!

[imaginepageant.livejournal.com]

Aw, thank you!

This probably makes no sense to anyone but me. Which means it's in the NaNo spirit!

[grimmerlove.livejournal.com]

“Zae… I’ve been fired.”

Those four words were enough to completely destroy their comfortable reality. Zaeokou and Raevaal had been together since they were five years old, him always having served her as a bodyguard, and they had chosen this moment to tear them apart? Zaeokou stood at the portal with tears in her eyes, the wind blowing her hair in her face. She was mostly upset that Raevaal was about to leave her, but there was a part of her that was extremely annoyed at the fact that her fucking hair wouldn’t get the fuck out of her face. Raevaal saw this and went back over to her, then forced a sad little smile before tucking Zaeokou’s hair behind her ears. He knew damn well that she could have reached up and smacked him right then, in fact she felt like it, but… that just wouldn’t have been a suitable goodbye.

“I’ll always love you, Zae… I’ll find a way back to you, I promise.” As he kissed her forehead and ran his hand over her cheek for the last time, she allowed herself to actually cry. When she looked back up at him, it was as if she had personally smacked him in the face with a super-powered mecha arm or something. She raised an eyebrow and he shook his head slightly. “No... I’m fine. I’ve just never seen you cry before. To think you’re crying for me is just…”

“I’m not crying for you, you arrogant bastard,” Zaeokou replied, crossing her arms over her chest as she stared him down.

Raevaal couldn’t help but let out a sad chuckle at this. “I know. You just have something in your eyes, don’t you? Both of them?” This earned him a swift kick in the knee, which made him flinch the slightest bit. He had deserved that one, though. “Sorry, Zae… I’m just trying to make light of—“

“Make light of? You think this is something that you can just make into some huge fucking joke?”

“That isn’t what I meant… but I really have to leave now, Zae. I love you…” He took her left hand in both of his and slipped something on her finger, then quickly turned and made his way back over to the portal.

Zaeokou stared after him for a long while after he had disappeared through it, unable to help herself. Then, she forced herself to look down. She knew what he had done, but she had to look and make sure that it was really there. “A ring…” she mumbled quietly, holding it up in front of her face so that she could see it better. It was a gorgeous, flawless thing. Three diamonds intertwined in a brilliant manner, with a beautiful vine pattern engraved in the thin, white gold band. As she stared at the ring, his voice ran through her head. Even after he had left, she had to be plagued by the sound.

“The most beautiful ring I could find for the most beautiful woman in the world… The woman I cherish more than anything.”

Zaeokou was crying again, and she didn’t even bother to wipe away the tears this time. She shook her head before picking up a rock and throwing it at the portal, hoping against all hope that it somehow hit him square in the back of the head. Too bad she would never know if it did or not. “You son of a bitch…”

The opening of the second half of the novel

[xoshimmystarox.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, it’s her dad that suggests the whole idea.


“A couple of friends of mine are away for the summer, they own the pub we all went to last time we were in London. They’ve asked if you and Cedric will stay and help run it and house sit in their flat for the summer.” He had suggested airily over breakfast and Shirley had choked on her drink while Cedric had then launched into a miniature Spanish inquisition. “The condition is that both of you need to go.” Her mum had nodded and left for a meeting with her publisher and her dad had still been sat, waiting for his answer.



Shirley said no while Cedric said yes and dad had conveniently had to go type up a report and had left them to argue it out over with a parting shot of, “the chief does not concern himself with trifles, Shirley.” And Shirley had just about restrained herself from pointing out that their mum was the chief in this house.



So for the next few days Shirley and Cedric had sniped and snarked back and forth at every available meal time with their mum ending up sending them from the table on more than one occasion. Finally though, after Cedric whining for long enough, Iona decides to play peace maker (if you talk to Cedric) and Devil’s Advocate (if you talk to Shirley).



“I’d have thought you’d be the one jumping at the chance to go to London on your own for months.” She begins and Shirley watches her warily because her mum’s a writer, has been since before Shirley was born so she knows how to pick her words, how to trap you in an argument. It’d be worse if it was her dad though because for all his apparent obliviousness and moments of sheer stupidity, he’s a psychologist and he’d end up analysing her and she’d scream and there’d be all this nonsense about issues and denial and Shirley doesn’t have the patience for it.

