Post by Bee on Jul 23, 2010 13:19:46 GMT -5
Bee dug through some of her files and found a couple of older prompts, and added a new one or two. Little moments from the lives of assorted characters. Eulalie flailed at me until I wrote her. I apologize for the horrible things I did to Midori speech. Be gentle and fair, dear citizens of SoD!
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054. Drugs
There is something green and pink before her. The colors are garish. She does not like them. The woman stands stark against her dusty backdrop, the burnt amber of the shaded sand and the terra cotta of the rocks. Smoke curls from her nose, drifts up in a spiraling cloud, and dissolves into the air. She sags against the rock, as though boneless. Others like her are slightly farther off, in the market proper; she can hear a din of noise but not the words.
Ananta continues to watch. The rodent puts the tiny blunt cylinder to her slack lips and huffs again. Her eyes are glazed.
"'Eh, mon," she says, a moment later. Her voice is hazy, deep. "Either be joinin' me for a light or buggerin' off, your big dead-eyed stare gives me the heebies."
Ananta blinks.
"There, mon, that's much better. Do dat more."
"A light," Ananta says. Her voice is monotone and betrays no curiosity.
The green woman proffers a small brown object much like the one she is puffing. Ananta glances down at it; she doesn't intend to smoke it, but nor does she wish to be rude. A moment passes. Then another. The blank look in the green woman's eyes changes slowly and almost imperceptibly to bemusement.
Ananta takes the little blunt and puts it in her satchel.
"You smoke it, mon."
"I am aware. But you seem persistently complacent," Ananta informs her, "and so I will keep this in stock as potential weapon to swiftly incapacitate enemies without bloodshed."
The bemusement is not so imperceptible now. It treads quite close to bewilderment. Ananta's expression is still a stony wall. "Aye, you got some screws loose, friend, I be suggestion' you smoke that bastard soon."
"I will take that under advisement," Ananta says, and doesn't, and leaves the green woman under the hazy shade.
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092. Rush
Eulalie crashed through the door with an excited shout and flailing of limbs, almost tripping over herself but not quite, skidding to a stop at her mother’s feet. “APPLESAUCE!” she yelled happily, tugging at his leg insistently as though trying to crawl up. “Do we have it? Fifi said we have it. I want it. Can I eat it? It won’t ruin my dinner I SWEAR.”
“I think Fifi is telling lies from her mouth, Lalie,” Iphis said, turning his attention away from the dinner he was preparing and to the little pink girl in grabbing at him. Fifi seemed to derive amusement from watching Eulalie bounce all over the place. Tell her there was something shiny hiding somewhere and she would run off immediately to look for it. Though she rarely looked for long. She had a short attention span even compared to the average five-year-old, but she was a special star nevertheless and she would grow more focused as she aged, maybe.
He paused. “And it will ruin your dinner and I am making trenette al pesto for dinner and if you don’t eat all of it I’ll be sad. I will make a sad face and you will feel bad for causing it.”
She looked crushed. She weighed the sadness of Momma against her desire for a snack. Sadness seemed so far away, and she wanted a snack right now.
“APPLESAUCE,” she insisted. “Fifi wouldn’t lie to me!”
Iphis gave her a perplexed frown. “Fifi lies to you all the time.”
Eulalie appeared to mull this over for a moment. Then she shook her head vigorously. “But not THIS time! This time she told me she was telling the truth!”
“Your logic is running in circles,” Iphis told her gently.
“I don’t have a logic,” Eulalie said, knitting her brows. The puzzlement disappeared a half-second later. “CAN I HAVE THE APPLESAUCE NOW!” She looked at him pleadingly.
Iphis bit his lip and thought a moment. He didn’t like telling any of them no (and he was in fact sometimes physically incapable of doing so; his brain would form a no but somehow his mouth made an “of course, sweetheart!”), but she really didn’t need to be eating so close to a meal. What if she failed to get a vital nutrient and her health suffered? He would never be able to forgive himself. He huffed a small sigh.
“Eulalie,” he said, leaning down so he was eye to eye with his daughter, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “I hear there is a Rabbit hiding behind the tree out back.”
Her eyes were suddenly saucer-sized. She bounced excitedly, the little nails on her paws clicking the tile. “A REAL RABBIT?”
“The realest,” he confirmed.
“OKAYLOVEYOUBYE,” she shouted gleefully, and sprinted back out of the kitchen, applesauce completely forgotten.
Iphis poked at the pasta in the pan.
“I lie to children,” he told it, sadly.
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013. Death
Yuri has cataloged nineteen deaths today, and it was only early afternoon. He noted each one in his journal. It was not a record but it was still pretty high.
