January 12-
Today we did hands.
This was exciting because for months we did nothing but drawings. Feet and hands and eyeballs and everything in between, drawn over and over in painful detail and if you got one little detail off they’d smack your fingers and make you do it again. Not good enough, they’d say, you can’t afford anything less than perfect. So you’d draw it again. Bone structure some days or ligaments or muscles or veins or arteries or nerves. Nerves are the worst, nerves and capillaries. They go on and on and they’re such a pain to draw, even if your pencil’s really sharp.
But today was for r
“Such a lucky, lucky girl,” the woman murmurs. She smoothes her daughter’s waxy hair back and wraps the girl’s head tight in scratchy wool scarves, taking good care to cover her mouth and nose. Even if they could afford the child a mask it would be a waste, sending it off with a girl that would never return.
The girl sniffles. She raises large, watery eyes to her mother: “I don’t want to go.”
The woman stiffens. She crouches so as to look her daughter in the eye. The light in the hall is dim, and her face is shadowed. The room smells like turnips and mildew, sulphur and salt, but neither notice, aft
The sky is a bright, blinding white as she skips through the grey snow. It’s thick, like running through water. Jaye sifts the powdery crystals through her fingers, throws them up into the air where they floats down in swirls and sparkles.
“Weiss,” Andersen calls from across the field, his voice crackling and muffled in her radio. “Could you stop being a child and help me with the measurements?”
But she is not to be deterred. She runs over to him, balling the snow in her hands. She throws it with notable accuracy at the boy’s head. He ducks and squeals, frantically clawing any hint of powder from his mask
The boy knocks sharply at the door.
"Weiss," he says.
A pause. "...Weiss?"
He twists the cold knob and enters the room with tentative footsteps. "Jaye?"
He steps into the dim room. The door shuts softly behind him.
Such a tiny room: one bed, one desk, one covered window. An armoire. He feels the slightest tinge of guilt at its size and simplicity in comparison to his own. The bed is carelessly made, edges un-tucked. His hands itch to fix it. Weak sunlight slips past the heavy curtains. He walks over to the window and opens the curtains slightly, grimacing at the clouding dust. His footsteps click on the hardwood.
She has a view of the
The little girls stand in a row. They're all dressed in heavy grey coats that reach down past their toes and button up to their ears.
Lanterns hiss at their feet, casting dim yellow light through the thick fog.
"You," the man says, through his breakfast, gesturing with the bread at the girls' blank faces, "are all so very lucky to be alive."
Walking and scone dough by TheAlbinoQuail, literature
Literature
Walking and scone dough
They follow one another through the liquid black, cold hands clasped tight together. The girls sing as they walk, their voices high and soft and cheerful. A dim yellow circle flickers ahead of them, leading them to the caves. There are no stars.
The wind combs through the tall, thin spires of rock, carved out by the river. Creeping plants web across the stone. Breath collects and freezes in their scarves. The hems of their dresses are dipped in same thick mud that crusts their boots. They are all wrapped up tight in layers of fabric so that no skin is left exposed to the frigid, acrid air.
*
A boy sits guard at the cave mouth, s
January 12-
Today we did hands.
This was exciting because for months we did nothing but drawings. Feet and hands and eyeballs and everything in between, drawn over and over in painful detail and if you got one little detail off they’d smack your fingers and make you do it again. Not good enough, they’d say, you can’t afford anything less than perfect. So you’d draw it again. Bone structure some days or ligaments or muscles or veins or arteries or nerves. Nerves are the worst, nerves and capillaries. They go on and on and they’re such a pain to draw, even if your pencil’s really sharp.
But today was for r
“Such a lucky, lucky girl,” the woman murmurs. She smoothes her daughter’s waxy hair back and wraps the girl’s head tight in scratchy wool scarves, taking good care to cover her mouth and nose. Even if they could afford the child a mask it would be a waste, sending it off with a girl that would never return.
The girl sniffles. She raises large, watery eyes to her mother: “I don’t want to go.”
The woman stiffens. She crouches so as to look her daughter in the eye. The light in the hall is dim, and her face is shadowed. The room smells like turnips and mildew, sulphur and salt, but neither notice, aft
The boy knocks sharply at the door.
"Weiss," he says.
A pause. "...Weiss?"
He twists the cold knob and enters the room with tentative footsteps. "Jaye?"
He steps into the dim room. The door shuts softly behind him.
Such a tiny room: one bed, one desk, one covered window. An armoire. He feels the slightest tinge of guilt at its size and simplicity in comparison to his own. The bed is carelessly made, edges un-tucked. His hands itch to fix it. Weak sunlight slips past the heavy curtains. He walks over to the window and opens the curtains slightly, grimacing at the clouding dust. His footsteps click on the hardwood.
She has a view of the
The sky is a bright, blinding white as she skips through the grey snow. It’s thick, like running through water. Jaye sifts the powdery crystals through her fingers, throws them up into the air where they floats down in swirls and sparkles.
“Weiss,” Andersen calls from across the field, his voice crackling and muffled in her radio. “Could you stop being a child and help me with the measurements?”
But she is not to be deterred. She runs over to him, balling the snow in her hands. She throws it with notable accuracy at the boy’s head. He ducks and squeals, frantically clawing any hint of powder from his mask
but i can't. the whole mushroom caves thing is bothering me. i want to break them back down into 3 parts, and then just treat the rest of the things i submit like little, erm, vignettes (?) into the bigger story. because linear writing and i are not friends. (the whole stretched-out mushroom-caves thing is a wonderful example of that...)
so yes.
(eventually the mushroom caves will just be split back into three. but i feel horrid. so not today.)
sigh. i only have one deviation now. that's so sad.
decided i needed to clean this up a bit, finally got around to writing part three. yay...
promise to try and get the next parts up sooner, but... urgh. everything i write now i want to throw against the wall.
oh, well. hope you guys like it (: