It is finally Friday. The sun is shining, the seedlings in the garden have managed to make it through the last little episode of frost. Actually the small celery seedling seemed to have reveled in the touch of frost. This is my first year attempting celery so I am going to take that as a good sign. It try to plant one new thing each year to see how it will work out. This year, it was celery. But now it is time for the final prompt of the week. The prompt that will propel us into Friday. Are you ready? Fabulous, let’s go.
This seems like a fun one. Even writing it I could see places where I repeated myself a little bit and will need to trim. I was trying to think about why our intrepid and stinky main character was called to the gleaming fortress and didn’t streamline my thoughts too much. But that is part of the process. You write for fifteen minutes without stopping and what comes out comes out. Later you can fiddle with it. And later I probably will.
Friday, March 31st: The apples gleamed in the cut crystal bowl.
Apples gleamed in the cut crystal bowl. For a moment I thought they were made of glass or even enameled as they gleamed. As I stepped closer I could see they were real. One of the apples was developing a small brown spot, rotting under its polished and shiny peel.
The thought brought some relief.
It was the one flaw in the room. The one thing that was not magazine layout perfect. Every item of furniture, every throw pillow every carefully chosen décor item was a perfect example of it’s kind. It was hard to imagine anyone sitting on any of the couches, reading any of the few decorative books or even standing and looking out of the window. It was a spectacular view but looking might fog the glass with someone’s breath.
The whole place made my skin crawl.
There was none of the clutter, the chaos, the life that I was used to seeing.
And beyond that, I didn’t know why I was here.
No one knew why I was called so no one could give me a clue what I would be facing. I was told it was a direct order and that I was to wait for nothing but report to the commander’s private domicile immediately. I was not given time to change or tidy myself and after six months in the field neither me nor my service uniform was looking all that spiffy. Things wore out and I patched them as needed. I made certain the stitches didn’t show but there were so many repairs now that in places accumulating a lot of wear the material either looked slightly puckered or had been replaced with a patch. I used the material from an older service uniform to repair the spots but the material was slightly more faded than my own so the patches were noticeable no matter how careful the stitching.
While I rinsed off and bathed when eve the opportunity arose, I didn’t use fresh water for such an act. Fresh water was for drinking, the brackish river water was for bathing, when you could find a section of the river that still had enough water to allow such activity.
The river had its own scent and as soap ran out well over six weeks prior there was nothing to balance the scent. Nothing in this place had a scent to it. Not even the apples. I was the only thing with any scent and even I had to admit it wasn’t a particularly pleasant one. The air clicked on, sounding loud in the space. The air was cold and blew across the top of my head making my scalp itch.
Still I was told to report and report I had. When I arrived I was told to wait and now I was waiting. As the Assistant who told me to wait looked at the white seating options and my dust covered service uniform, visible shuddering in the thought of the two meeting, I remained standing.
Footsteps sounded and I turned. Instead of the commander a man wearing a loose flowing robe entered. The rope was a soft pale gray that only made him stand out slightly from his mostly white surroundings. He was a gray smudge of smoke. The apples were cherry red and I was a varying collection of desert sand and sweat stained browns.
“Ah I am sorry to have kept you waiting,” the man said. “I am told you are just in from a tour through the Deralwan Deserts?”
Ten til Midnight 