Category: Daily

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Cold Cold Air

I’ve missed a couple day’s writing, and I haven’t felt too badly about it. Yesterday we cleaned the garage. That needed doing.

Xannajhandra-tha buoyed near the surface where the vent-heated lake still warmed his naked body and gave his mind comfort. This small volume of water had no name, but he’d come to think of its shape as little-gate or last-gate or maybe lost-gate as he drifted from inlet to outlet all morning. He allowed a tentacle to uncoil past the drop-off and sink into the hotter layers nearer this last vent on the downstream end of Lost-Gate. As it snaked deeper, his awareness of place increased. The heat differential between his head and tail fed a sense he couldn’t feel outside walking on the ground. Like this, caught between the relative cool of the shoal and the scald of the vent, he felt precise, accurate, and calm. For Xannajhandra-tha the contrast made making decisions easier, and he wanted to have one last memory from one correct decision.

He lulled to one side and pushed a bulbous eye outside into the cold air. The surface tension tickled when he blinked the nictitating membrane to clear the water pooled in the corner of his eye. No one noticed his movement; no one was there to notice. Outside, the lake steamed. Very few fliers and no walkers would be able to see him depart the safety of the water. He scuttled out making no more noise than necessary and none that wouldn’t be mistaken for the sound of lake water surging into the stream nearby.

Next, he changed shape; he’d have to find clothes in this human form.

Not sure I made this bettter: https://1000days.douglasblaine.com/20080414/outside-into-the-cold-cold-air/

276 words on day 891

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The Merriweather Balloon Boat & Mobile Market

It turns out that trying to write at 6 AM without a plan for what to write is not a great way to write what you were hoping to write at 6 AM. That turned out to not be anywhere near as humorous as I’d hoped.

Broke for Mt Dew and an English muffin with butter and homemade jelly. Let’s see if that does the trick…

So I thought I’d write this somehow: http://www.intothepixel.com/artwork-details/winner_details.asp?idArtwork=1278

The Merriweather Balloon Boat & Mobile Market burned from the Crows’ Crow’s Nest to what would have been the waterline had it been a seafaring craft and not a…balloon boat (and mobile market). But I’m getting ahead of myself with the hook and you’ll be wanting a little less medias in your res.

Gondola Mike Evercotts lashed the last of his boxed cargo into the main net and tossed it overboard to dangle below his dad-made skiff—
—ok, some things will be easier if I just come right out and tell you: Mike goes by “Evercotts” and not Mike or Gondola Mike. When he did briefly go by ‘Gondola Mike’ they stressed the second syllable not the first, thus: ‘gone-DOE-luh mike’. He gondoliered for maybe two weeks one summer and it stuck—except that no one ever calls him that to his face. Usually you’ll hear people introduce him as “Gondola Mike Evercotts [as I did above], but just call him ‘Evercotts’.” He’s got iron-black hair and is shorter than you’d like him to be but as tall as he needs.

Also, it’s best if you imagine me narrating in something like an Irish accent—not a brogue though. Later my narrative accent—again,you should imagine—will drift into anything applicable from the western parts of Europe, Morocco, and once Italian…Italy. You know what I mean. However, for the ease of your reading I’ll be typing it all out in American English. I’ll just let you know which to imagine when we get there.

324 words on day 889

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A Lesson to Me

But now that Dunsa had made it this far and was this close and the joy of seeing her fathers again tugged at her sleeve like a puppy she wasn’t sure being here was what she wanted. She wanted the hugs and the ensuing dinner meal. She wanted the cups of wine after and the frontroom storytelling. She wanted to climb the narrow stairs to her waiting bed and sleep till the smell of bacon woke her. She maybe wanted to repeat that the next day, but she didn’t want to the third day or the fourth or the fifth or the hundreth. She wanted to come home; she didn’t want to stay.

If I walk in that door, she thought, I’ll never have the strength to leave again.

She felt the trees on the slope behind her become an answer.

Wow, I hadn’t expected this head writing to be so hard. Clearly I need a better idea of what’s going on in this girls life around her before I can write what’s going on in her head. I was going to try to muscle through this to the end—and I should—but I’m going to wimp out and not do that. Let that be a lesson to me.

208 words on day 888