Excerpt from Phat Fairy (still very rough)
The next morning I could barely drag myself out of bed. It was not so much that the day was grey, a rainy drizzle intensifying into downpour that dragged my spirits to the ground. I felt lumpy and miserable, full of uncomfortable aches and pains to go with my spiritual ache.
Everything was grey. The clouds that roiled overhead were gun-metal grey, ominous and threatening as a car horn at close range.
Even so, I found it difficult to care. I dragged myself out of bed without bothering to make the bed behind me, and wandered over to the window. My feet felt unfamiliar and as though they were no longer a part of me, as though they might head off down the Road of their own accord at any moment. As though they were independent, capable of thought more rational than my own erratic nature might provide. I flushed at the thought.
Even in my reveries, I was inferior, this time to simple body parts.
I put my palms down on the windowsill and pushed against the smooth cool surface. I rested my shoulders and forearms, as much of my skin as I possibly could, against the cool, silvery glass, fog-shrouded and beaded with drops of condensed moisture, clumped with cobwebs in the corners.
Bink.
Something hurled itself, fast as lightning crackling, against the glass, a solid pebbly impact that sounded like a musical instrument’s note, a glass piano, perhaps, or a triangle. I shuddered away from the glass, seeing nothing but the swirl of cloud against it. Then something purple, humming bird wings, wasp-stinger and clutching mandibles, angry hornet buzz that frightened me on some deep level, instinctive as a Neanderthal pissing.
Happily I didn’t follow suit.
Instead I backed away from the glass, looking at the wasp. Another joined it, and then anther and another and another until at least a dozen hovered there like irate jewels.
Faced with that, it was harder to be depressed, even though I could feel the emotion, as deeply plunging as any Pit, yawning just to the side of my attention. But I turned away, trusting to the sturdiness of the Palace’s glass.
The buzzing and impacts behind me grew furious. For a moment, I thought that I had made a terrible mistake, for which I would be stung when the glass inevitably shattered.
But despite the terrible fear riding my spine, the wasps did not break through. I walked away, across the chamber towards the door. Behind it I cold hear a conversation, and for a moment I put my ear to the door and listened, despite the buzzing of the wasps at the window far behind me.
Everything was grey. The clouds that roiled overhead were gun-metal grey, ominous and threatening as a car horn at close range.
Even so, I found it difficult to care. I dragged myself out of bed without bothering to make the bed behind me, and wandered over to the window. My feet felt unfamiliar and as though they were no longer a part of me, as though they might head off down the Road of their own accord at any moment. As though they were independent, capable of thought more rational than my own erratic nature might provide. I flushed at the thought.
Even in my reveries, I was inferior, this time to simple body parts.
I put my palms down on the windowsill and pushed against the smooth cool surface. I rested my shoulders and forearms, as much of my skin as I possibly could, against the cool, silvery glass, fog-shrouded and beaded with drops of condensed moisture, clumped with cobwebs in the corners.
Bink.
Something hurled itself, fast as lightning crackling, against the glass, a solid pebbly impact that sounded like a musical instrument’s note, a glass piano, perhaps, or a triangle. I shuddered away from the glass, seeing nothing but the swirl of cloud against it. Then something purple, humming bird wings, wasp-stinger and clutching mandibles, angry hornet buzz that frightened me on some deep level, instinctive as a Neanderthal pissing.
Happily I didn’t follow suit.
Instead I backed away from the glass, looking at the wasp. Another joined it, and then anther and another and another until at least a dozen hovered there like irate jewels.
Faced with that, it was harder to be depressed, even though I could feel the emotion, as deeply plunging as any Pit, yawning just to the side of my attention. But I turned away, trusting to the sturdiness of the Palace’s glass.
The buzzing and impacts behind me grew furious. For a moment, I thought that I had made a terrible mistake, for which I would be stung when the glass inevitably shattered.
But despite the terrible fear riding my spine, the wasps did not break through. I walked away, across the chamber towards the door. Behind it I cold hear a conversation, and for a moment I put my ear to the door and listened, despite the buzzing of the wasps at the window far behind me.