The exercise:
Write about something that is: red and white.
Just three more sleeps until Christmas. Starting to feel somewhat ready for the big day.
Work was pretty quiet today. Had a stack of business license renewal payments in the mail, but otherwise there wasn't a whole lot to do. Hopefully it'll pick up just a little bit tomorrow, but I don't expect it to since the payments aren't due until the end of January.
Today was Kat's brother's birthday, so we went up to their parents house to have a dinner in his honor. It was a surprisingly civilized affair with four kids there. While we were eating, anyway. Before and after, however, was quite a different story.
I was very surprised I was able to get Max to sleep as quickly as I did once we got home. I'll just leave it at that.
Mine:
"Would you like a candy cane, little girl?"
"Yes!"
"Yes... what?"
"Oh. Yes, please!"
"That's better. Here you go."
"Thank you! Mmm... blech! This isn't a candy cane!"
"Sure it is! And I should know - I made it myself!"
"With what, dog butt?"
"That is just rude!"
"Oh, sorry. With what, dog butt, please?"
"Actually, if you must know, it's my very own special recipe. It has cinnamon, peppermint, water..."
"And sugar?"
"Oh, there's no sugar. That stuff is bad f-"
"Mommy! This strange man is trying to ruin Christmas!"
The business licences sound mundane, but that might be a good thing before Christmas. An emergency request for you to approve a six-storey all-night gin palace (ideally run by Shanghai Suzie) in time for a Christmas orgy might be quite stressful. Especially when you say yes.
ReplyDeleteHah, for some reason I really like that your candy canes contain no actual candy. I am curious as to how you get the texture right without it though... And I love the child's manners throughout!
Red and white
Magdalena paused two doors down from Lord Thereau's room and looked over her shoulder. David was standing a little way back; professional courtesy to not eavesdrop on how she had secured her room from any potential intruders. "I shall be only a moment, David," she said with a smile. Her face seemed to light up with it, and her eyes gleamed like a cat's in headlights. "I am just picking up some of the work that I've been doing with James."
"Of course," said David. "I shall wait here, if that's acceptable?"
She smiled back and turned the handle. Though the hotel doors were all supposed to require the keycard in the device next to the door in order to open at all her door opened smoothly and silently. Beyond the doorframe was greyness: it was the non-colour of the lack of vision, the lack of anything existing within than frame. Though there was nothing there it played tricks and pulled the gaze around as the brain hunted for something to make sense of. Even David could feel the hypnotic pull and rocked gently on the balls of his feet, resisting it. Magdalena stepped into it as casually as though it were just a doorway, and disappeared. The door swung softly on its hinges as though caught in a subtle, unfelt breeze.
David looked down at the carpet rather than keep resisting the nothingness, but after a moment his gaze started to wander there as well as the wards sought to entrap him and lock him in place. He sighed quietly and stretched, his hands above his head and his knuckles and elbows cracking in the silence.
"This is the problem of too many wards," he said under his breath. "Nothing here is untrapped."
The thought rested in his mind gently, and he probed it. Curious now he relaxed a little, engaged his Will, and carefully opened his mind to the hallway and rooms around him.
For a few seconds there was just a pandemonium of shapes and sounds and he pressed gently but firmly against it, his mind and Will insisting that there was a pattern there and that it should reveal itself. There was resistance proportional to his insistance but he was the stronger, and a map unfolded in red and white.
The general shape of the corridor was there, as were the shapes of the suites beyond. David noticed with interest that Magdalena appeared to have a suite of her own, almost the same size as that of the three Lords Magical. Whirlpools of red indicated where the wards were pulling on anything passing by, and something like cross-hatching showed where the wards interfered with each other. Some wards stretched out lines of varying thicknesses, showing how they reinforced one another, and here and there a patch of white showed complete interference and destruction of any warding at all. To his enormous surprise he found that there was a path that lead through the hall and avoided all the wards at all.
"David?"
Magadalena's voice shattered the vision and he dropped the working, smiling at her again.
Greg - well, it certainly wasn't especially exciting work. I may have found time to do some writing while I was there though...
ReplyDeleteI intentionally left the ingredient list incomplete, as I honestly had no idea what would be needed to get something candy cane-like without any sugar. Glad you enjoyed it!
The writing, not the pseudo candy cane, that is.
Another intriguing entry here. The revelation at the end, of their being a way through that avoided the wards, was particularly captivating. My thoughts are tumbling over each other, trying to figure out what it could mean...