Never Silent

(“Lord of Locusts” by Aaron Acevedo)

Post-urban myth recorded in the former Kansas City, among the second generation post-plague.

One day, the Lord of Locusts walked out onto the plains. He looked out across the fields, and he smiled a terrible smile, and he opened up his cloak.

Out from his cloak swarmed a million million locusts, and they devoured all of the crops in their path. All the crops were the same in those days, all modified with the same strains, all bred with the same base…. so they all fell to the same plague. All over the country, the crops died off, and the Lord of Locusts laughed.

This is why we have to be careful now. The Lord of Locusts can only kill one crop at a time, so we have to make our crops as different as possible.

One day, we will have wheat again.

I caught a piece of sky the other day -

threw my net up as high as I could, cloud-white,

and it fell back to my hands all the blues of afternoon.

I don’t know how I did it.

My sisters crowded around me, demanding explanations,

and I had none to give.

I ran the net through my fingers all day and all week,

wrapped it around my neck in the winter.

(It turned grey in the winter.

Still connected to the sky somehow.

But even grey, it held the warmth of the sun.)

I never spotted where it came from.

The sky always looked just as blue,

just as grey.

And I kept my ribbon of sun-warmed sky.

My perfect secret.

My only magic.

(Scarf hand-knitted and hand-dyed by Andrea O’Sullivan of Natural Obsessions.)

(Paper bowl by Donna Albino)

She left the bowl behind when she ran away. It was the only thing she left. Just this one lonely, sparkly bowl sitting on the empty dresser. He remembers it holding earrings, necklaces – he remembers her slim fingers stirring little bits of silver and stone around, searching for just the right thing.

He doesn’t know what this means, her leaving him this. Leaving him only this. He sits on her bed and holds it, cradling it in his hands, fingers brushing over its rough edges. Is it some kind of message? If he figures out why she left it, will he know why she left?

(Labradorite necklace by Christina Allen of Sihaya Designs.)

I find the broken places.

The dome is supposed to be impregnable, but the windstorms kick things up – so there are little cracks. Not many. And I keep them secret, because otherwise the council would close them up.

I find the secret places. Impact scars, light spidering out along the lines of stress and fracture. I climb rusted old towers, squeeze between old buildings, venture over mountains of junk to get to those specks of light.

And oh, that light! So different from the faint yellowish light of the dome. This is white and pure, and bathe in it like I would bathe in a blessing. The light of the sun I’ve never seen, shining and holy.

My necklace seems to carry the light for hours afterward – the shifting deep-blue shine, reflecting the last light of a dying sun.

They chime softly as they fly. You can barely see them – shimmering, translucent as Depression glass. “Aren’t they beautiful?” Marta sighs.

I study her. She looks tired. “And this is all you’ve got?” I say, trying to be gentle.

Marta droops even further. “There was the problem with the worms-”

“The radioactivity, right. You’re-” One of the butterflies alights on my arm. “You’re, ah, sure these are stable?”

“We’ve run them through several generations. No problems – no breakdown, no nothing. They’re clean. They’re perfect.”

“But they’re not enough.”

“No,” she says quietly. She sits. “They’re not. The president wants… attack badgers or bomb-carrying voles or something. Instead I’ve given him glass butterflies.”

“Are they utterly useless, then?”

She meets my eyes for the first time. “No. They’re not.”

“What can we do with them.”

She waves her hand. “They can get anywhere. Small spaces. Faraway lands. And they can carry a viral payload…”

“Bioweaponry.”

“Bioterrorism.”

“Marta, this is amazing.”

Her smile looks pained. “It is. And – the DOD can’t have it. Can’t have them.” She presses a button on her PDA, and the dome begins to rolls back. The hum of the dome almost drowns out the chiming of the butterflies as they make for open air. Marta tips her head back, finally smiling for real, and I realize that, on some level, I rather expected  this.

The butterfly on my arm takes flight.

The style that summer was necklace PDAs. The more flamboyant people had flashy necklaces with spikes everywhere, but the one my mother wore was simple – a four-petaled flower on a strand of pearls.

When I think of that summer, I remember my mother, always wearing that necklace, trailing music behind her. She let the baby play with it, fiddling with silver stamens once she’d switched it off – it only took one instance of the baby accidentally rearranging her Google calendar for her to learn that. It suited her, that necklace. One might not even realize what it was. One might think it was just a necklace.

Which is how she got the senator on tape. Or, well, on necklace-recording. The senator was notoriously behind on the technological times… if he even realized that necklace-PDAs existed, he likely figured they were all big flashy things. And here comes my sweet mother, hair in a bun, librarian-chic with her pearls and little silver flower…

That necklace changed the world. But when I think of it and her, I think of that trail of music, or of the baby’s chubby fingers tugging at it. And her soft smile.

