Prompt: Words flow like water

Jekkub gripped my hand, squeezing my fingers till I thought the bones would crunch together. It didn't matter.  Even if I couldn't hold a pen after this. We'd come this far together. I wouldn't pull away from him now.

“You skeered?” Collum sneered at us, puffing out his chest as if he actually had any importance. He didn't matter either. He strutted in front of our cluster of novices, supposedly preparing us to enter the Glade, but doing his best to add to the terror we all felt.

“I heard one novice went in and never spoke again…” A whisper came from the back of the group. I recognized Claret’s voice and shushed. Not helping.

“I heard one came out star raving mad, and they've been locked up ever since. Only speaks gibberish…”

“Shhh,” I hissed between tight lips. “Not. Helping.”

Jekkub squeezed harder, and I squeezed back. My penmanship was definitely in peril.

“Marris,” Collum snapped. I hadn't though Jekkub’s grip could tighten any more. I glanced to him and gave a sharp nod. His hand slipped away, and I squeezed his fingers before he was gone. I stepped forward. Before Collum could goad me, I said firmly, “I'm ready.”

If Collum spoke as he ushered me through the door, I didn't hear it. I was deafened by the roar in the Glade. The heavy doors swung shut behind me, and I stood still, hands balled into fists, heart racing, breath in fast gasps. Panic. Fight or flight. No room for thought. I forced my hands into motion, left over my diaphragm, right over my chest. Slow breath, slow heart, fast mind.

The sound echoed all around me, a continual roar at first. “Words flow like water,” I remembered Hollew, our mentor, walking around a stone basin, trailing his fingers in the clear water. “Let them flow. They'll wash over you. Around you. Through you. Receive the words that have meaning for you, and let the rest flow on.”

The roar of sound was words. But this was no flow, this was a raging storm. A maelstrom. I shook my head and closed my eyes, stepping forward. My hands pressed harder against my robe. Slow breath. Slow heart.

“...fast mind…”

I froze. Tilting my head, I listened. The roar was words, spoken, sung, chanted, in a million different voices, different languages, all at once. How could I make sense of any of it?

“...flow..."

I pulled my right hand away from my stomach and swept it in front of me. I felt cold, like water against my skin. I swirled my hand in the air and felt ripples wash over me. The solid roar changed as I swirled my hand. In it,out of it, came streams of voices, single threads I could catch and follow for a moment, before they were swept back up in the roar and washed away.

I reached out my left hand and waved it with my right. I felt the sounds wash over me, heard the streams of words flow, against me, through me. I laughed and raised my hands, waving them like the music leaders I loved to watch around the village night fires. The words flowed, and I swept them into music around me.

Finally, the streams, the roar faded away, and I stood in the middle of the Glade with my arms raised high. I dropped the down, once more pressed against my heart, my stomach. Yes, the words still flowed. I was ready to carry them out of the Glade and into the world.

The doors opened before I reached them. Collum stood ready to gloat at my failure. The words flowed. He didn't matter…

Untrue. I stopped in front of him and pressed my hand to his chest. “It's your turn, Collum. There are words you need to hear.”

He paled, unresisting as I pushed him through the doors and pulled them shut behind him.

#

And so, with a loving heart, I offer you

Namaste

I’ve heard many translations. Here’s my favorite:

The light of the universe that shines within me recognizes

the light of the universe that shines within you.

#

Prompt: Sacrifice, or The Elements of Life

Thanks to Elwira Pawlikowska for permission to use her darkly beautiful “Fantasy Pond”!

We’ve dreamed each other our whole lives.

Well, I think I’m real, and Heilewisa thinks she’s real.

We can’t both be, can we?

We better be.

I can’t save her if we’re not.

I begged her not to go to the Dark Temple. She’d whispered the legends to me at night just as her older brothers and sisters had whispered them to her, cuddled together under thin blankets, shivering in the cold with only moonlight through the tiny open window of their mud-and-thatch house.

No one made their way through the Deadwood to the long-abandoned temple with any hope of return. If they had hope at all, it was that their sacrifice would be payment enough for whatever they were driven to beg the angry, old gods.