“It’s just…it’s London. I’ve only been there once.”

“And you loved it.”

“We were there for a week!”
“And you’d have been in Camden every day if you could. Look, pretty girl like you,” it’s on the tip of Shirley’s tongue to counter back with an I’m not pretty but she doesn’t, “in London, helping to run a pub, staying in a flat above said pub. In an area that all the indie hipsters hang out in and do whatever it is that they do. You’re eighteen, time for you and Cedric to get out and have some fun before uni starts in September.” Shirley really can’t argue with that part.

[themournfulduck.livejournal.com]

My other classes are easier to bear. I get out of school and walk towards the bus but I hear someone shout "ELLIE" and I pause.
It must be someone shouting for another Ellie. It can't be my father yelling for me.
But it sounded like him.
In spite of myself, I turn my head. On the other side of the fence is a tall man with brown hair, in a brown jacket, with a brown paper bag. It is him. I look at the bus and then back at him. He waves to me. I run to him. He's gripping the fence, and I put my hands on his fingers.
"Will you come with me?"
I nod. I must.
When I get to the other side of the fence, he puts his arms around me and I breathe in deeply his smell, almost crying. How could he leave me so long? Parents shouldn't leave their kids. Why didn't he take me with him?
"How are you?" he asks me and tries to break apart from me but I don't let go. I don 't ever want to let go. When I do he'll be gone again. Maybe this could last forever. Maybe I wouldn't even ever need anything else.
But my face is buried in his chest and he wants to see it (to make sure I am the right one) so he puts his thumb under my chin and tilts up my head and looks into my eyes. "How are you?" he says.
"Fine," I say. I know that since he's looking in my eyes he can tell that I'm lying. That my heart is actually breaking all the time. He always taught me not to lie but if he hadn't left I would still be truthful and maybe even cheerful. But since he left I've had to hide who I really am.
But I can't hide from him.
"Do you want to go get ice cream?" he asks me. I nod, and allow the embrace to end. My hand slips into his, like it did when I was five. I don't care what people think about this. I don't want him to slip away from me. I'd be left all alone.
"How is school," he asks me, as we lick our ice cream cones. I notice that we have the exact same technique. Maybe most people do though.
"Good," I respond, though he can tell that isn't the truth either. We both got chocolate. I was fulfilling my craving from earlier but now whenever I have ice cream I get chocolate. I used to get mint chocolate chip, or other exciting kinds of ice cream, with different chunks in it, and my father almost went to order me mint chocolate chip, but he stopped himself, paused, and said, "well, what do you want, Ellie?" And I told him just chocolate.
"Why are you here?" I ask him. I want him to say he is here because he missed me. Not something stupid like, I was in the neighborhood.
"I was in the neighborhood," he says, but I look in his eyes and can tell he's lying.
"How long are you staying?" I ask him.
"I can't stay long." This is the truth.
I want to ask him what he's been up to but I'm afraid to know the truth, so I ask him, "what's in the bag?"
"It's for you," he says, and he presents it to me. I open it. In it is a card with money, a box of chocolates, and a crucifix. I will never eat the chocolates, because that would mean I couldn't keep them. (I probably will spend the money, though). And as for the cross-necklace, I lift it over my head and put it on. People will think now that I believe in Jesus Christ but they are wrong. For me, the cross has always stood for my father.

[ruth-the-sleuth.livejournal.com]

So I cut her hair to the bottom of her neck and then when she said More I cut it to her chin and then when she said More I gave the scissors to her and said Do it yourself and went outside to sit on the porch for a while. I sat out there for an hour and listened to the snip of the silver scissors through gold and tried to read a book but put it down after reading the same half-page seven or eight times and went back inside and turned on the TV hoping for a pleasant movie and turned off the TV when the only thing on the only channel was another news show, always another news show, about the Golden State Killer: I watched it long enough to see that he had killed another girl, a high-schooler from a town in northern California, and the newsman said there were all indications that he was moving north toward Oregon, and showed a school picture of the girl, so pretty, so happy, so smart: she had long, bright hair, parted in the middle, though from the black-and-white picture you could not tell the shade; she had gentle eyes, and a gentle mouth, and looked as though she had not yet learned the thing that most men want. She looked toward the camera, smiling, and knew that everything would always go her way.

