(no subject)
I had an unusually well-plotted dream last night.
There was a woman in a military society in a state of cold war, or in which war might break out at any moment, but which was currently at peace. It was very elegant and old-fashioned, perhaps consciously so. The men wore dress uniforms with polished boots, and the women evening wear or, to the dances, ballgowns. There were dinner parties and gossip. It was something like the British Raj, but not a real society that I recognized.
This woman, who was not married herself but was part of the society of officers' wives, was snubbed by the other women, for no reason that she could figure out. They whispered about her behind her back, and she was left out of party invitations. Sometimes the supply lines got mixed up, and the enemy's food was all that was available in the shops; it was strange and didn't taste good, and the other women seemed to conspire that it was all that was left by the time she got to the store.
Then a new woman joined the group, and the ostracized woman overheard an established wife talking to her, about the woman herself: "Don't talk to her, she's a vom; we don't associate with them."
"What's a vom?" asked the new woman. (That wasn't the word-- it was some other short word beginning with v that I didn't recognize and now can't recall.)
"Sometimes people just lose it here," explained the officer's wife. "We call them voms. Don't talk to them, or you could get sucked in too."
And then the whole world shredded like mist in a wind, and, just for an instant, the woman saw where she really was: it was WWI, and she was a soldier huddled in a filthy trench in some field in France.
(If you're about to say, "Write that story!" I should mention that most magazines specifically note in guidelines that they hate stories that end with it all being a dream or hallucination.)
There was a woman in a military society in a state of cold war, or in which war might break out at any moment, but which was currently at peace. It was very elegant and old-fashioned, perhaps consciously so. The men wore dress uniforms with polished boots, and the women evening wear or, to the dances, ballgowns. There were dinner parties and gossip. It was something like the British Raj, but not a real society that I recognized.
This woman, who was not married herself but was part of the society of officers' wives, was snubbed by the other women, for no reason that she could figure out. They whispered about her behind her back, and she was left out of party invitations. Sometimes the supply lines got mixed up, and the enemy's food was all that was available in the shops; it was strange and didn't taste good, and the other women seemed to conspire that it was all that was left by the time she got to the store.
Then a new woman joined the group, and the ostracized woman overheard an established wife talking to her, about the woman herself: "Don't talk to her, she's a vom; we don't associate with them."
"What's a vom?" asked the new woman. (That wasn't the word-- it was some other short word beginning with v that I didn't recognize and now can't recall.)
"Sometimes people just lose it here," explained the officer's wife. "We call them voms. Don't talk to them, or you could get sucked in too."
And then the whole world shredded like mist in a wind, and, just for an instant, the woman saw where she really was: it was WWI, and she was a soldier huddled in a filthy trench in some field in France.
(If you're about to say, "Write that story!" I should mention that most magazines specifically note in guidelines that they hate stories that end with it all being a dream or hallucination.)