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The Flimsiest Cord

Day 467

Yesterday I tried to clean up an old bit of script, but spent more time than I should have tweaking and remeniscing. Noticed too late that whatever it was I had was not the complete story I’d written back in college. The distance of time helped me see how poorly I’d learned the screenwriting craft at that point and how dull the dialog had been. I can’t decide if I should move on, novelize, or edit the short piece. They all have different educational appeals.

I don’t have to decide now. All I have to do now is write.

Zhirvon propped back the shotocar pelt he slept under and slipped his feet onto the ox-blood floor. Years past, after he was a young man but before he was old, he decided never to linger in a warm bed on a cold morning. He sifted a few nut sized coals from the grey ashes of his overnight hearth and layered on shaved pine. Heat emerged slowly so he stepped outside to relieve himself—naked.

Whenever he wasn’t reticent in a conversation he was brusk. When he wasn’t brusk he was inadvertantly rude. Chelly would cling to his arm and pat his chest at the end of an evening with friends apologizing, “He has a warm heart though, my Zhirv.” He would form a practiced smile. If they had just spent the evening drinking and eating with his brother, Marken would reply, “Someday maybe it will warm up his tongue.” And they would laugh and he would form a better practiced smile. The truth Zhirvon knew was a fierce heart. An often angry heart. A sometimes vile heart. A demon heart he kept tied down with the flimsiest cord and a practiced smile. His warm feet melted frost while steam rose from an unending stream of urine.

Zhirvon was a lean muscular man who would be gaunt in a few more years. His once taunt skin slackened. His ribs easier to count. His knife hand trembling unless the whole arm moved. A thoughtful Zhirvon appreciated these changes and accomodated for them in a fight. A willful Zhirvon despised them and fuel his anger with them. His skill, his training, his experience were no longer equal to the task he’d set himself against, but maybe his bitter heart could be tapped. Maybe the vileness he’d stoppered all these years could garner him his revenge.

402 words

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And Gypsies are Fun

Day 465

The four day stale snow covered the land like a tattered blanket or corpses on a battle plain. Overnight chill froze the horse-trod slush in the roadway and crusted the still white lumps under the shadowed firs. The sun may have risen or it may still be mired in the horizon. Either way, grey clouds had hammered the earth shut in a dim lit coffin.

Back from the empty serf-road Jora squated to see below the branch-line. A small dark-metalled dagger appeared in her hand. If you hadn’t been just hovering over the narrator’s shoulder you’d be dead now. Jora ranged ahead of her three sisters scouting. Sometimes she waited for them to catch up and sometimes she traveled back to them. She waited.

In this weather Jora’s ears picked out voices in the distance with preternatural ease but the clarity cheated distances and timing. Jessa, Jemma, and Jia arrived later than Jora anticipated. Jia clomped down the road because she just didn’t give a shit. She could kick your ass if needed too.

Jora scowled at Jia. The youngest sister gave Jora the finger but hushed her tromping and jumped the ditch to join the other three gathered in the grass and frost.

Jessa, the oldest, gestured for Jora to share her scouting.

Jora shrugged a silent ‘all clear’.

“Then why are we being so fucking quiet here?” asked Jia. Jemma elbowed her. Jia replied with, “Cut that shit.”

“Maybe the gypsies will share their coffee. Right now you need to hush,” Jessa said, “How far to the camp? I’ve been smelling their cookfires for a while now.”

“Just over the hill. They’ve split the road and put up a shop or two. Jia can get her coffee and some food from what I saw,” Jora said.

“Strange. They know something we don’t?” asked Jessa.

“Must.”

“Or they don’t know something we do,” said Jemma.

Jia snorted. “Let’s just get something to eat. I could have eaten last night’s rabbit myself.”

No one looked to Jessa for leadership, but they waited for her assent. “Fine, but don’t stuff yourselves. Be alert. We should have found Crotter by now. And you,” Jessa tapped the hilt of Jora’s concealed blade, “eat last and keep watch.”

“I’ll second,” said Jia.

If you’re thinking this is a trap then you’re thinking the same as all four women, but they’re hungry and confident. And gypsies are fun.