There was the beetle from this morning. (Cause of death: squished flat by Yuri's sister.)
There was the baby bird in the roses. (Cause of death: neck broken by fatal fall from nest.)
There was also the pet mouse. (Cause of death: unfed for four days by cook's careless daughter.)
There was of course the other mouse. (Cause of death: cannibalized by starving mouse.)
He had insisted on giving the mice proper burials, digging their little mouse graves with wide, mournful eyes, and etching their names on a couple of smooth little rocks. He'd demanded that the murderess--by criminally negligent homicide--be present and say the eulogy. The cook's daughter was apparently so frightened that she ran off and hid for the rest of the day. She had a strangely large capacity for horror for someone who had let her mice cannibalize each other in a desperate attempt to fend off a slow, painful death.
(One of the eyes had been eaten out. It seemed a queer thing for a starving mouse to target. Maybe the starving mouse felt guilty about eating a dead brother who watched him, blackly and blankly. Yuri would never be able to eat his own brothers and sisters. Not ever.)
Yuri had finished the eulogy himself, delivering his speech to an assembled audience of stuffed animals. "And we shall never forget the light that Miles and Phineas brought to the world. May they forgive their murderess and journey swiftly to the Mice Heaven, where mountains of cheese glisten yellow in the distance and Cards run the mazes for their amusement. Blessed be the hills and the light, damned be the mousetraps, forever and always, yea verily unto the end of time, so say we all."
It seemed an adequate speech. He led the stuffed animals in a brief moment of silence. They, too, felt the loss of Phineas and Miles.
"So say we all," he repeated, gently, and the assembly was dismissed.
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016. Criminal
"Ayuh," said Reisz, nodding slowly. She squinted against the sun as it glinted off the gently waving sea of wheat, trying to detect a figure. Hard business, when a body hardly looks different from the crop. Awful hot out, it was. She'd ask the old nan for a drink here soon, but she expected the lady would offer well before that. "Nicked the whole cart?"
"For true," the little old woman said. A Club, all worn from a life of hard work. Now she weaved baskets. Eyes looked rheumy. Probably hadn't seen the little ruffian coming.
"Damn shame, that is," Reisz said, glancing to the field again. Little runt long was long gone. "Right damn shame."
"Whole cart," the woman contined, shaking her head. "All my purchase."
"Got a goodun who?"
"Ayuh," old nan said. "Beils, more'n like. Regular bad seed. Pawed a basket of apples from Lena a week back. Poppet, you look parched as Lowlander country. Lemme get you some water."
"Right kind," Reisz said, gratefully, and the old woman disappeared into her little hut. Small and perfectly formed, like all Veldt houses. Kept the storms out. Kept the warmth in. Had some netting in storage, like all of 'em, for when the bugs woke up. Not that it did a right lot of good. But it felt like security, and sometimes you needed a little lying to get by. She tried to remember what Beils looked like. Young runt, a weasel and a Spade, a hunter if she recalled correctly, on account of his water-generating ability being shit.
She hoped he gave himself up willingly. Reisz was a good hand with a weapon and had a nasty bite. Beils was in a bind, anyhow. More behavior like this and he'd start getting bar time and bad work detail. Much more behavior like this and he'd get sent Away. Not Away like that wretched hive Cap City. Away like a Solandrian snowbank. Or, worse, a Solandrian cabin. She'd heard they were full of brain-bending rapers and murderers. Didn't care one whit about anyone, liked to toy with their prey before they ate it. Reisz hadn't a lick of patience for that sort. Brutes.
She didn't anticipate a problem, though. Reisz had decent respect. Most of the people who'd gone stupid on her were from Away, and well, they had shit for sense anyway.
Old nan came back with water. Reisz inclined her head in thanks, and drank, then wiped her mouth. "Reckon I'll wrangle yer purchase, in addition."
"You've a true heart, poppet."
"Naught of it."
It was her job, after all. She hadn't gotten pulled for Diamond duty, so she roved her territory, her fields and her little villages. Not much trouble, usually. The gold mines were where the fights broke out, all those people all cramped on the outskirts of the Higher Veldt, thinkin' if it hits, if the bugs wake up, we're the first gettin' hit with it, we're dead. Awful way to live, but someone had to live it.
Hadn't had a good riot round here for a couple years, though. Hadn't had a disastrous outbreak in several. Giving a wooly-brained little geck a fright wouldn't be a huge break in the monotony, but it'd be a break. She almost ought to be thanking the old nan, really.
"'pose I'll be back before dusk with yer effects. Wait up, ayuh?"
Old nan nodded, filled Reisz's canteen, and handed it back. Reisz slung it over her shoulder and took her leave, around the fields, briskly, earrings swinging with every step. Beils was just one village away.