Waking up each morning has been agony, abandoning her on her journey. Each night, I pushed myself to go to sleep as early as possible to find out how she had survived the day.

Last night, she had reached the Dark Temple and waited for me there. Together, we walked around the fetid moat, full of bone-white lotus flowers and the broken remains of statues and pillars that had once graced the temple’s entrances.

“Look.” Heilewisa pointed to the six statues that remained, as if guarding the temple steps. “They carry sacrifices.”

I peered across the still, black water. The pair of statues at the bottom of the steps held urns. The next pair beyond them held bowls. And the pair at the top of the steps held…lumps? My brows drew together and I turned to Heilewisa in confusion.

She laughed, a sound of sharp surprise with no joy, that rang across the water and bounced off the stones. “The elements of life. Water in the urns, grain in the bowls, earth in the hands.”

“Heilewisa, this is crazy. You can’t cross the water. It looks…wrong.”

She gazed at it in silence, then pointed to the floating lotus. “Look, they live. I’ll be all right. I have to.”

We hugged each other in desperation, and I felt the tug of morning pull me out of her tight embrace.

And now, look at her. Floating in the black water, small ripples flowing out from her body, as if there might still be some movement left in it. Some life. But the color has already leached from her skin, her hair, her lips. Her gown looks like it’s been eaten by moths, or acid. Will her skin look the same soon?

Hot tears burn down my cheeks. Heilewisa knew the risk. She thought she had no choice. I do. I can wake up. She’s just a dream. That’s what everyone would say. Anyone. But what if she’s not? What if I am? And what if I can save her?

Heilewisa’s last words had remained with me all day, running around and around in my mind. The elements of life. Water, food, earth. Something was missing.

I turned back to the Deadwood, keeping my eyes on Heilewisa as long as possible. I’ve never tried to bring anything with me in my dreams, but I’ve always had whatever I was wearing, or carrying in a pocket. Now I pulled the wool scarf from around my neck. It was only a few steps away from the water to find a long dead branch on the leaf-littered ground. I wrapped the scarf around the end of the branch and reached into my pocket for the lighter I’d swiped from my stepfather’s dresser. Rubbing my thumb across the top, I set the lighter to its strongest flame. Flick, I pressed down. Nothing. Flick. Nothing. My heart leaped into my throat. I had tried it at home. I knew it would work. It had to.

With the side of my thumb, I pressed against the top of the lighter one more. Flame shot up two inches, singing my thumb as I jerked it away. Holding it close to the wool, I ran the flame around and around, until the scarf caught fire and I held a torch above my head.

Now what? I eyed Heilewisa and the statues. How did I use the element of fire to save her? The reflections of the statues waved in the water, as if they were bending closer to the surface. Bringing their offerings closer. Water. Food. Earth.

Fire. I smiled, feeling the fierce grin stretch the skin tight across my face. Reaching out with the flaming torch, I lowered the torch to the black water. As it touched, it began to hiss and sizzle, but the flame didn’t go out. It leaped across the water, sweeping across the lotus, across Heilewisa, racing toward the statues bearing the other elements of life temple steps.

I threw the torch on the black water and waded in toward Heilewisa. She rolled over in the water and folded up, choking and coughing. I grabbed her around the chest and started pulling her away from the temple, back to the shore. The fire raged behind us. I dragged her out of the water and dropped to the ground, holding her tight. Her skin and hair remained bone-white, bleached of their color, but she was breathing, shuddering in my arms.

She opened her eyes and stared up at me, then across the water to the flame roaring over the Dark Temple. The statues’ arms were raised, their tributes, their sacrifices, pouring into the flames.

“Sweet Rhea, what have you done?”

#

And so, with a loving heart, I offer you

Namaste

I’ve heard many translations. Here’s one I love:
The light of the universe that shines within me recognizes
the light of the universe that shines within you.

Dogs in House	Houdini, Brindle
Time writing	1 hour, interrupted
September word count	4,206

Prompt: Adrift

I am still adrift. Awash on the waves, stalled on a windless sea.

