Pandora has finally gotten my trance music mix right. It took a lot of coaching on my part, but she's caught on. I like my trance light and cheesy. Thus, my channel is inspired by What Is Love, by Haddaway.
Keith has injured himself- his knee, to be exact. The hospital on post here is very nice and confidence inducing. We hobbled over to O'Charleys for lunch when he was finally released, with a crutch and instructions to come back in a week. I got grease from my Philly cheese sandwich on my white linen sun dress. It's in the wash now.
We have had our major "We've moved" argument. Throughout the move, there are periods of increased but impersonal irritation that erupts from time to time, like hot ashes. And then, after a while, Vesuvius blows her top and we are immersed in Argument, with a capital A.
We made up this morning, so I'm glad we got that out of the way. We're almost all the way home, now. Coming into our cool, mostly clean house after the morning out- it felt good.
I am writing like a son of a gun. For three hours, I wrote on my netbook in the waiting room of the hospital, the tiny laptop propped up on my purse. Its such a cute little thing. I love it.
I have four different stories I'm working on now. Three of them have the same exact characters. Eventually I will have to decide which one to pursue, but right now, I'm just letting myself go for it, whatever it is. I'm just writing it out.
It feels like I'm finally unpacking myself. As if I had folded myself up, tighter and tighter to survive the move and now, I am uncurling and all my imagination is seeping back in, like spring water.
I'm waiting for Keith to go back to work before tacking Ceallach and Phillipa. They've been essentially left hanging for about a month, right on the edge of a rather intense scene and I just don't want to start working on it, not knowing how much time I'll have to concentrate on it.
I'm scared of that scene, to be honest. I need to be all by myself, in a quiet house, with hours of time before me before I plunge in there.
In the meantime, this story has stolen my heart, and all my creative energy. It's only fifteen pages long, at the moment. Who knows where it's going? Somewhere interesting, I hope.
Excerpt:
It was the sound of the wind chimes. The sound came to her in the quiet summer evening as she stood at the top of the ridge, where the long grass blew amid the roots of old apple trees. It was a soft sound, off tempo and hollow.
When she heard that sound, she knew something had changed in the air. The sky above her was a soundless depth of blue and the faded, white imprint of the moon was fixed on the lower half of the sky, just over the dusky foothills of the mountain. Everything was breathless; the trees that surrounded the small meadow stirred restlessly, their leaves silvered and whispered.
Turning, she could see the buildings of her family’s farm on the crest of the hill beyond her, could see the dull red, wooden siding, with the white lintels glowing in the evening light. The thick, green grass that ran up the smooth slope of lawn was almost purple, and all of one piece, a thick pelt of grass.
Half way up the slope stood a lone pear tree, a black and twisted silhouette against the green. It bent back toward the farther hills, as though crying out for them. There were small, hard pears on the boughs, the girl knew, spotted with brown and slightly worm eaten.
She turned her back to the slope and waded into the longer, wild grasses of the meadow, following the faint sounds of the wind chimes. Moths flew up from the grass, disturbed by her brown, bare feet. Their white wings beat against the air, they danced clumsily around her and then fluttered away in the sky.
Ducking her head, she passed into the orchard. For many years it had been untended and the trees had grown wild. Their branches reached out determinedly in all directions, tangling, fighting for the sun. They made a maze that would have bewildered anyone but the girl, who had grown up under them.
She stopped short, when she got to the far side of the orchard, where the pine woods began to encroach on the apple trees. Strands of her hair fell softly back around her face as she stood there, one hand grasping a branch with whitened knuckles.
There was something lying on the ground, lying against the bole of one of the largest apple trees, one half hidden by the pines that had grown up around it. The pine branches cast a bewildering tangle of shadows in that space.