Only question would be where he stashed his loot.
_____________________________________________________
054. Drugs
There is something green and pink before her. The colors are garish. She does not like them. The woman stands stark against her dusty backdrop, the burnt amber of the shaded sand and the terra cotta of the rocks. Smoke curls from her nose, drifts up in a spiraling cloud, and dissolves into the air. She sags against the rock, as though boneless. Others like her are slightly farther off, in the market proper; she can hear a din of noise but not the words.
Ananta continues to watch. The rodent puts the tiny blunt cylinder to her slack lips and huffs again. Her eyes are glazed.
"'Eh, mon," she says, a moment later. Her voice is hazy, deep. "Either be joinin' me for a light or buggerin' off, your big dead-eyed stare gives me the heebies."
Ananta blinks.
"There, mon, that's much better. Do dat more."
"A light," Ananta says. Her voice is monotone and betrays no curiosity.
The green woman proffers a small brown object much like the one she is puffing. Ananta glances down at it; she doesn't intend to smoke it, but nor does she wish to be rude. A moment passes. Then another. The blank look in the green woman's eyes changes slowly and almost imperceptibly to bemusement.
Ananta takes the little blunt and puts it in her satchel.
"You smoke it, mon."
"I am aware. But you seem persistently complacent," Ananta informs her, "and so I will keep this in stock as potential weapon to swiftly incapacitate enemies without bloodshed."
The bemusement is not so imperceptible now. It treads quite close to bewilderment. Ananta's expression is still a stony wall. "Aye, you got some screws loose, friend, I be suggestion' you smoke that bastard soon."
"I will take that under advisement," Ananta says, and doesn't, and leaves the green woman under the hazy shade.
______________________________________________________________
092. Rush
Eulalie crashed through the door with an excited shout and flailing of limbs, almost tripping over herself but not quite, skidding to a stop at her mother’s feet. “APPLESAUCE!” she yelled happily, tugging at his leg insistently as though trying to crawl up. “Do we have it? Fifi said we have it. I want it. Can I eat it? It won’t ruin my dinner I SWEAR.”
“I think Fifi is telling lies from her mouth, Lalie,” Iphis said, turning his attention away from the dinner he was preparing and to the little pink girl in grabbing at him. Fifi seemed to derive amusement from watching Eulalie bounce all over the place. Tell her there was something shiny hiding somewhere and she would run off immediately to look for it. Though she rarely looked for long. She had a short attention span even compared to the average five-year-old, but she was a special star nevertheless and she would grow more focused as she aged, maybe.
He paused. “And it will ruin your dinner and I am making trenette al pesto for dinner and if you don’t eat all of it I’ll be sad. I will make a sad face and you will feel bad for causing it.”
She looked crushed. She weighed the sadness of Momma against her desire for a snack. Sadness seemed so far away, and she wanted a snack right now.
“APPLESAUCE,” she insisted. “Fifi wouldn’t lie to me!”
Iphis gave her a perplexed frown. “Fifi lies to you all the time.”
Eulalie appeared to mull this over for a moment. Then she shook her head vigorously. “But not THIS time! This time she told me she was telling the truth!”
“Your logic is running in circles,” Iphis told her gently.
“I don’t have a logic,” Eulalie said, knitting her brows. The puzzlement disappeared a half-second later. “CAN I HAVE THE APPLESAUCE NOW!” She looked at him pleadingly.
Iphis bit his lip and thought a moment. He didn’t like telling any of them no (and he was in fact sometimes physically incapable of doing so; his brain would form a no but somehow his mouth made an “of course, sweetheart!”), but she really didn’t need to be eating so close to a meal. What if she failed to get a vital nutrient and her health suffered? He would never be able to forgive himself. He huffed a small sigh.
“Eulalie,” he said, leaning down so he was eye to eye with his daughter, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “I hear there is a Rabbit hiding behind the tree out back.”
Her eyes were suddenly saucer-sized. She bounced excitedly, the little nails on her paws clicking the tile. “A REAL RABBIT?”
“The realest,” he confirmed.
“OKAYLOVEYOUBYE,” she shouted gleefully, and sprinted back out of the kitchen, applesauce completely forgotten.
Iphis poked at the pasta in the pan.
“I lie to children,” he told it, sadly.
_______________________________________________________________
013. Death
Yuri has cataloged nineteen deaths today, and it was only early afternoon. He noted each one in his journal. It was not a record but it was still pretty high.
There was the beetle from this morning. (Cause of death: squished flat by Yuri's sister.)
There was the baby bird in the roses. (Cause of death: neck broken by fatal fall from nest.)
