Threecount - Chocolate Chip Mint, Chocolate, Sour Apple, Fudge Ripple
I'm still alive, sort of. Here, have a new story! *waves red scarf frantically at*
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate Chip Mint #11 - translucent, Chocolate #17 - freedom
Rating: G
Title: The House Down The Road
Story: The Dim Reflections of a Distant City (henceforth known only as Distant City)
Timeline: ??? - Broken is new.
Word Count: 730
He grew, budded from the ground as an exotic flower did, his very being unfolding like the snowy petals of an orchid. The Garden of Dreams. His home. His childhood was impossible, a quick nonexistence marked with the slow twist of his limbs towards the ground.
When his foot brushed dirt, a sign of reality, of there-ness - I'm alive, I exist, I am - he knew it was time to wake. The twisted cocoon which bore him twitched, once, twice, and then bloomed with a swift unnoise that deposited him shivering into the dust. His skin was pale, even for a newborn, and the dirt where his motherflower grew smudged his fingers.
He found it fascinating, and with only a child's wonder he gazed at the brown streaks against the white.
His brothers and sisters were unrelated to him. Few were beautiful. Most were unlovely. Many were ugly, and those were the ones who scared him - their last touches of affection still lingered about their inelegant faces, and it seemed as if they were really just wearing monster masks. They looked at him with eyes that stabbed, and he hid behind his less dystopic brothers.
They were real enough, he knew. Their slowing lives were agony-riddled, a studding of uselessness that they ended with a journey to the forest at the end of the garden. The false ones, the ones who really did wear monster masks - they were the ones who had been born in the terrible trees, and they were the ones who howled in the dead of the night.
He was gone from his childhood, but his childhood clung to him, as he watched and learned and discovered. In the Garden where the fruit bore children and the ground itself cradled the bodies of the dying; that was where he learned how dew felt on his fingertips, and how grass slid beneath his unwieldy feet. His brothers and sisters left, replaced by those who he could only call his cousins, yet they bore as much a relation to him as the past ones had. They left, too, but he stayed - an unbreakable thread tied him here, still.
The broken. That's what they called him. He was small and quick and silver-haired, and his eyes were the color of the berries that grew - the ones that left blood-colored smears on his lips when he bit into them. His brothers and sisters had disappeared from the Garden, had wandered downhill into the cold and ill-assuming house of reality, but the broken child remained.
He learned that the red-berries tasted of shattered hearts, and that the dew licked from morning-leaves carried the scent of old memories. When he brushed against a tree when the blue-moon was up it left a scar upon his skin, one that shone with the glow of a thousand smiles under the blue-moon's light.
His motherflower kept him close, and he was content to rest in her embrace. Her petals wilted but he cared little, returned every night to her when the yellowstar fell and his cousins rambled down the hill to the reality-house. Her stem faded with every day, bent as he climbed into her welcoming arms, but he didn't notice - he was the child and she was the mother and they were content to be like that, for a while.
When he ascended the hill with the daily scars of knowledge on his heart he found the wilted remains of the motherflower, and it was then that he learned what grief tasted like.
The blue-moon painted his sorrow with the salve of sympathy, and in the morning the broken child buried his motherflower underneath the dirt which had been his first thing to touch. Her petals were brown with age, but he remained as pale as the day he was born, and the broken child knew something of regret now, too.
His sisters and brothers were long since gone, and his cousins were too - it was alone that he sewed himself a cloak of starshine, a clumsy and unskilled pair of breeches. It was alone that he stood underneath the welcoming blue-moon in the Garden, listening to the murmur of the motherflowers and the sibilant death-cries in the woods of decay.
The broken no-longer-child drew his cloak tighter around his shoulders and made his way down the hill.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Sour Apple #12 - repeat after me, Chocolate #11 - confusion
Rating: G
Title: The Mouths of Babes
Story: Distant City
Timeline: 2003 - Broken is new, Elise is 5.
Word Count: 302
"Elise, honey? Who did your hair like that?"
Eli looked up from the bird she was coloring in. Mommy was looking at her with that kind of look in her eyes, the one that meant she was either going to start crying or send Eli to her room. She didn't like the thought of either of them.
