Overhead, without any fuss, the stars are coming on.
Casi had these on her ceiling, too, when she was a teenager, but she didn’t have this many, or this solid an understanding of the sky. The former occupant of this room pasted stars trickling down closet molding and peeking out from behind the mirror; Orion winks at her from above the TV.
Does a room remember the childhoods it’s seen? Is childhood–like a room, like a constellation–anything but a construct formed of negative space? If these walls could talk, they’d recite Greek poetry. Casi’s would have mumbled Dashboard lyrics.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Windel’s head is beating like the protest drums of the stupid hill tribes–which issue they probably won’t even get to, today. It’s hard to conquer a continent when the ruling council stinks.
“Lords,” Windel says, “we must have your decision on the prohibition of alcohol in the newly conquered lands! What are your votes?”
But as always, they’re deadlocked: three wet, three dry.
Leaving the chamber, Windel kicks his agenda in frustration, and his aide scrambles to scoop up the scattered papers. “I’m this close to instigating a coup,” Windel growls.
“What,” his aide says hesitantly, “like a regime change?”
The endless war between Divine and Infernal drives the spin of every atom in our universe, and in terms of sheer fury involved, it has nothing on the current community annexing debate in Higley, Arizona.
“Third through Eighth must go to Mesa,” snaps the council chairman. “The county line stops at Main!”
“No, they will go to Gilbert,” says Davea. “We’re not joining your myopic tax bloc!”
“The line must hold!”
“Fellow merchants!” cries Davea. “Take up the cry!”
Bertram quivers, knowing his vote will decide it.
Above, the six thousand swords of the seraphs have paused to watch him choose.
Reaching the West Reaches can run now, for the first time in many years. It’s strange and painful, and he staggers gladly to a stop at a cold-breathing cave to set the dwarf down.
“The Wish Power could never heal me before,” he grumbles. “Tell me why I can’t–”
“There is no why,” sighs Stumble Jade, sitting.
He peers into blackness. “What’s in there?”
“Only what you take with you,” says Stumble Jade. “Your weapon–you will not need it.”
Reaching the West Reaches takes up his broken blade anyway, and limps through the entrance.
The Backstroke is waiting inside.
“Hold out the plan-scroll, boys,” says Captain Lanthorn, and her first mates stretch the saurian form across the empty little shop.
“It’s been long since I designed at such a scale,” frets the old clockmaker, twitching once a second. “I can’t guarantee it will work!”
“Of course it will,” she murmurs. “It’s perfect, isn’t it, boys? And now, unique.”
Cutpenny binds his wrists and gags his mouth. Curl snaps the cord for the heart-key from around his neck.
It’s six days before anyone finds the body. Around him, dragons of teak and rosewood are just beginning to wind down.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
“They didn’t mention the exact amount,” says the actress, “but I understand it was quite generous.”
Clemson shrugs a face. “Not important,” he says, “I would have given it anyway, but when I saw the top prize was having you read my screenplay…”
She smiles, and braces herself. “Yes, well, we should get started.”
“Of course.” He rummages. “Um. As long as we’re talking, would you mind reading some of it aloud?”
“I suppose not.”
“Starting with the title?” He plops it over.
“Telephone Directory,” she hesitates, “City of Los Angeles.”
“You can just start in the Js,” Clemson says dreamily.
When she and Sterling start over it’s glorious: they spend whole days together in the park, sunshine and honest silence, and the earnest rhythm of his words.
But six months in, she remembers why things ended. He rants at length and his arguments are ill-founded; he never listens to her. When she finds herself cheating with Bisson and Willis, she knows the time has come.
She takes him out to a coffee shop to break it to him. “It’s not me,” she scribbles on his cover page, “it’s you,” and leaves him with one of those stickers on his back.
Longinus started the first two cults by accident, and found them tremendous annoyances. The steppes made him as depressed as they made everyone else clingy; he swatted them away like Mongolian horseflies (but smaller and less determined).
The third he assembled deliberately, and for a specific reason: he hadn’t slept with anyone in a hundred and thirty years. Just a run of bad luck, which didn’t get any better, as the name “Sisterhood of Love Divine in Flesh” somehow managed to attract eighty-nine eunuchs.
The fourth cult got stolen by Ahasuerus and that just ruined the whole thing for him.