by Mayumi-H | Mar 7, 2012 | From Hell (A Love Story), Short Stories
This week’s 100 Word Challenge for Grown-Ups (100WCGU), courtesy of Julia’s Place, was a bit different. We were given a visual prompt: a horse statue, from the Eden Project in Cornwall.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I could only use 100! Anywho, here’s my attempt:
Mummy crouches close, frowning. “Don’t you want to see?”
Katie’s head judders. She hates statues. Especially angels, with their blank eyes and cold faces, looming over silent graves. In her dreams, they move, lightning fast, grasping her collar, spiriting her away.
She whines; Daddy’s trouser leg rustles in her grip.
He smiles. “But, you like ponies…!”
She blinks; the word intrigues.
So, now, Daddy scoops her up, and she sees: No stoic, marbled nightmare, this, but a majestic mount, captured mid-motion in a canter.
Mummy takes her tiny hand, pressing it to noble, knotted muzzle.
Enchanted, Katie beams.
Nightmares (night-mares) are horses from Hell, made popular by the Dungeons & Dragons game and manuals. There’s nothing horrific about this particular horse, though. Rather, it’s actually quite lovely and majestic. I wanted to try and capture some childhood ambivalence about statuary (especially those sometimes-scary angel guardians), and make Katie’s fear turn around, when she comes face to face with unexpected beauty.
The Nightingales are characters I’ve visited before, but this was a fun new take on them. It is certainly difficult to break these relationships down into 100 words! I’m tempted to collect the drafts and put some of them up for people to see, to illustrate how ideas start out but then get pruned. Maybe that’s a project for another day, eh?
by Mayumi-H | Mar 2, 2012 | Persona 4 Fan Fiction, Songbirds, Uncategorized
“Adaptation” is a short Doctor Who–lite story I wrote for the one-off characters of Sally Sparrow and Larry Nightingale, as presented in the television series episode “Blink” (Series 3, episode 10).
Nothing like a romantic little one-off, eh?
I fell in love with this pairing almost immediately, and I’ve written about them more than once. “Adaptation” was my attempt at drawing parallels between classic literature and personal relationships.
It’s not often that readers entirely “get” what I’m trying to do with my stories…but, sometimes (occasionally; rarely), a sharp, clever reader will absolutely nail it. The feeling of elation I get when that happens can last me for days.
Reader Rokesmith wrote:
This is my favourite of your Songbirds stories. It says such wonderful things about these two incidental characters and the relationship that sadly we only got a glimpse of. But mainly, I like it for what it says about relationships, Sally’s slow uncovering of Larry’s deep rooted insecurities about how an introverted geek is supposed to maintain a relationship with a bright, beautiful girl with whom he shares very few interests. This is something I imagine a lot of geeks find themselves confronted with in relationships at some stage, which is why the resolution is so touching: Sally’s gentle but inescapable affirmation that no matter what their differences in interests and dreams, they love each other and that’s what’s important. And it’s all brilliantly tied together by a comparison to ‘Sense and Sensibility’ that fits so well with Sally herself. A perfect meeting of Doctor Who, classic literature and compelling romance, which is everything this pair should be.
Of all of my fan fiction outings, I think I love my Songbirds series the best. It’s not nearly the most popular, either for the pairing or in general, but the stories are very simply about two people romantically entwined. There’s no grand adventure they undertake, beyond that of life and love. Though, in some ways, that’s the best adventure of them all.
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