She had been found in a drainage ditch by the side of the I-5 forty miles north of the town she had been abducted from. Her hands had been bound, and there were bite marks around her shoulders. Her tongue was gone. I turned off the TV before they said what else he had taken, got a beer and went outside to the porch and looked at the river and instead of thinking listened to the sounds of the night and tried to isolate each one from the rest: I listened to the chirp of the crickets and the cooing of the peacocks in their roosts, the breeze in the treetops, the cars on the highway, the faint music from Rosie’s Bar, where Shyla had once worked, half a mile down the road; kids laughing in a house somewhere, voices carrying through an open window, cats crying, and the slow deep pulse of the river under everything else. I took them all away from each other and added them all together again; I remembered, from the time my father and I were staying with the Mantovani woman, a record that played one movement of a symphony and then took it apart piece by piece, each instrument playing its own part, then put it back together again. I listened to all the pieces of the night and put them back together, and every car backfiring and cat crying as beautiful, I thought, as any violin or harp.

[puffingnoise.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is really pretty.

[ruth-the-sleuth.livejournal.com]

Thank you. ^_^

[alpha-orionis-v.livejournal.com]

Two hands turned to one, lightly tracing circles on Nicholas' stomach when a high-pitched squeak echoed off of porcelain tiles. Nicholas stiffened sharply, his jaw clenched as he turned round, blindly grabbing the grinning yellow duck from Danny's hands.

"No," he said simply, perching the toy back on the shelf next to his razor, his fingers pausing slightly on the slick rubber before turning his attention back to not smelling like condom lubricant and sweat.

"You all right, Nick?" Danny asked lightly, letting his hand trail down Nicholas' chest. "S'just a duck. Not like they're all that hard to come by."

"I just..." Nicholas started, looking over at the duck, "prefer that some things not be touched," he said unevenly.

"S'all right," Danny said, kissing Nicholas lightly on the forehead. "I get it." He didn't, really. At all. But it sounded like the right thing to say.

[lmeighmy.livejournal.com]

Lucky tried to turn his face away from hers, but he felt numb. She held his face with both her small hands. He struggled as much as he could and finally stumbled away from her, confused and delirious.

“Why did you...? What...? I don't feel so good...” He said, his speech slurred. He tried to stand, but fell again.

Then, mercifully, he passed out.

Toshiko nodded to the two closest men and they came forward, easily lifting Lucky from the floor. Toshiko opened a panel next to the door and pushed a button. Part of the wall began to move downward, exposing a small medical lab, of sorts. The men laid Lucky upon a medical table and strapped him down.

“Leave him. Soon he will come to, and I want to be the only one in the room with him.” Toshiko ordered.

The men left the room and Toshiko sat herself down in a chair beside the table, waiting........

Copyright © 2008 by Lois Eighmy.
You can read more in my journal (http://lmeighmy.livejournal.com)...

Mysterious, nearly unrelated prologues are fun~

[typophsyco.livejournal.com]

Combinations of dark and nothingness. Burgundy velvet. Comforting, soft...but unnatural. It was as if she had plunged herself into the depths of some forgotten ocean, as if she had traveled too far for anyone to find her. Her ocean was too secure, too hidden. Safe.

Now if only she could breath, everything would be alright. If only she could take that first breath, that first gasp of air to put an end to this panic. Anything. Anything to stop the drowning. She needed air- she wanted air. She wanted to feel free. She wanted to feel rose petals and frozen grass on her fingertips. She wanted the fresh scents of autumn leaves and running water to cling to her hair. She wanted to predict the wind, and the crashing of the waves. Memories that seemed too far away, almost completely out of reach. Perhaps they were imaginary things in this darkness- This nothingness.

Perhaps they were only lost figments.

[krispy-kream.livejournal.com]

((It's Halloween. Slice-of-life. And a dare I got from the forums. Beware of typos, of course.))

