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Reanimating A Cold Case
Apr. 18th, 2012 09:49 pmHere is a very sad comment on my home-boundedness. I took 3 days off work so I could reorganize the kids' clothes for the change of season and clean out the crawl spaces. Was it worth it? Absolutely. I got a lot done, and I got a pretty significant reward for my efforts. First, I spent a lot more time than usual with 6th-born, the toddler, who is full of hugs and snuggles and every good thing. It's good for me to spend more time with her. Second, I rediscovered a box of personal items I all but forgot about. It's been buried in the crawl space since we moved into the house, and I don't know how long before that it sat neglected in our previous house's basement. All I know is it contained a folder full of my teenage writing efforts. There was the journal I kept from my trip to Europe in 1991. There were maps I drew of an alternate universe I created for a couple of stories. Most exciting (to me, anyway), there was the beginning of a story I barely remember writing, dated November, 1988. I was 15.
I read it over, expecting some fairly embarassing garbage, to be honest, but instead, I found an intriguing idea of a novel that never happened. For fun, since I didn't want my vacation to be all work and no play, I transcribed my early efforts to Word, did some very slight editing, and now I'm posting it here because...because...Ha! Because I'm not writing anything currently to post so I'm borrowing from a cold case!
Seriously, though, I'm tinkering around with the idea of developing this further and seeing where it goes. It's a genre I haven't written in a really long time. There's actually more to this scene, but it gets a little confusing toward the end and needs a smoother transition. A second character is introduced who takes the mood in an entirely different direction. Here is part one.
Paula's Adolescent Fiction Effort
Seamed in on all sides by barren, cobalt-blue hills, the deepening loneliness that had accompanied her flight now clinched painfully about her chest. At last, after spending so many scorching days and bitter, wind-driven nights roaming the hills alone, the last of her desperate survival instinct was spent. She could no longer avoid reflecting on those unfortunate acts that had brought her to this point.
Were they cruel? Were they so wrong?
Was it not rather cruel to condemn her to this life, to force her to fill the place of a slave who wouldn’t be kept? She had never desired a part of this ancient tradition that had come to her, and she had never given any of the elders a doubt of her disinclination.
“Tiyrus!”
Her voice was a lost wail, blending and dissolving to nothing in the harsh gusts around her. The name that her voice launched pained her throat. She swallowed hard and fell to her knees on the uneven gravel. Slowly, she raised her eyes to gaze deeply into the star-lit sky, tainted by a red haze left as evidence of the long-since fallen sun. The hills were turning from blue to black in the dusk.
“Why, Tiyrus? Why have you left your duties to me?” At long last, her complaint found vent, flowing upward like a hot spring geyser. Gravity poured it back down onto her face, where it burned her eyes and left streams of water running down her cheeks.
“This was never to be mine! It was for you, not me!” A sob choked her and she coughed. Her hands covered her face. “Not me.”
She fell silent for a long time with her face turned upward toward the stars. Pools of tears continued to flood her solemn gray eyes as they sought answer from the dark, from that place of promised light beyond the nothingness of the grave. Her brother and so many before him had escaped there, leaving only an ignorant, third-born girl to inherit the dark realm they had left behind.
“You have abandoned me!” She wept. “You left me to run from what I can never evade.”
More silence. The wind roared in her ears and dried her eyes. The abundant, long locks of her black hair lifted, fell, and twisted together, propelled by the endless gusts. “I cannot run forever. I shall die here.”
How long had it been? Nearly a month’s time, surely, for she had fled on a new moon, and there was no moon visible tonight among the stars. There was nothing but the wind and the star-speckled sky, and the oppressive silhouette of the stony hills.
I read it over, expecting some fairly embarassing garbage, to be honest, but instead, I found an intriguing idea of a novel that never happened. For fun, since I didn't want my vacation to be all work and no play, I transcribed my early efforts to Word, did some very slight editing, and now I'm posting it here because...because...Ha! Because I'm not writing anything currently to post so I'm borrowing from a cold case!
Seriously, though, I'm tinkering around with the idea of developing this further and seeing where it goes. It's a genre I haven't written in a really long time. There's actually more to this scene, but it gets a little confusing toward the end and needs a smoother transition. A second character is introduced who takes the mood in an entirely different direction. Here is part one.
Paula's Adolescent Fiction Effort
Seamed in on all sides by barren, cobalt-blue hills, the deepening loneliness that had accompanied her flight now clinched painfully about her chest. At last, after spending so many scorching days and bitter, wind-driven nights roaming the hills alone, the last of her desperate survival instinct was spent. She could no longer avoid reflecting on those unfortunate acts that had brought her to this point.
Were they cruel? Were they so wrong?
Was it not rather cruel to condemn her to this life, to force her to fill the place of a slave who wouldn’t be kept? She had never desired a part of this ancient tradition that had come to her, and she had never given any of the elders a doubt of her disinclination.
“Tiyrus!”
Her voice was a lost wail, blending and dissolving to nothing in the harsh gusts around her. The name that her voice launched pained her throat. She swallowed hard and fell to her knees on the uneven gravel. Slowly, she raised her eyes to gaze deeply into the star-lit sky, tainted by a red haze left as evidence of the long-since fallen sun. The hills were turning from blue to black in the dusk.
“Why, Tiyrus? Why have you left your duties to me?” At long last, her complaint found vent, flowing upward like a hot spring geyser. Gravity poured it back down onto her face, where it burned her eyes and left streams of water running down her cheeks.
“This was never to be mine! It was for you, not me!” A sob choked her and she coughed. Her hands covered her face. “Not me.”
She fell silent for a long time with her face turned upward toward the stars. Pools of tears continued to flood her solemn gray eyes as they sought answer from the dark, from that place of promised light beyond the nothingness of the grave. Her brother and so many before him had escaped there, leaving only an ignorant, third-born girl to inherit the dark realm they had left behind.
“You have abandoned me!” She wept. “You left me to run from what I can never evade.”
More silence. The wind roared in her ears and dried her eyes. The abundant, long locks of her black hair lifted, fell, and twisted together, propelled by the endless gusts. “I cannot run forever. I shall die here.”
How long had it been? Nearly a month’s time, surely, for she had fled on a new moon, and there was no moon visible tonight among the stars. There was nothing but the wind and the star-speckled sky, and the oppressive silhouette of the stony hills.
