Morning all. Last night I had nightmares and then woke up, fell back into the nightmare and found myself editing it, adding elements to make it more scary. Very strange. I think I might be doing too much editing. Never edited my own dreams though. Learn something new every day. So Timers set and off we go to see what we learn from the sentence.
I think this could make for an interesting tale. not sure quite yet what the tale is but I am willing to think about it.
Wednesday, August 7th: Grandmother uncorked the wine.
Grandmother uncorked the wine. As she rarely indulged, I knew this day had gotten to her. “Grandmother,” I began. She waved me off.
“Later,” she told me. “Tomorrow.”
I nodded as she poured herself a glass of the deep ruby liquid. I could tell from the color which wine it was. I did not know its name, or even if it officially had one, but it was referred to as the special wine. It was only brought out for momentous events. Someone had to get married, be born or die for this wine to make an appearance.
Unlike the other wines the vineyard produced, this wine was never sold off. The other vines produced grapes that were harvested by teams of workers and hauled off for processing in the center of town. Then they would be blended with others in the surrounding fields and bottled. The village working together to create the bulk of wine needed for selling in larger markets. It was good wine and sold well, helping all of them out. But blended with the surrounding vineyards it lacked some of the individual specialness of each vineyard’s specific terroir. Most families kept a portion of their vineyards away from the bulk processing. These vines were harvested by the family, processed, bottled and aged in the cellars they each kept. Each family viewed these as their specials.
They were prized as gifts and as so few were produced each year, regarded as a rare and precious commodity. I watched ass Grandmother set her glass to the side and put the cork back in the bottle. I knew this was not a marriage or a birth. I wondered if it qualified as a death of some sort. Grandmother’s face was set into her thinking face. There were no hard lines of anger, pain or annoyance. There were no smiles. When she thought it was as though the rest of her face went blank and all her emotions were pulled into her eyes. Her black eyes seemed deep pools with quicksilver thoughts dancing through them. When she got like this, there was no talking to her. She was set to think, not converse. I left her to it ass she settled herself in the chair and took a sip of her wine.
I didn’t know who the visitor was, no one did. I was sent to see if any information could be gleaned. While I learned it was someone who made grandmother think and that called for a glass of the special, I did not know his identity. He was as much a stranger now as when I arrived at her small cottage. I turned away and walked back towards the main house.
Grandmother liked us to visit, but she told us she was too old to deal with the constant noise and motion that our active family required. She retreated to her little cottage at the edge of the vines. She came for dinner a few times a week and always joined in events, but for the most part preferred her solitude and the occasional solitary visitor.
I walked the dusty track between the vines. The harvest was over for the year, the vines now bare. The secondary plants like mustard had been seeded and allowed to grow, putting the nutrients the vines took out back into the soil. There was a precisely arranged assortment of plants actually, but the mustard was already growing and seemed to dominate.
Ten til Midnight 