Roxas spent most of the night eating the real food that Larxene's stepmom had been so kind as to leave out for them near the kitchen and Demyx and Axel came to entertain him often.
That's when Demyx found the cabnet with all the baking ingredients.
"You don't need more sugar, you dolt," Axel laughed when he saw that Demyx was investigating the different containers the cabnet held. Demyx was pointedly ignoring this piece of advice, however, and pulled out a small container simply labled 'cinnamon.'
"Oh, cinnamon sugar! I've been missing out on this flavor," he said, as if justifying the extra intake. He grabbed a spoon and shoveled some into him mouth, while Axel just laughed at him and Roxas hung his head only partly fake shame. Demyx pulled the spoon out of his mouth and starting making strange faces.
"Wait, fuck," he said, trying to open and close his mouth, which was still strangly full of cinnamon, "I can't swallow!" Axel and Roxas stopped laughing at stared at him.
"Wait, what?" Roxas asked incredulously and Axel took the spoon from Demyx so he could he could try his own spoonfull and try to see what Demyx was talking about. It only took a few seconds, but Axel's face contorted in some strange sort of effort and he turned, wide eyed, to Demyx.
"Holy crap!" He made a few lip smacking noises before continuing with more amusment than Demyx seemed to be feeling, "it won't go down!"
"I know, what the hell!"
"What are you guys doing?" Peter asked as he came into the room and Axel got a spoonful of cinnamon and passed it to him.
"Dude, eat this, it's crazy," he explained and Peter only looked quizically at the spoon for a moment before complying.
"... Whoa, what the hell!"
"I know! Crazy, isn't it?" Roxas had to hide his face in his hands and tried valiantly to pretend that he did not actually know anyone in the room. Demyx had simply gone quite and was still attempting to get rid of all the cinnamon in his mouth on his own. Axel and Peter were causing a large enough commotion that everyone suddenly felt compelled to come see what it was that had them so worked up.
"What are you doing in my kitchen?" Larxene demanded, a grand smirk planted on her face dispite her slightly firmer tone. Axel just got another spoon full of cinnamon.
"Larx, you have to try this," he explained, voice slightly muffled since his mouth was still full cinnamon, "This shit dries out your mouth and it just wont go down at all, it's crazy!"
"What?" she said in complete disbelief, but stuck the spoon in her mouth anyway. She stood there and contemplated the cinnamon in her mouth before her eyes widened in apparent surprise. "Oh my god, I can't swallow!" she exclaimed then.
"I know!"
"That's crazy!"
The cycle, of course, did not end there. Everyone in the room went through the same exact epifeny right down to the 'holy crap's and 'this is crazy's. Roxas was apparently the only one who wanted to just take everyone's word for it and not attempt to swallow something that had clearly been proven to be impossible to swallow. Axel was the most disappointed by this fact and, since he had gotten another spoon full out just to make Roxas try it, he almost stuffed a second spoon full in his mouth until Larxene repremanded him and told him he shouldn't risk the possibility of death by lack of spit. Demyx finally had had enough weirdness and went wordlessly to the sink to try to wash all of the cinnamon out.
It took him a good five minutes. Then he sat down next to Roxas and just started eating some of the normal food. He didn't eat any more of his candy that night.

[mistressfishie.livejournal.com]

We walked into the bookstore, greeted by the smell of paper and ink, and a friendly worker behind the counter nodded to us. Izzy wandered off to browse the craft books, probably looking for more wedding ideas, and I flipped through some of the bestsellers idly. All of the stories seemed the same, happy endings and perfect romances. It was like Izzy's story. I wondered where mine was. A story of bizarre happenings and romances that just sort of fizzle away, and of stupid decisions and of guests that come into your house and use your couch as a bed for weeks on end, and of coupons that come in the mail for salsa lessons and of coworkers with names that are not names and others with unknown genders, and of ghosts and secrets and newspaper clubs. I did not see a story like that. I supposed that if it was a story it would end up perfectly. Sugar and Skylar would forgive me, they would reform into perfect citizens and give up their unique habits that made them interesting to better suit our friendship. Will would move out finally and take his advice with him, coming back to visit us at the holidays with his girlfriend. Izzy and Frannie would elope and go off somewhere exotic for their honeymoon, and like it so much they would stay there. Keith would come back and declare himself the giver of the lunch bag presents, citing his shyness as the reason he couldn't give them to me in person. Alex would turn out to be a girl and she and Someone would date, and Dan and Noah would be able to rendezvous without worry about who saw them or what they might say. Everything would be tied up in a nice little package and there would be no questions at the end.

I put the book down with a sudden and inexplicable surge of anger. Life was not that way. Life was unpredictable. Maybe Will would stay on my couch forever and become an alcoholic that we had to have the police evict. Maybe Frannie and Izzy would divorce within the year and I would be caught between them as the friend who couldn't chose. Maybe the person who was leaving me gifts and poems would kill me in a fit of passion. Maybe my dad abandoned our family after a fight with Mom, and she was just too upset to tell us the truth, even after all these years. How would I know?

