Pushing Daisies snippet: In This Elegant Chaos
The lovely schneestern is hosting a love meme, with a lot of people in need of some virtual loving today - should you feel like giving me some love, I'm here.
Now a wee ficlet.
In This Elegant Chaos [Pushing Daisies, Chuck, PG, 350 words. Title from Julian Cope's Elegant Chaos.]
In This Elegant Chaos
My big fear
Is to dig it at last
And have it taken away
Barefoot in the meadow, green green grass and white daisies. She pushes her toes into the ground, into the soil.
It's warm in the sun, pleasant between her toes, friendly. At night, when the temperature drops, the ground goes cold. Quiet, and she thinks it would be lonely down there. No conversation. Worms aren't known for being chatty, nor are beetles.
Chuck doesn't like silence. Silence should be light, but rarely is.
As she runs, she feels the earth under each foot, rising up to meet her stride. She feels all the people who've lived and died and become the meadow she's running in. All that history, right underfoot, silent.
There are bees in the air, following a pattern that looks random but isn't. Maybe her bees, she can't tell. She dances with them, circles and ellipses and lemniscates, but she can't find their pattern.
Chuck's life looks orderly, she thinks, but somehow it feels random, like there's a pattern still missing that she needs to find.
A bee stings her and she apologizes. She kneels down and watches it sadly as it lies on the ground, fat black and yellow and dying, skinny legs twitching up in the air, and if Ned were here she'd ask him to touch it. Wanton and reckless of her, wanting to steal a life from another creature, but this life and death she can see. Sometimes that makes all the difference.
When she runs, straight line now, down the meadow, away from the bees, she imagines she's able to fly. Arms out wide, like aeroplane wings. Lighter, she is, all that history buried in a casket with her name on the side. History weighs a person down - Chuck's felt it - and now she has none. She's a new woman, free, fancy-free woman.
She tried to fly, tried to flee, Tahiti beckoning, but first time around it didn't work out too well, killed for a pair of gold monkeys, that's never a good ending, random or not. Second chance now.
Later, she is going to stand on the rooftop and learn how to fly.
//
Now a wee ficlet.
In This Elegant Chaos [Pushing Daisies, Chuck, PG, 350 words. Title from Julian Cope's Elegant Chaos.]
In This Elegant Chaos
My big fear
Is to dig it at last
And have it taken away
Barefoot in the meadow, green green grass and white daisies. She pushes her toes into the ground, into the soil.
It's warm in the sun, pleasant between her toes, friendly. At night, when the temperature drops, the ground goes cold. Quiet, and she thinks it would be lonely down there. No conversation. Worms aren't known for being chatty, nor are beetles.
Chuck doesn't like silence. Silence should be light, but rarely is.
As she runs, she feels the earth under each foot, rising up to meet her stride. She feels all the people who've lived and died and become the meadow she's running in. All that history, right underfoot, silent.
There are bees in the air, following a pattern that looks random but isn't. Maybe her bees, she can't tell. She dances with them, circles and ellipses and lemniscates, but she can't find their pattern.
Chuck's life looks orderly, she thinks, but somehow it feels random, like there's a pattern still missing that she needs to find.
A bee stings her and she apologizes. She kneels down and watches it sadly as it lies on the ground, fat black and yellow and dying, skinny legs twitching up in the air, and if Ned were here she'd ask him to touch it. Wanton and reckless of her, wanting to steal a life from another creature, but this life and death she can see. Sometimes that makes all the difference.
When she runs, straight line now, down the meadow, away from the bees, she imagines she's able to fly. Arms out wide, like aeroplane wings. Lighter, she is, all that history buried in a casket with her name on the side. History weighs a person down - Chuck's felt it - and now she has none. She's a new woman, free, fancy-free woman.
She tried to fly, tried to flee, Tahiti beckoning, but first time around it didn't work out too well, killed for a pair of gold monkeys, that's never a good ending, random or not. Second chance now.
Later, she is going to stand on the rooftop and learn how to fly.
//