"Broken did," she replied matter-of-factly. Broken wouldn't like her telling her mommy about him, but he wouldn't be mad, either - after all, her mommy and daddy knew about Broken already. They just didn't like thinking about him.
Her mother sighed and raked a hand through her hair. She'd gotten her hair from her mommy, Daddy always said - they were the same color of brown, the really pretty kind that was kind of sand-colored. Eli's attention drifted back to her picture.
"Honey, Broken isn't - " Hannah Sage stopped, aware now that her daughter was ignoring her. And it wasn't really bad, she reasoned. After all, every kid had an imaginary friend, right?
Broken, Hannah thought, leaning back into the chair. No, it wasn't odd for Elise to be talking to someone who wasn't real - but Broken was a weird, morbid name. Her psychology teacher might have suggested that Elise was feeling different, odd - broken, in other words.
She wasn't going to pursue the matter of Broken's name, though. He was Elise's figment, and Hannah wasn't going to try imposing herself on Eli's little world.
Crediting Broken for the mess of intricate braids wrapped around her head, though - that went beyond odd and into the realm of obsessed. There was no way an imaginary friend could have done that, but her chubby child fingers were too clumsy to handle her hair that carefully.
This mystery troubled Hannah more than it should have.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate Chip Mint #18 - ancient, Fudge Ripple #12 - temptation, Sour Apple #25 - it's all in your head
Rating: PG
Title: Gulls Made of Sea-Glass
Story: Distant City
Timeline: August 2032 - Elise is 34, Broken is young.
Word Count: 595
They stood balanced on a precarious divide, silver and brown tangling in the summer breeze while the sun touched their hair. It shone, and she could see the reflection scuttle across the cliffside in a strange parody of water-ripples.
Their toes hung out to the breeze. Instinctively she curled hers, clutching at the edge so as not to fall, and she felt the clench of his fingers tighten around hers.
Do you think we'll ever leave here?
Not unless we try. She felt him smile, though she could not turn her eyes from the web-ripple of the sun's reflection, and the crying of gulls reached her ears.
Why don't we?
It's dangerous.
Everything is dangerous.
We might die.
You never will.
There was a pause. The sea slapped at the base of the cliff. Had it been there before? She couldn't remember. It seemed as if everything had been like this forever; the sea and the sun and the cliff and the calling of the gulls. She had always been here. He had always been here.
Do you think we can?
Her eyes remained riveted on the blurring horizon. The sun burned her eyes if she stared at it too long, but it seemed as if she had been looking at it forever, and it still burned hot and bright and orange.
I think we should try.
They turned in slow-motion to face each other, feet slipping back from the cliff. Hadn't it been like this once upon a very long time ago? Hadn't they looked at each other like this? Or had they been standing at that cliff for all time, and she knew what he looked like simply from the flashes she caught from the corner of her eye?
They turned in slow-motion, and she thought - No. It was like this, a very long time ago.
Things change.
The crying of the gulls turned to silence. The sea carried on its impossible rhythm, a crashing splashing din that seemed to burn through her mind with its impenetrability. Her eyes widened. What?
He faced her, all red and white and silver, and he let go of her hands. His eyes were sad, but that didn't change the way it felt when she stumbled back, when the invisible ropes of desperation and forgotten things caught her around the ankles.
When she fell, he reached for her, but the way his fingers skimmed hers didn't change the way she plummeted into the noiseless screaming chaos of the sea below.
-
Elise woke breathing heavily, deep terrified pants that shrieked out of her with a vigor that frightened her more than the dream had. Thad slept peacefully next to her, unaware of his wife's nightmares, unaware of anything. Thad was a deep sleeper.
She stumbled to the bathroom. The green tile was cool against her feet, and without thinking about what she was doing, she crumpled to the floor to press every inch of her skin against the cold surface. Strands of golden-brown hair stuck to her cheeks, but she ignored them.
Things change. Things change. Things change.
She felt better, soon, once the heat of the bed and utter oddness of the dream had faded. Elise sat up, rubbing her tired eyes, and looked up at the ceiling. I should get someone in here to repair that fucking vent, it's fucked up so badly it'll be a miracle if it ever works again.
Things change.