My brain is pretty much totally offline. To the point where nothing short of sleep will kick-start it.

…considering that this usually happens at 2pm, I have done pretty well.

So I pretty much had the choice of
a) continue to sleepwalk my way through half-assed storybits, or
b) just post whatever and write all of the remaining storybits after my nap.

And I chose b). Because the artists want good stuff to go with their pieces, and the buyers want good stuff to go with their purchases. And I think that’s probably
more important than churning the storybits out on schedule regardless of quality.

And I think that, in future years, I need to
a) get more advance assistance on running Team Venture and
b) be more reasonable about my limitations. Not just body, but brain, as there is just no arguing with fibrofog.

And these writing challenges work for Wind Tunnel Dreams because I have the whole morning to think of what to write in response to one. Here, I have ten minutes. And when my brain gets like this, that’s not enough.

So yeah. Frustrated. But I want you guys to get better from me than what I’ve been turning out.

Still staying up. Still leading Team Venture to victory! Just allowing myself to meander off the trail a bit.

I step into a world of glass…

Every available window is hung with glass, colored or prismatic, abstract are in shapes of nature or artifice. Light fractures all over the tower, light splitting light, rainbows all over the walls. The glassmaker can make you anything here. She specializes in window hangings, but you may have a kaleidoscope or a prism, if you are very good. Do sit on the window seat here while we do a little business. Just a few lenses. It won’t take long at all. Just lie back, dear, and watch the prism just over your head. See how the light moves? Just watch there, and this will all be over soon…

———————-
Abstract snowflake, purple butterfly, and balloons stained glass by SageAutumn. Shiny!

The exhaustion has set in fully. With it, the loopiness. Slipjig’s last list will be awful.

Blogathon 2008. 24 hours of spontaneous fiction for BARCC.
Sponsor me.

I open the box and tip out a necklace – three strands of beads twined together.

I count out the beads precisely as I work. Magic has rules. Magic always has rules. It’s the metal beads I’ve put the spells on, of course; the glass beads would have taken me years! No, the metal beads are enough. Old magic, like the kind once used on ships – tying up the wind in rope, unknotting it when needed. I’ve spent the last few months traveling every place I could think to find magic, tipping it into the little metal beads, and stringing them on.

So in theory, the whole necklace should have enough magic to take me back. It’s not emeralds, but those are a bit pricier over here. This should be enough, these three – magic number, three – strands of glass and magic.

It will be done soon. Soon I will go back.

————————————-
Triune necklace by aVivaSedai. Three individual necklaces of seed beads in blue and green with
funky eclectic spacer beads can be braided together or worn separately.
Between 18-19 inches long, each two-stranded necklace can add fun and
color to your outfits!

I have no idea where my sponsorships are at. I’ll have a better idea tomorrow afternoon.

Coffee.

Blogathon 2008. 24 hours of spontaneous fiction for BARCC.
Sponsor me.

The box is small, but the embellishment is so rich and detailed… the artist had an eye for perfection.

Keryn kept her chips in the box. A gift from her grandmother, its black-on-cinnabar swirls mirrored the design on her everyday chips, the ones she wore to school. They fit perfectly behind her ear, in her new socket, and clicked out for the dozens of hair-thin cables her lessons were delivered through.

Her hair was shaved on the left side, of course, so it wouldn’t get in the way. And of course her chips and socket cover had to be decorative. Plain shimmersteel wouldn’t just be boring, it would be outright embarrassing. Grandma got it, even if Dad didn’t. Grandma knew that chip fashion was what she wanted, and she gave it to her, every birthday and Founder’s Day.

Keryn’s favorite part of the morning was opening the box and choosing what socket cover she’d wear that day – jeweled or not, silver, copper, what kind of decoration. School? No oh no. This was about the decisions she got to make for herself.

———————-
Lavishly-embellished steampunk/Victorian tin box by MizArchivist of Cosmo’s Curiosities. embellished Altoids tin measures 3.75″ x 2.5″ x 1″ (standard Altoids
size) and is covered in Sculpey, which is soft until it is baked in 250
F for half an hour. It’s glazed with a polymer medium and signed on the
back (hinging) side by the artist. It is safe to store food in, as it
once held mints. Obviously, don’t eat the clay off the tin. That’s not
good eats.

The design has its roots in a silver Balinese filigree and
Steampunk/Victorian- favoring the latter, particularly given the color
choices.

This is *perfect* for your favorite BPAL imps!

Blogathon 2008. 24 hours of spontaneous fiction for BARCC.
Sponsor me.

Dear artists: I am not going to have enough time to write about everything during the thon. Was scrambling til the last week, then stuff I hadn’t anticipated started flooding in! So I will write the remaining ones after my nap. Because 24 straight hours is totally my limit.