Commute

Deep frost this morning, and rims of ice on the ponds. The bus, adjusting its schedule, dropped me off one stop early in the flat suburban wasteland: road and strip mall, parking lot buffered by a canal and frozen lawn. A flock of geese, feathers ruffled against the cold, paused in their grazing to watch me pass.

Found in a folder

"It's not as though you have to remain a dragon," said Drusilla, in a superior tone that implied it had been she, rather than Livia, who had mucked about with the spell book. "There's always a whatchamacallit, a counterspell, don'cha know? We just have to find out what it is."

"Mrflxgq!" said Max, which was the closest his dragon-mouth could come to forming human words. What those words might have been, we leave to your imagination.

"It's bound to be something fiendishly difficult," Drusilla continued, warming to the subject. "Like wearing out a pair of iron shoes, or knitting shirts from nettles. I wonder if dragons can knit?"

"Plrqxxzln!" said Max. "Rmmphl."

"Or it could be a quest. You may have to travel to the mountains behind the moon, and bring back the Giant-Queen's silver underdrawers, which the warrior princess will sew into a sail for her star-sailing galleon. I just made that last bit up. Don't you think it's awfully clever?"

"Ngllopmxvn," said Max, shaking his head until the scales rattled.

"As a matter of fact," drawled Livia, who was lazily munching a croissant, "it is a quest. I looked it up while you two were yammering."

You might have said something earlier, Max tried to say. Except it came out as "Grmxxqh!"

"Where's he going, then?" Drusilla asked, only slightly deflated.

Livia buttered another croissant. "Max has to go to Brickford, and bring back a box of toothpicks."

"Brickford!" Drusilla protested. "Why, that's hardly an hour's walk! Couldn't it be South Xanadu or the coast of Tartary?"

"It's definitely Brickford," Livia said. "And it's definitely toothpicks. Although a box of unsharpened lead-pencils may work as well. It said that in a footnote."

"Oh," said Drusilla. "Trust you to pick a boring spell. I could have done much better."

Max was silent. He had been to Brickford a hundred times, mostly buy cinnamon buns or escape his trigonometry tutor. It was, as Drusilla had said, an hour's walk from the castle.

But it was also the place he had directed Sir Reginald just this morning, with the promise, so lightly made and half forgotten, that there the Questing Knight could find and slay a dragon.

Heat too

For Mars

The heat brought a darkness with it, a blindness caused by glare and slitted eyes. As the outer world vanished, the inner flared into being. Clouds became smoke, buildings pale ashpiles crested with ramparts of flame. Each breath felt thick and liquid, like inhaling hot blood.

Heat

by Titanium Mars


‎"When it gets that hot, we will all die."

Seal made a dismissive gesture. "Surely not all. The old. The ill. The vulnerable. Those who can't afford air conditioning. It's not the end of the world."

Her companion pointed upward, at the glaring mosaic of the sun's disc filtered through leaves. "The corona has already engulfed Mercury. By Friday, it will touch Venus. This is the end."

She searched for words of comfort and denial. But the leaves above them had begun to smoke. In the field beyond their shade, a lone deer glided, its body a mass of flame.

Seal understood then that it was already spirit. And that she and her companion were already dead.

(reprinted with permission)

Red

One of my PSN friends and I are doing "prompt poems". We send each other words or phrases, and send back the poems they inspire.

This one was actually from a prompt I sent her: "wolf status". She sent me a lovely poem in reply, describing wolves singing in the boreal forest. But it got me thinking along somewhat different lines, and here's the result.

He's a high-status wolf, this one
lounging beside the path:
diamond stud in his right ear
gold ring in his left,
a brocade waistcoat,
and spats on his hind paws.
A real dandy. And he's coming on to me,
asking where I'm from,
how old I am,
and where I'm going --
all the usual wolf questions.

"Grandma's house," I say,
not wanting to admit it's to the Mall.
But this wolf is having none of it.
"You look lonely," he says.
He wags his tail like a big dog,
cocks an ear. "Take me with you?"
"No way," I tell him. I'm not having
anything to do with these wolves.
Everyone knows how that ends.

But I feel his eyes follow
my red cape through the forest.
I remember his amber eyes,
his silky ears. I know
tonight he'll end up in my bed.

I'll call it rape, and show the scratches.
But no one will believe me.
He's just that classy.