The Municipal Bell

Truly I had not expected my “Therefore…but…” exercise on Sunday to have produced so much writing fodder for the week. I’m a little amazed that I came up with six different (and fairly distinct) options. I love that this exercise pre-loaded my week with ready-made scenes with the same topic. The unexpected delight the exercise gave me is the synergistic nature of the options: I can mix and match them. Glomming A with B or C with D and E was such a compelling (and obvious) epiphany I had to tamp it down during the option making effort at about B and a half.

I’ve already subsummed the spirit of option three into yesterday’s writing, but I’ll set that content aside to treat number three fresh today.

3) Therefore she goes to the mayordomo’s home to ransom him, but she finds him dead upon her arrival.

Woo spilled down the steps leading out from the Pratacalla like water from a punctured skin. At the bottom, in the dusty sand, away from its halls and columns and sanctified fools she spat a glob so thick it roped back to her chin. She smeared it dry with the palm of her hand. On the ground, the bulk of her ire cohered into a wet-darkened ball.

“What do they think is going to happen?” Do they think the Bel Avi will just stop laundering clothes and planting crops? Stop bathing or drinking? Just stop?

Something had to be done she thought. Something had been done. She’d gathered her arguments and the will of her district and brought them to the Pratacalla where instead of anyone listening and understanding she’d been accosted by a guard and denied by the mayordomo. She had to do more. Woo couldn’t go back without more water for her people.

The mayordomo had reduced the Bel Avi’s water today when she’d pleaded. What might he do tonight when she threatened? Woo found a nearby brinna cafe and waited till the municipal bell toll.

334 words on day 951

A Warded Phone

Karen had managed to crawl back to the shade and was resting on the dirt, back against the concrete picnic table’s bench, with her injured leg extended. She may have been pissed that Malachi left her stranded along highway 56 between Clayton and Springer, but she was angry at herself for allowing it to happen.

The other problem was that she understood why—and agreed. Which paradoxically cooled the first anger, but simmered the second. She wasn’t an easy girlfriend for a man like Malachi to have, she thought. He was serving his first tour in Vietnam the year she was born. [fact|logic check that] She supposed her youth made her exuberant about being with him while it just made him embarassed, and he was trying to protect her the only way he could because she wasn’t doing enough to protect herself.

Karen shuffled her phone out of her front pocket and was glad to see a single bar of coverage. “Hi, Margaret. It’s Karen. I need a text-hop…and I need your help with something else…I’ll tell you when I get there.”

Karen hung up the phone and texted Margaret a single character: ‘K’. When nothing happened she checked her coverage—still a bar. The trill of an incomming text startled her. It read: He warded your phone.

[Action]

217 words on day 796