Friday Five: First Five "Daily Drabbles"
Jan. 18th, 2019 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mniMy New Year's resolution this year was two-fold: to post more regularly to Dreamwidth, and to write a Proper Drabble every day.
I also realized I could combine the two, by posting the drabbles I've written.
So:
Move-In Day: Saturday, 3:07 am
Jane gave up trying to sleep.
All their things were still in boxes. There were no curtains on her window, yet. There was a monster in her closet.
Someone had stitched together several plush animal parts (teddy bear’s body, crocodile’s snout, lion’s tail, and one rabbit’s ear), then left it behind on the shelf.
She turned on the light, got up, and dared to open the closet door. The minute she took it down, she could feel how carefully it was made: soft fur, firm stuffing, tight stitches.
Jane hugged it, instinctively, breathing in the scent of cedar, and yawned.
Braver Than Knights in Shining Armor
Two page boys carried it in. ‘Twas found buried in the dragon’s golden hoard.
The king wanted it poached, with the pieces of shell brought before him, as proof it wasn’t doctored goose eggs.
Old Cook begged for time. “Not even sure how to crack it, Your Majesty.”
Not that she was going to try. She’d seen enough half-formed chicks in her frying pan.
So doctored goose eggs it would be.
Pastry Cook worked miracles with pie crust. And the king didn’t know egg shell from alabaster.
The king’s empty platter was returned-- without any guards to take them away.
Untitled
“Be careful of pens you pick up on the street.”
Simon smiled at the message, and picked up the pen. Ruining a student’s art project? Probably. But he needed a pen, and was running late.
The Chairman droned on. Simon doodled. An intricate knot, spiraled in on itself.
The world wobbled, like the skin of a soap bubble. Then, it popped. And Simon was back on the street… in a different world. Very like the one knew, but-- shifted. Sideways.
No ballpoints here. And the other one was left behind.
They called him “Doodler.”
...Trying to find the doorway home.
Untitled
No cover letter: the deed (the previous owner shared her mother’s maiden name), the key, and an address.
So very Gothic, Allison thought, driving out there.
The house, however, was not. Dwarfed by the trees growing on either side of the front walkway, it was as simple and square as a child’s drawing.
The front steps were solid. The door opened silently. No stink of death or mold. Only a thick layer of dust.
“M-r-row!”
Allison looked down. The cat blinked slowly.
“Hello! This your place?”
The cat turned, tail high, and went further inside.
“Guess so,” Allison said, following.
Untitled
The dream always ended the same: His five brothers flying ahead of him, swooping low as their sister tossed the flower-woven shirts over their backs.
They each landed in human form.
His shirt was unfinished. His humanity ended at his left wing.
A swan’s wing was strong, but couldn’t carry a shield. And his monstrous form reminded everyone of their stepmother’s curse.
If he could’ve stayed a swan forever…
A knock on his door. “Uncle Feathers? I had a bad dream.”
“Come in.”
His eldest nephew clambered onto his chest.
The sixth prince wrapped his wing around him, and smiled.
For that last one, it might be enlightening to read this story, credited to the Brothers Grimm*: The Six Swans.
*But told to them by Dorothea Wild.
I also realized I could combine the two, by posting the drabbles I've written.
So:
Jane gave up trying to sleep.
All their things were still in boxes. There were no curtains on her window, yet. There was a monster in her closet.
Someone had stitched together several plush animal parts (teddy bear’s body, crocodile’s snout, lion’s tail, and one rabbit’s ear), then left it behind on the shelf.
She turned on the light, got up, and dared to open the closet door. The minute she took it down, she could feel how carefully it was made: soft fur, firm stuffing, tight stitches.
Jane hugged it, instinctively, breathing in the scent of cedar, and yawned.
Two page boys carried it in. ‘Twas found buried in the dragon’s golden hoard.
The king wanted it poached, with the pieces of shell brought before him, as proof it wasn’t doctored goose eggs.
Old Cook begged for time. “Not even sure how to crack it, Your Majesty.”
Not that she was going to try. She’d seen enough half-formed chicks in her frying pan.
So doctored goose eggs it would be.