"God, I need a psychiatrist," she said aloud, and the sudden staticky buzz of Thad's alarm clock seemed to agree.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate Chip Mint #11 - translucent, Chocolate #17 - freedom
Rating: G
Title: The House Down The Road
Story: The Dim Reflections of a Distant City (henceforth known only as Distant City)
Timeline: ??? - Broken is new.
Word Count: 730
He grew, budded from the ground as an exotic flower did, his very being unfolding like the snowy petals of an orchid. The Garden of Dreams. His home. His childhood was impossible, a quick nonexistence marked with the slow twist of his limbs towards the ground.
When his foot brushed dirt, a sign of reality, of there-ness - I'm alive, I exist, I am - he knew it was time to wake. The twisted cocoon which bore him twitched, once, twice, and then bloomed with a swift unnoise that deposited him shivering into the dust. His skin was pale, even for a newborn, and the dirt where his motherflower grew smudged his fingers.
He found it fascinating, and with only a child's wonder he gazed at the brown streaks against the white.
His brothers and sisters were unrelated to him. Few were beautiful. Most were unlovely. Many were ugly, and those were the ones who scared him - their last touches of affection still lingered about their inelegant faces, and it seemed as if they were really just wearing monster masks. They looked at him with eyes that stabbed, and he hid behind his less dystopic brothers.
They were real enough, he knew. Their slowing lives were agony-riddled, a studding of uselessness that they ended with a journey to the forest at the end of the garden. The false ones, the ones who really did wear monster masks - they were the ones who had been born in the terrible trees, and they were the ones who howled in the dead of the night.
He was gone from his childhood, but his childhood clung to him, as he watched and learned and discovered. In the Garden where the fruit bore children and the ground itself cradled the bodies of the dying; that was where he learned how dew felt on his fingertips, and how grass slid beneath his unwieldy feet. His brothers and sisters left, replaced by those who he could only call his cousins, yet they bore as much a relation to him as the past ones had. They left, too, but he stayed - an unbreakable thread tied him here, still.
The broken. That's what they called him. He was small and quick and silver-haired, and his eyes were the color of the berries that grew - the ones that left blood-colored smears on his lips when he bit into them. His brothers and sisters had disappeared from the Garden, had wandered downhill into the cold and ill-assuming house of reality, but the broken child remained.
He learned that the red-berries tasted of shattered hearts, and that the dew licked from morning-leaves carried the scent of old memories. When he brushed against a tree when the blue-moon was up it left a scar upon his skin, one that shone with the glow of a thousand smiles under the blue-moon's light.
His motherflower kept him close, and he was content to rest in her embrace. Her petals wilted but he cared little, returned every night to her when the yellowstar fell and his cousins rambled down the hill to the reality-house. Her stem faded with every day, bent as he climbed into her welcoming arms, but he didn't notice - he was the child and she was the mother and they were content to be like that, for a while.
When he ascended the hill with the daily scars of knowledge on his heart he found the wilted remains of the motherflower, and it was then that he learned what grief tasted like.
The blue-moon painted his sorrow with the salve of sympathy, and in the morning the broken child buried his motherflower underneath the dirt which had been his first thing to touch. Her petals were brown with age, but he remained as pale as the day he was born, and the broken child knew something of regret now, too.
His sisters and brothers were long since gone, and his cousins were too - it was alone that he sewed himself a cloak of starshine, a clumsy and unskilled pair of breeches. It was alone that he stood underneath the welcoming blue-moon in the Garden, listening to the murmur of the motherflowers and the sibilant death-cries in the woods of decay.
The broken no-longer-child drew his cloak tighter around his shoulders and made his way down the hill.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Sour Apple #12 - repeat after me, Chocolate #11 - confusion
Rating: G
Title: The Mouths of Babes
Story: Distant City
Timeline: 2003 - Broken is new, Elise is 5.
Word Count: 302
"Elise, honey? Who did your hair like that?"
Eli looked up from the bird she was coloring in. Mommy was looking at her with that kind of look in her eyes, the one that meant she was either going to start crying or send Eli to her room. She didn't like the thought of either of them.
"Broken did," she replied matter-of-factly. Broken wouldn't like her telling her mommy about him, but he wouldn't be mad, either - after all, her mommy and daddy knew about Broken already. They just didn't like thinking about him.