Note: Like my last post, this is one of the most personal of this blog. I hope you’ll share it, and maybe find some kernel of value in it. But if you prefer, just consider the prompt, and perhaps try your hand at stream-of-consciousness writing, which I described and modeled in the previous post. If you’d like, please feel free to post some or all of what you write in a comment here.

Eight nights ago, the police stopped a known drug dealer. He sped away and soon was racing at 120 miles per hour when he crashed into Tammy White, my best friend’s other bestie for more than 20 years. She died en route to the hospital.

We mourn. Grieve. Fear for her grown son, drowning in shock, loss, emotion. Begin to deal with the aftermath of a life cut short. Think What if it were me? Grieve. Talk about Kubler-Ross. Rage at the police. Wonder who was protecting and serving Tammy White? Mourn.

And the thing is, while I mourn for Tammy, and her life lost so senselessly and shockingly, it’s the living I truly grieve for. Her son. My friend. Left with a gaping hole, a wound, in their lives, their hearts, their souls. Left to pick up the pieces of their own lives, and they wrap up the remnants of hers.

There’s something else. Something that feels selfish. What if it were me? Not only, Who would mourn me? But What have I done with my life? What will be my legacy? And, at least a passing nod to What would the poor person think who had to go through All My Stuff?

I learned years ago, as my family dealt with my grandparents’ deaths, that all the trivia of daily life gets mixed up with the profound, the sacred, the profane. Moments etched in memory. My grandfather kissing my hands goodbye for the last time. Practicing in the mirror saying that he died, because I kept bursting into tears while trying to find a dogsitter the night before Thanksgiving, because I’d planned to take her to my parents, and we all spent Thanksgiving at a hotel instead. When my other grandfather died, one of my most treasured memories from the wake is all the women who told me how he delivered their children, cared for their families, came to their homes in the middle of the night when their husband had a heart attack. The irony—perhaps the beauty—of death is how it brings together the living.

My strongest memories of Tammy are a trip I took with her and my friend, a working trip for them to Savannah and Charleston. There were many bumps on the road, including some major personal and professional stress for them, and during a difficult time in my own life. But what I remember is laughing. Shaking our heads over hotel mismanagement, going out for drinks and dinner to celebrate success, sitting in hot tubs, relaxing, talking about children, partners, dreams. Celebrating life. Not big, not grandiose, just…life.

But in this past week, I feel like the crash—or the phone call—severed my mooring ties. I can’t seem to find my way, to gather forward momentum, to move on. My energy goes, as it usually does, to others: my daughter, my friends, my work. When I sit in quiet, I deflate, my shoulders curling forward, hands on my belly, where my stress centers in sharp pain, my head drooping. A lump. An unenergetic, uncreative lump.

I’m not saying this to ask for sympathy, though people have been very kind to share it. It’s the sharing, really. Like I said in my last post, maybe someone will read this and recognize some of what they themselves are going through and feel less alone. I share, because even in my grief, I recognize that I can let my light shine, and someone might see it, and it might strengthen their own light, however dimmed by their own burdens. Too often we hide it all inside—even sharing this here, I have hidden most of this from my daily interactions with people—and I believe it hurts us, kills us to do so. What we hold inside is like the Spartan soldier’s fox, eating us alive.

And it’s not that I’m not thinking about writing. I have, actually, had some ideas about my book, of which I’ve managed to write maybe 100 words. I took a rejection of a short story square on the chin, flailed for awhile, then thought of another opportunity and turned it back around the same night. I’m actually rather proud of that.

Two things that have suffered the most: my vision and plans for this blog, and my efforts for ConTemporal, both wrapping up this year, and planning for next year. When I think about *doing*, that inertia overwhelms me, and all I can do is… “Float, just float,” like Claire Danes advises Holly Hunter in Home for the Holidays.

“Sorrow floats”, says John Irving in Hotel New Hampshire.

And “hope floats”, as Sandra Bullock learns in Hope Floats.

