The thing about my wild theories is that -- occasionally -- they're right. Like spotting your Lady Gaga week from the first post, or discovering that you're a black-belt at Scrabble. And sometimes it would be nice if they were right, and you were a top-flight Canadian assassin (I'm thinking Brad Pitt from Mr and Mrs Smith). I have no theories about "limited" today though :-p
Limited Purple heather created a Pollock-like pattern across the Polish moor. Here and there snowdrops poked their heads above the ground, and yellow crocuses clumped like patches of jaundice. Three soldiers, wearing dirty uniforms and smelling of days-old sweat and stale cigarette smoke, tramped wearily across the ground, uncaring of the flowers they crushed underfoot. They reached a bare patch of ground; there was no indication as to why nothing grew there, and stopped. Two of them immediately pulled cigarette packets from their pockets, while the third fumbled with a zip pocket across his chest and eventually pulled out a map and a heavy, hexagonal bronze object that looked like a paperweight, or possibly a compass meant to be decorative rather than practical. Blue-grey smoke plumed in the still air from the cigarettes, and the tiny red coals, for a moment, were like the squinting eyes of Smoczy Krol. The man with the map turned it about in his hands, aligning the map with north, and a finger so grimy his skin appeared to be grey, dragged across the paper. When he was satisfied about where they were he folded the map back up, taking two attempts to fit the creases back together, and put it back in his pocket. Almost immediately the other two dropped their cigarettes, grinding them underfoot, and came to a ragged, exhausted kind of attention. The bronze object was set carefully on the ground, and the man with the map leaned close to it, and spoke three words, harsh and guttural sounds, enunciating them carefully. There was a sensation like a cool breeze on an otherwise hot and still summer's day and the world around them rippled as though seen through a heat-haze. The ripples got bigger and then it was as though everything was drawn on canvas and someone folded the canvas around them, wrapping it up, passing it through itself, and unfolding it again the other way out. The bare patch of earth was now the start of a blasted stretch of land that was irregular and jagged; something huge had ploughed erratically through this, criss-crossing itself and reaching down to random depths. Rotting tree trunks, torn up and discarded, provided a loose direction to follow, but the devastation was strictly limited: it stretched away to a compass point that didn't seem to quite tally with the sun. At the edges the heather and the snowdrops still stood proudly, almost overlapping as though they existed in slightly different realities. The soldiers started to pick their way through the tumulted ground, carefully ignoring that the tree trunks they passed, though green with moss and black with rot, nevertheless seemed to be bleeding.
Lord Derby finished strapping Dignity's corpse to the back of Tomasz's Byakhee mount and shook his head. "I feel like somewhere someone's god is watching and disapproving," he said. "Though I also feel that Dignity's spirit is laughing hard enough to split its incorporeal sides."
Love, my love, I need you More than you need me. I crave more Time than you can give, more Embraces than you can offer, but Don't despair, I understand.
Greg - woo, that was a fine little side trip away from the main story. I wasn't totally sure it was a part of things, but I did suspect it. Fascinating and baffling all at the same time. Can't wait to see where it all leads.
Morganna - that final line packs quite the punch. And it was set up perfectly by the preceding lines. Very impressive acrostic work, as per usual :)
3 comments:
The thing about my wild theories is that -- occasionally -- they're right. Like spotting your Lady Gaga week from the first post, or discovering that you're a black-belt at Scrabble. And sometimes it would be nice if they were right, and you were a top-flight Canadian assassin (I'm thinking Brad Pitt from Mr and Mrs Smith).
I have no theories about "limited" today though :-p
Limited
Purple heather created a Pollock-like pattern across the Polish moor. Here and there snowdrops poked their heads above the ground, and yellow crocuses clumped like patches of jaundice. Three soldiers, wearing dirty uniforms and smelling of days-old sweat and stale cigarette smoke, tramped wearily across the ground, uncaring of the flowers they crushed underfoot. They reached a bare patch of ground; there was no indication as to why nothing grew there, and stopped. Two of them immediately pulled cigarette packets from their pockets, while the third fumbled with a zip pocket across his chest and eventually pulled out a map and a heavy, hexagonal bronze object that looked like a paperweight, or possibly a compass meant to be decorative rather than practical.
Blue-grey smoke plumed in the still air from the cigarettes, and the tiny red coals, for a moment, were like the squinting eyes of Smoczy Krol. The man with the map turned it about in his hands, aligning the map with north, and a finger so grimy his skin appeared to be grey, dragged across the paper. When he was satisfied about where they were he folded the map back up, taking two attempts to fit the creases back together, and put it back in his pocket. Almost immediately the other two dropped their cigarettes, grinding them underfoot, and came to a ragged, exhausted kind of attention. The bronze object was set carefully on the ground, and the man with the map leaned close to it, and spoke three words, harsh and guttural sounds, enunciating them carefully.
There was a sensation like a cool breeze on an otherwise hot and still summer's day and the world around them rippled as though seen through a heat-haze. The ripples got bigger and then it was as though everything was drawn on canvas and someone folded the canvas around them, wrapping it up, passing it through itself, and unfolding it again the other way out.
The bare patch of earth was now the start of a blasted stretch of land that was irregular and jagged; something huge had ploughed erratically through this, criss-crossing itself and reaching down to random depths. Rotting tree trunks, torn up and discarded, provided a loose direction to follow, but the devastation was strictly limited: it stretched away to a compass point that didn't seem to quite tally with the sun. At the edges the heather and the snowdrops still stood proudly, almost overlapping as though they existed in slightly different realities.
The soldiers started to pick their way through the tumulted ground, carefully ignoring that the tree trunks they passed, though green with moss and black with rot, nevertheless seemed to be bleeding.
Lord Derby finished strapping Dignity's corpse to the back of Tomasz's Byakhee mount and shook his head.
"I feel like somewhere someone's god is watching and disapproving," he said. "Though I also feel that Dignity's spirit is laughing hard enough to split its incorporeal sides."
Love, my love,
I need you
More than you need me.
I crave more
Time than you can give, more
Embraces than you can offer, but
Don't despair, I understand.
Greg - woo, that was a fine little side trip away from the main story. I wasn't totally sure it was a part of things, but I did suspect it. Fascinating and baffling all at the same time. Can't wait to see where it all leads.
Morganna - that final line packs quite the punch. And it was set up perfectly by the preceding lines. Very impressive acrostic work, as per usual :)
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