John left the farmhouse with his toolbox after lunch, ready to fix the gate on the goat pen. His nanny goat Greta was waiting, tied to the southern post, watching her owner with glittering, playful horizontal eyes.
“How was your taste of freedom?” John asked. “Don’t get too used to it.” He lifted the toolbox and let her smell it; Greta bit the corner experimentally.
Dad pulled Toby to a stop and climbed down off the wagon. The dead man hung close to me in the late autumn wind, his rope creaking in the wind on the thick branch of the hanging tree. While dad got the sacks out of the back of the wagon I looked out from the hill over the browning woods and fall fields under the low sun. Crows cawed from somewhere and Toby snorted softly.
Image by Muffet (http://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/)
I did some light touchup on The Cold Fairy 2: It’s Not Easy Being Fantastic. I decided Henry and Jacob would have been a little more familiar with each other; I was trying too hard to explain the story through their words, at the expense of some believability. That kind of tortured dialog is one of my pet peeves, but like many such feelings it’s rooted in my own habits.
I think I found a good medium point, though if you think I left the thread a little too invisible, don’t be shy!
Photo by avlyxz (http://www.flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/)
[Here's a quick one to get me back in the swing of things, after having spent a few weeks working on a game prototype took my creative time. Part One is also available for your amusement. --ff]
The dim light of the room and the soft hum of voices were soothing to Henry. The night had gone awfully wrong. He walked up to the bar, sat down on a stool, and ordered a beer. The cold fairy sighed and held his head in his hands, elbows propped on the dark wood of the bar, the bells on his jester hat drooping down with the motion, tinkling softly.
When his beer arrived, Henry drank gingerly, letting the coolness fill his mouth and join warmth before he swallowed, eyes closed. Around then Jacob walked in, his fairy clothes bright and his hat carefully pressed into crisp angles. Some of the other fairies in the bar waved to him, and he exchanged a few smiles. Jacob noticed Henry and, waving, came over, motioning to the bartender for a beer of his own. “You look terrible,” he said.
“I feel terrible,” Henry said. “I got caught.”
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Liess hiked his pack a little higher on his back as he crested the hill. The dry packed trail continued down the other side through short grass to a small stream, small enough that there were only stones for the crossing. At the other side, trees grew like a dark wall: forest. He swore softly, checked his knife at his belt, and kept walking ahead.
Going back to The Cold Fairy, I noticed that the scene with the shadow creeping in was not long enough. It sped by so quickly. I was impatient at the time, I think, and rushed to finish the story; it was completed late at night on my mobile phone, then uploaded in the morning after a cursory glance-over.
So I added some more text there, and to the ending as well, since that felt abrupt.
I’ve also started adding images to each post, since they fill out the blog so well. The Cold Fairy has one now. But I’m newish at using WordPress, so please forgive the tweaks and changes over the next few weeks. I’m not entirely sure I’m happy with the theme I’m using, so that may jump around a bit, and the header image really does need redoing.
Thank you for reading!
photo: bradleyj (www.flickr.com/photos/detroitsunrise/)
On Sunday it happened again. Despite her best precautions, despite the handwashing and the herbal supplements, Diana woke up with a cold.
“Unh.” She lifted her too-heavy head from the pillow. Tight pressure pushed out on her cheekbones, eyes and temples like wet sand stuffed into a latex glove. She swallowed and regretted it. “Unbelievable. Again.”
Dragging herself out of bed and into coughing consciousness, Diana remembered a strange half-dream: she had woken up to go to the bathroom and get a drink of water from the kitchen, and on the way down the hall, she thought she’d seen a small shadow figure peek around the corner. It had turned out to be a trick of the light from the street.
Diana washed her face numbly, got some orange juice and settled in for another cold.
The same thing happened five more times in three months. Diana’s coworkers started to notice, and offered their own opinions about her diet, her house, even her makeup. She saw an allergist, an ENT, and an internist, and they all chalked it up to bad luck. But the same strange thing happened every time: late on a Saturday night a sound, or a noise, or a shadow, and the next day, she’d wake up in congestion city.
It got to where Diana could predict the next one somehow; something in the air, a certain phase of the moon, maybe. So the seventh time, when she knew it was coming again, she waited, pretending to sleep, bedroom dark. About three in the morning, a silent shadow crept into the room cautiously, and her breath caught in her throat. The shadow paused, waiting for her breathing to resume, then slid from the door to the far corner. It followed the wall to the next corner, then finally to the head of the bed. Through her barely-open eyes Diana could dimly see a little man climb quietly onto her mattress.