But as Chuck Noland found in Cast Away, and Pi Patel found in Life of Pi, even when you float adrift on the ocean, eventually the currents and tides will bring you ashore. Even with death, Life goes on.

                                       

Namaste

I’ve heard many translations. Here’s one I love: The light of the universe that shines within me recognizes the light of the universe that shines within you.

Dogs in House	Houdini, Brindle, Eggs
Music (movie) Playing	Hayao Miyazaki, Whispers of the Heart
Time writing	~1 hour
August word count	1990

Prompt: Use Meditative Journaling, or “Stream of Consciousness”, perhaps to write about loss or grief

You may recall that during ConGregate in Winston Salem last month, I had the good fortune to spend time with Sharon Stogner of I Smell Sheep, the wonderful paranormal romance review site. Sharon gave me a lot of ideas for branding and building this prompt blog, some of which I have already begun to implement. I plan to do more in August, so I hope you’ll keep coming back to see more content and resources being added.

I am also going to buckle down and focus my writing efforts on finishing my novel. I know, I know, I’ve been saying that…and saying that…and saying that.

New Goal: Complete First Draft by DragonCon.

The thing is, today is August 5^th, and I have neither posted in the blog nor written a word yet this month. Why, you may ask? Well, that’s the hard part. Life. Loss. Death.

A friend – one of my dearest friends’ lifelong besties – was killed in a car wreck on Friday night. I’m still feeling the shock, the grief, the anger. And sometimes –when I am out and about living the life that goes on no matter what has happened – I think I can write about that and maybe even channel it into some of my story, which includes loss and grief and anger. And perhaps I will. But when I am home and quiet, I haven’t yet gathered the strength and energy to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, until tonight.

I still feel the shock, the grief, the anger, wrapped around me, tugging at my limbs, pushing against my chest, my forehead, behind my eyes. I’m going to try to write about it. Is that self serving? If you think so. I think it might be healing. And honoring my friend, to explore my feelings deeply and honestly, and ultimately to share them in some way. And maybe someone will read the scenes I write someday and say “Yes, that’s how *I* feel!” And they won’t feel alone in whatever they’re going through. And I’ll keep on living, and they’ll keep on living, and we will have shared something, even if we never meet. Life is interconnected in all kinds of ways we can never really know, perceive, or understand.

How can I channel my intense, personal feelings into something I might use in my story? I’m going to use meditative journaling, which is a kind of “stream of consciousness” or "free writing". If you’ve never done it, I encourage you to give it a try. The idea is to start writing (and literally using pen and paper, but with experience, a keyboard works fine too), and keep writing, no matter what. If you don’t know what to say, you write that. So it may look something like this:

Meditative journaling prompt: Swimming

Swimming. I love the water. I’m a “Cancer”, a water baby. My daughter, a Pisces, is too. I love showers, baths, pools, the ocean, rivers, rain, waterfalls. I have stories for every one of these things. Memories. The feel of cold water in the kitchen sink, soap bubbles lathering my hands. Hot water, spraying dishes clean, scrubbing them, rinsing them. When I heard about Tammy and waited for a friend who came to comfort me, I washed my crockpot, scrubbing it over and over, running my fingers over the cersmic until it was clean and smooth once more.

The cascade of water in the shower, pulling through my hair, pulling my head back. Floating in the pool, leaning my head back in the water, feeling small waves wash up against my sides, wash over me. Hearing people, planes, noises from above. Holding my breath and diving under. A deep breath, a deeper dive. Into the crystal blue water at Bimini. Dolphins, nurse sharks, spiny lobsters, barracuda, remora…but that’s another story. Water. Water. What to say? Is there a story here? Standing in the pool, moving through physical therapy exercises. Feeling the swish of the water as I lift my leg, the push of muscles and the resistance they don’t feel in air. The flow. Like dancing. I love bobbing up and down, standing in second and tilting my feet en pointe. More graceful than I ever was on a ballet studio floor. Water. Ease. Grace. Flow. Beauty…

Give it a try. It may surprise you. You see in my example, I moved from swimming to water without consciously realizing it. Maybe nothing interesting will come of it. Maybe you’ll be inspired with a scene or story idea. Maybe you’ll discover something you weren’t consciously thinking about. And if you write about loss or grief, maybe you’ll find some peace.