Pastry Cook worked miracles with pie crust. And the king didn’t know egg shell from alabaster.
The king’s empty platter was returned-- without any guards to take them away.
“Be careful of pens you pick up on the street.”
Simon smiled at the message, and picked up the pen. Ruining a student’s art project? Probably. But he needed a pen, and was running late.
The Chairman droned on. Simon doodled. An intricate knot, spiraled in on itself.
The world wobbled, like the skin of a soap bubble. Then, it popped. And Simon was back on the street… in a different world. Very like the one knew, but-- shifted. Sideways.
No ballpoints here. And the other one was left behind.
They called him “Doodler.”
...Trying to find the doorway home.
No cover letter: the deed (the previous owner shared her mother’s maiden name), the key, and an address.
So very Gothic, Allison thought, driving out there.
The house, however, was not. Dwarfed by the trees growing on either side of the front walkway, it was as simple and square as a child’s drawing.
The front steps were solid. The door opened silently. No stink of death or mold. Only a thick layer of dust.
“M-r-row!”
Allison looked down. The cat blinked slowly.
“Hello! This your place?”
The cat turned, tail high, and went further inside.
“Guess so,” Allison said, following.
The dream always ended the same: His five brothers flying ahead of him, swooping low as their sister tossed the flower-woven shirts over their backs.
They each landed in human form.
His shirt was unfinished. His humanity ended at his left wing.
A swan’s wing was strong, but couldn’t carry a shield. And his monstrous form reminded everyone of their stepmother’s curse.
If he could’ve stayed a swan forever…
A knock on his door. “Uncle Feathers? I had a bad dream.”
“Come in.”
His eldest nephew clambered onto his chest.
The sixth prince wrapped his wing around him, and smiled.
For that last one, it might be enlightening to read this story, credited to the Brothers Grimm*: The Six Swans.
*But told to them by Dorothea Wild.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 03:56 pm (UTC)Yeah, I'm not into "Fandoms," generally, in the usual sense, except when it comes to fairy and folk tales.
I love the Grimms' retellings.; I'm more conflicted/bothered by their political motivations for doing so.
However, they are role models in showing me how to use wonder tales for political ends. If they could use them for German Nationalism and the patriarchy, I'm certainly within my rights to use them for egalitarianism and social justice for the marginalized.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 04:05 pm (UTC)Grimms and Politics
Date: 2019-01-18 05:38 pm (UTC)The new stories weren't very good--at all--because the political morals always came first, and were heavy handed. And that kind of storytelling just gave the Right all the more material to fully degrade the term "PC." But the Left was loathe to even touch the Grimm tales they were reacting to, because that would've been "tampering" with an "Authentic, ancient, Source Material."
...I took a course in Fairy Tales when I was a freshman in college, and that's how the Grimm collection was presented: as close to an ancient, true, "folk tradition," from before the stories were ever written down, as we could hope to get.
The problem with that, is that was precisely Jacob and Wilhelm's finely crafted propaganda to sell the idea that the morals and social codes celebrated in their stories embodied what it meant to be "A true German."
When I learned just how much they'd edited their source material (and how much more agency the women characters had, in earlier versions), a) I got annoyed at all the translators and commentators who took their propaganda at face value, and b) dared to tread where
nofew Progressives had gone before. >;-P)no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 11:22 pm (UTC)I absolutely love "Doodler". I have a lot of love for stories that posit another world just a sideways step away. Not just the portal fantasy of going on an adventure to a wonderful different world, but the idea that another world might be almost close enough to touch, if you knew the right way... and the more similar to ours the other world is, the more unsettling.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 11:47 pm (UTC)*nods* Yeah. "Doodler" may end up as a series... if only because it raises more questions than it answers.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-19 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-19 04:48 pm (UTC)Yeah... I have a feeling many of these stories will end up being parts of on-going series.
But part of the reason I've decided on a drabble challenge for myself is as an agility exercise: How quickly can I move from one story to another? How many different P.O.V.s and settings can I create? So I've decided that I'm not going to go back to a previous story and write a sequel until X number of unique drabbles have been written. ...I just haven't decided on the value for X, yet. ;-)
12 might be good...