Her mother sighed and raked a hand through her hair. She'd gotten her hair from her mommy, Daddy always said - they were the same color of brown, the really pretty kind that was kind of sand-colored. Eli's attention drifted back to her picture.
"Honey, Broken isn't - " Hannah Sage stopped, aware now that her daughter was ignoring her. And it wasn't really bad, she reasoned. After all, every kid had an imaginary friend, right?
Broken, Hannah thought, leaning back into the chair. No, it wasn't odd for Elise to be talking to someone who wasn't real - but Broken was a weird, morbid name. Her psychology teacher might have suggested that Elise was feeling different, odd - broken, in other words.
She wasn't going to pursue the matter of Broken's name, though. He was Elise's figment, and Hannah wasn't going to try imposing herself on Eli's little world.
Crediting Broken for the mess of intricate braids wrapped around her head, though - that went beyond odd and into the realm of obsessed. There was no way an imaginary friend could have done that, but her chubby child fingers were too clumsy to handle her hair that carefully.
This mystery troubled Hannah more than it should have.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate Chip Mint #18 - ancient, Fudge Ripple #12 - temptation, Sour Apple #25 - it's all in your head
Rating: PG
Title: Gulls Made of Sea-Glass
Story: Distant City
Timeline: August 2032 - Elise is 34, Broken is young.
Word Count: 595
They stood balanced on a precarious divide, silver and brown tangling in the summer breeze while the sun touched their hair. It shone, and she could see the reflection scuttle across the cliffside in a strange parody of water-ripples.
Their toes hung out to the breeze. Instinctively she curled hers, clutching at the edge so as not to fall, and she felt the clench of his fingers tighten around hers.
Do you think we'll ever leave here?
Not unless we try. She felt him smile, though she could not turn her eyes from the web-ripple of the sun's reflection, and the crying of gulls reached her ears.
Why don't we?
It's dangerous.
Everything is dangerous.
We might die.
You never will.
There was a pause. The sea slapped at the base of the cliff. Had it been there before? She couldn't remember. It seemed as if everything had been like this forever; the sea and the sun and the cliff and the calling of the gulls. She had always been here. He had always been here.
Do you think we can?
Her eyes remained riveted on the blurring horizon. The sun burned her eyes if she stared at it too long, but it seemed as if she had been looking at it forever, and it still burned hot and bright and orange.
I think we should try.
They turned in slow-motion to face each other, feet slipping back from the cliff. Hadn't it been like this once upon a very long time ago? Hadn't they looked at each other like this? Or had they been standing at that cliff for all time, and she knew what he looked like simply from the flashes she caught from the corner of her eye?
They turned in slow-motion, and she thought - No. It was like this, a very long time ago.
Things change.
The crying of the gulls turned to silence. The sea carried on its impossible rhythm, a crashing splashing din that seemed to burn through her mind with its impenetrability. Her eyes widened. What?
He faced her, all red and white and silver, and he let go of her hands. His eyes were sad, but that didn't change the way it felt when she stumbled back, when the invisible ropes of desperation and forgotten things caught her around the ankles.
When she fell, he reached for her, but the way his fingers skimmed hers didn't change the way she plummeted into the noiseless screaming chaos of the sea below.
-
Elise woke breathing heavily, deep terrified pants that shrieked out of her with a vigor that frightened her more than the dream had. Thad slept peacefully next to her, unaware of his wife's nightmares, unaware of anything. Thad was a deep sleeper.
She stumbled to the bathroom. The green tile was cool against her feet, and without thinking about what she was doing, she crumpled to the floor to press every inch of her skin against the cold surface. Strands of golden-brown hair stuck to her cheeks, but she ignored them.
Things change. Things change. Things change.
She felt better, soon, once the heat of the bed and utter oddness of the dream had faded. Elise sat up, rubbing her tired eyes, and looked up at the ceiling. I should get someone in here to repair that fucking vent, it's fucked up so badly it'll be a miracle if it ever works again.
Things change.
"God, I need a psychiatrist," she said aloud, and the sudden staticky buzz of Thad's alarm clock seemed to agree.