There was also the pet mouse. (Cause of death: unfed for four days by cook's careless daughter.)
There was of course the other mouse. (Cause of death: cannibalized by starving mouse.)
He had insisted on giving the mice proper burials, digging their little mouse graves with wide, mournful eyes, and etching their names on a couple of smooth little rocks. He'd demanded that the murderess--by criminally negligent homicide--be present and say the eulogy. The cook's daughter was apparently so frightened that she ran off and hid for the rest of the day. She had a strangely large capacity for horror for someone who had let her mice cannibalize each other in a desperate attempt to fend off a slow, painful death.
(One of the eyes had been eaten out. It seemed a queer thing for a starving mouse to target. Maybe the starving mouse felt guilty about eating a dead brother who watched him, blackly and blankly. Yuri would never be able to eat his own brothers and sisters. Not ever.)
Yuri had finished the eulogy himself, delivering his speech to an assembled audience of stuffed animals. "And we shall never forget the light that Miles and Phineas brought to the world. May they forgive their murderess and journey swiftly to the Mice Heaven, where mountains of cheese glisten yellow in the distance and Cards run the mazes for their amusement. Blessed be the hills and the light, damned be the mousetraps, forever and always, yea verily unto the end of time, so say we all."
It seemed an adequate speech. He led the stuffed animals in a brief moment of silence. They, too, felt the loss of Phineas and Miles.
"So say we all," he repeated, gently, and the assembly was dismissed.
_________________________________________________________________
016. Criminal
"Ayuh," said Reisz, nodding slowly. She squinted against the sun as it glinted off the gently waving sea of wheat, trying to detect a figure. Hard business, when a body hardly looks different from the crop. Awful hot out, it was. She'd ask the old nan for a drink here soon, but she expected the lady would offer well before that. "Nicked the whole cart?"
"For true," the little old woman said. A Club, all worn from a life of hard work. Now she weaved baskets. Eyes looked rheumy. Probably hadn't seen the little ruffian coming.
"Damn shame, that is," Reisz said, glancing to the field again. Little runt long was long gone. "Right damn shame."
"Whole cart," the woman contined, shaking her head. "All my purchase."
"Got a goodun who?"
"Ayuh," old nan said. "Beils, more'n like. Regular bad seed. Pawed a basket of apples from Lena a week back. Poppet, you look parched as Lowlander country. Lemme get you some water."
"Right kind," Reisz said, gratefully, and the old woman disappeared into her little hut. Small and perfectly formed, like all Veldt houses. Kept the storms out. Kept the warmth in. Had some netting in storage, like all of 'em, for when the bugs woke up. Not that it did a right lot of good. But it felt like security, and sometimes you needed a little lying to get by. She tried to remember what Beils looked like. Young runt, a weasel and a Spade, a hunter if she recalled correctly, on account of his water-generating ability being shit.
She hoped he gave himself up willingly. Reisz was a good hand with a weapon and had a nasty bite. Beils was in a bind, anyhow. More behavior like this and he'd start getting bar time and bad work detail. Much more behavior like this and he'd get sent Away. Not Away like that wretched hive Cap City. Away like a Solandrian snowbank. Or, worse, a Solandrian cabin. She'd heard they were full of brain-bending rapers and murderers. Didn't care one whit about anyone, liked to toy with their prey before they ate it. Reisz hadn't a lick of patience for that sort. Brutes.
She didn't anticipate a problem, though. Reisz had decent respect. Most of the people who'd gone stupid on her were from Away, and well, they had shit for sense anyway.
Old nan came back with water. Reisz inclined her head in thanks, and drank, then wiped her mouth. "Reckon I'll wrangle yer purchase, in addition."
"You've a true heart, poppet."
"Naught of it."
It was her job, after all. She hadn't gotten pulled for Diamond duty, so she roved her territory, her fields and her little villages. Not much trouble, usually. The gold mines were where the fights broke out, all those people all cramped on the outskirts of the Higher Veldt, thinkin' if it hits, if the bugs wake up, we're the first gettin' hit with it, we're dead. Awful way to live, but someone had to live it.
Hadn't had a good riot round here for a couple years, though. Hadn't had a disastrous outbreak in several. Giving a wooly-brained little geck a fright wouldn't be a huge break in the monotony, but it'd be a break. She almost ought to be thanking the old nan, really.
"'pose I'll be back before dusk with yer effects. Wait up, ayuh?"
Old nan nodded, filled Reisz's canteen, and handed it back. Reisz slung it over her shoulder and took her leave, around the fields, briskly, earrings swinging with every step. Beils was just one village away.
Only question would be where he stashed his loot.