It could happen, and it scared me somehow. I wanted that neat little package. And until now I hadn't had any doubt that one day I would get it.

[rowanthunder.livejournal.com]

The night progresses, and those who are older than me talk late into the night of trivial matters, coming and going from the bonfire like flitting moths, never seeming to stay long enough to have a conversation of any depth. It seems to the casual listener of which there are very few tonight although the circumstance of guests being invited to the campsite is not unheard of or even frowned upon, that—due to the briefness of conversation, due to the circling around the vocabulary which would make things slightly clearer—trivial matters are all that they talk of, but I know better. They talk of people, people as numerous as the stars which are visible in the night sky. Coyote and Raven are asking Wyrm for an exchange that Wyrm very obviously will hear nothing of. My tutor says that Wyrm is much more conservative than Coyote and Raven are, but that if Orca was here, Wyrm would immediately help Coyote and Raven with what they are planning. Still, when they are done arguing over things that must be done, they talk of manipulation and learning curves, and Tiernan behind to me puts his hand on my shoulder.

Right now, I listen, staring at the stars in the sky. My Sister is sleeping now, not in her sleeping bag inside her tent, which would separate her from all of the people, but sleeping, safely curled into a blanket and leaning against our Father, safely inside of a circle that has formed, excluding me. I too am sitting by the remains of the bonfire, and I too am sitting next to Father, but I am outside of the circle of conversation, excluded like someone who can never quite belong, a dog in a pack of wolves. She mutters softly in her sleep about what has been, and I know that that in its own way is as important as what Coyote and Raven speak of.

Tiernan turns away from his conversation with Lion's Mate, towards me with a sad smile on his face, and plays with a piece of dry grass and drops it onto the fire.

"Watch it burn, not-so-little child," he says softly, a note of kindness in his voice that I never actually expected to hear again. "See how flammable it is, how easily it disappears into just the dust of ash? When it is gone, can you tell which was the dry grass, and which ash came from the rest of the tinder or the firewood?"

I do, watching as the grass turns to sparking embers. I wonder for a minute too, how People burn. Do they burn as radiatingly as the dry grass? Coyote is after all, the type to burn, when he loses himself in something, I see it as much as any other of his children do.

"I can't tell," I respond.

Tiernan nods, and says, "Of course you cannot tell, Mairead. When it is done and over with, we are all equal. We are really made of the same stuff, you, me, Abby, the Open, even Kennedy and his lot. We are all people."

[cloudsinmycafe.livejournal.com]

All of them had been lost in the ocean Hitler had brought with him when he invaded Hungary . Each and every one of them was unaccounted for, including the littlest of children, my nephew who was only three years old in May. The last I had heard from them, they were to be relocated to another area of Budapest that was sectioned off for Jews only. I continued to write to them, but my letters were inevitably returned weeks or months later with words sprawled on them like “NO SUCH ADDRESS” or “OCCUPANT NO LONGER LIVES HERE” or sometimes I would be told that the government was not allowing letters from the United States into their country. But I continued to write to them, almost everyday actually. I told them about George and his business trips to Los Angeles that had become all the more frequent. I wrote to them about Isabelle’s first boyfriend and then her subsequent first heartache. I explained to them that having a job downtown for the first time during the war effort made me feel secure and confident and freed me from the endless cycles of laundry, of separating the colors from the whites and watching the spin cycle rotate over and over and over. I wrote of walking to catch the trolley unaccompanied and smiling at all of my fellow women who were joining me in the war effort, all of us clamoring to get on the car to take us to work in our high heels and light fall jackets. We were an army with an unspoken anthem. Although we didn’t know one another, we understood each other all too well and knew that while the war took our boys away, it brought us a certain freedom that we knew we would be reluctant to give back.
I wrote about how I had lost weight and gained weight, about how Isabelle was learning to sew with war-friendly fashions and how I craved real butter. I wrote about the newest films, about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and how I longed to waltz just like her. It became an outlet and a release and I began to write to them obsessively, mailing letters at first to their old address, then to things I would make up like “TO THE JEWS STERN IN BUDAPEST” or “FOR MY BROTHER WHO NEVER WRITES AND LIVES IN BUDAPEST” or “PLEASE READ THIS I’M DROWING. BUDAPEST , HUNGARY .” I even mailed them to these made-up foreign addresses and waited for them to be returned to me and then pasted them up in an old photo album. But I never read them again. It was an unspoken code that what was once written was gone. It had been purged from my soul, never to speak of again.