Namaste

I’ve heard many translations. Here’s one I love: The light of the universe that shines within me bows to the light of the universe that shines within you.

Dogs in House	Houdini, Brindle
Music Playing	Delta Rae, “Morning Comes”
Time writing
August word count

Prompt: Wishing we were different

Slighth rolled through the shallows, avoiding everyone in her path. The cool waves washed them all in frothy yellow, with green sand swirling up from below. The sun reflected on colored limbs all around her, and she sighed, glancing down at her own pale scales. Twisting past a dark-blue female and a dark purple male, she longed for scales that refracted the light with more than her own undistinguished light blues.

If only she had the same glinting teal as that female over there, curling her long tubes in the water as if she wasn’t aware of her effect on every male in sight. Slighth brushed past a pair of young dark brown males, who ignored her, entranced as they were by the myriad of other, darker scales all around.

Reaching the water’s edge, Slighth stretched out her standing tubes and rose above the waves. As she reached her fronds toward the warming sun, she pretended to be invisible…

###

Author’s note:

Here’s an idea that has fizzled. It came to me as I was walking on the beach, admiring the beautiful tanned men and women, of all shapes and sizes. I was struck by those sunbathing with such an air of relaxation…I have never been able to do this. My skin is too fair, and I don’t have the patience or tolerance to sit in the heat, when I know I will never have skin that beautiful color. We don’t even have to get into all the health issues, because this is at heart a perception-of-self issue.

So I started thinking about how to turn that little self dialogue into a different kind of scene, and rather than a fantasy setting, I came up with an otherworldly, alien setting. Which sounded fun. Trouble is, I have a setting and an initial character, but no actual story…

Sometimes these things all come together, and sometimes, they don’t.

So give it a try, and let me know what you come up with!

Time writing	20 minutes
July word count	10,692

Prompt: Solid Water Isn’t Always Ice

It was raining when I went to bed. It had rained all day, and I loved watching the drops skitter and bounce over the waves. The silence woke me sometime in the night, and I hoped we’d have clear skies in the morning. I was restless after a day cooped inside.

I’m not a morning person. It takes me awhile to wake up, and I prefer silence and coffee to blaring news or music. I always get the coffee started before anything else. So I set up the coffeemaker and held the pot under the tap – and nothing came out. Crap. There must be a busted pipe or something. I hoped it was on the city line and not my property. I pulled a bottle from the fridge and set the maker in motion.

Since I figured there was no running water in the house, I didn’t try a shower or anything else. I usually took one after I biked across the island to the office, anyway. So it wasn’t until I had suited up and walked my bike out of the hallway that I bumped into the first drops.

I did a double take and stared, trying to wrap my brain around what my eyes were seeing. Drops of water were hanging in the air. Just hanging there, like they were frozen in place. I looked around, and they filled the air as far as I could see in every direction.

I touched one of the drops, and it fell into my hand. It wasn’t cold, like ice. It just sat there, like a stone. Picking it up between two fingers, I squeezed it, and it felt like a cool marble – solid, but not like frozen ice. I tipped my hand over and it fell to the ground. It didn’t shatter, or splash. It just lay on the ground in front of me.

Why weren’t the others falling? I took a step forward, and as I brushed solid drops, they fell around me, as if my forward momentum was knocking them back into motion.

There was a puddle in front of me, and I touched it with my toe. My shoe slid over it like glass…

Note: 

A description piece - trying to visualize the scene of water hanging in the air...

What could I do with this? What an intriguing idea...

Also, is this science fiction, or fantasy? So far, it could go either way. Though with chemistry, physics and gravity involved, I'm thinking fantasy is the easier route!

Dogs in house:	Houdini, Eggs
Time writing:	~20 minutes
April word count:	9,841