[chimericalnymph.livejournal.com]

Azmyth Zysk rubbed his face in his hands and looked at the clock that sat on his dark cherry wood desk. It had been one of the longest days of his life at the end of an even longer week. The little sleep that the man had managed to get was not restful. His anxiety had not allowed him any true rest.

Under normal circumstances, he could not be described as an anxious man. However, this last week had proven that he was not immune to the uncomfortable feeling. He raked his fingers through his short brown hair and glanced at the ticking analog clock again between the cracks in his fingers. He sighed. Paperwork had piled up because of his distraction over the last week, and it was not going to be fun to catch up.

What was taking him so long? It had been over an hour. Maybe something was wrong. He jumped to his feet and was about to walk around the large desk when a knock sounded on his door. Azmyth adjusted his suit and walked over to the small bar in the corner of the room.

“Come in,” he said. He was proud, he had managed to keep his voice even despite how he felt. At this late hour, there was only one person who that would be.

As Azmyth poured two glasses of scotch, an aging man came into the room. His hair was gray with white strands popping up occasionally. He had a thick curly beard and wore an expensive dark gray suit. His skin was beginning to sag and his face had many wrinkles. The man looked as tired as he probably felt, a feat to be sure. This was the man that Azmyth had been expecting, Eric Boomer.

Eric Boomer had been working for the Zysk family for years, and had yet to fail them in anything. Over the years, he had become the highest placed advisor, but it was not his council that Azmyth wanted right now. A fact that was not well known in the organization was that Eric Boomer was a medical doctor. He had acted as the Zysk family doctor for years, and it was only his opinion that Azmyth trusted.

“She’s fine, just sleeping,” the doctor said. He accepted the small glass that Azmyth offered with more poise than he felt that he had. Scotch was one of his two great loves. He sipped the amber liquid and regarded the young man. Even though Azmyth was only in his late twenties, he was Eric’s superior. Some might have thought that there would be feelings of ill will from the senior member; after all, he had been a member since before Azmyth’s birth. They would have been wrong, though. Eric had no aspirations of running the organization and was much happier where he was now, as an advisor.

Azmyth breathed a sigh of relief. Thank god. He remembered how his heart had stopped for a second after he was told that Candice nearly drowned earlier that day. He did not know how it had happened, but it did. He could only remember one other incident that he had been so scared in his life. There was still a problem, though. How was she going to act when she woke up? Was he going to lose his temper and lash out because of how worried he had been? If he did, then how would she react? Why could not life be simpler?

“Anything I need to be aware of?” he asked. He doubted that he needed to, but it never hurt to be thorough.

The doctor took a long sip of his scotch before he answered. “Just her reaction when she wakes up.” He did not look at the man in front of him; instead, he was looking at the pair of ice cubes in his now empty glass.

[lmeighmy.livejournal.com]

Several weeks went by with no word of Toshiko and the few men who had managed to escape with her. Lucky had heard the expression, 'no news is good news,' but he didn't feel that particular adage fit this situation very well. Toshiko was dangerous and her family was powerful. With the passage of time, his worries grew. He felt it was only a matter of time before she resurfaced, stronger and more determined than ever, and he was afraid. Afraid for Mina. Afraid for Joey. Afraid for the family left defenseless back in Mayville and Gage. He didn't like feeling afraid and helpless, but he had no choice, at this point.

Joey began teaching Lucky some more advanced self-defense techniques, so he would be better prepared for what they may, eventually, face. He even taught Mina a few tricks. It helped pass the time and gave the younger people some hope that they would pull through this alright.

The agents posted in and around the cabin had been changed several times. The newest ones had only been at their posts for a couple of days when the break-in happened late one night.

Lucky had just barely fallen asleep when he was awakened suddenly by a noise...or, at least, he thought it was a noise, but he wasn't sure. He lay still, listening...

Copyright © 2008 by Lois Eighmy.
You can read more in my journal (http://lmeighmy.livejournal.com)...