Friday Story
Feb. 24th, 2017 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radiantfractureYou can hear everything that crosses the roof of the Beautiful Shed, including squirrels, cats, rain, raccoons, and hail. My sleep was thin last night; I think I heard each in turn and in combination. I definitely heard the hail sometime in the small hours. Therefore, here is another bit of a story about the cold, since it is on my mind.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
A fine spray of stones stutters from the shower head and rackets on the enamel. Bryn throws a hand up to shield squinting eyes and slaps the tap shut. The stones rattle to silence. Bryn’s feet stomp onto the tiles. Crystals sift sweating through Bryn’s trembling fingers. Ice. Hail.
Bryn roughs bumpy skin dry and piles on clothes, hoodie, hat, boots. Outside, obscure faces in wreaths of faux fur and wool peer at a grimly bright haze. The ground is mottled with a map of pinhead ice. Jan Green shields her hydrangeas with a red umbrella. Her small dog Tony is barking, not in rage but in regular bursts like a car alarm.
Bryn takes a breath. The haze stings.
There is a rush and the air is full of seagulls fleeing with klaxon cries towards an invisible shore. Bryn follows for a few steps, inking a story into the snow.
Down the street, a column of colourless lizards and amphibians cascades into a wet twitching heap. A slow car pulls up. Bryn retreats a step, catches a stark chameleon in one loose palm, backs up a step further. The wind gasps ice.
White hail drops from a white sky: the size of tears, the size of lost dimes, the size of blank eyeballs. The people retreat under rooves. The ones in cars huddle. The hail is the size of a child's fist. A wrestler's fist. A severed head. Car crowns buckle. Bryn backs into shadow and begins to hum, below the threshold of ear’s hearing. The baby kicks.
The hail is the size of basketballs. It is the size of globes. The stones grow as big as the doubled self before it is split. They drop like stopped helicopters. They crash like felled blimps. They swell as large as the geodesic dome on Science World. They grow to the size of city blocks, of small towns, of metropoli. They erase islands. They fall as big as Greenland and then Australia and then the continental United States. They hurtle the size of planetoid Pluto and the moon. They match Mercury, Mars, Earth, then Neptune. They approach the size of stars.
Stuck to the side of an ice world flung out of orbit, Bryn sucks up ropes of shredded haze and hums. Hail the size of whole universes falls through possibility. Bryn’s hat blows by.
Here in the heart of nowhere yet, faster than the swelling hail the emptiness expands. The greater the stones grow, the smaller they shrink. Bryn sings.
Singing, Bryn leaps.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Mostly I was wishing for the lyricism of a recent post ofaldersprig's.
{rf}
Audio version of this post here.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
A fine spray of stones stutters from the shower head and rackets on the enamel. Bryn throws a hand up to shield squinting eyes and slaps the tap shut. The stones rattle to silence. Bryn’s feet stomp onto the tiles. Crystals sift sweating through Bryn’s trembling fingers. Ice. Hail.
Bryn roughs bumpy skin dry and piles on clothes, hoodie, hat, boots. Outside, obscure faces in wreaths of faux fur and wool peer at a grimly bright haze. The ground is mottled with a map of pinhead ice. Jan Green shields her hydrangeas with a red umbrella. Her small dog Tony is barking, not in rage but in regular bursts like a car alarm.
Bryn takes a breath. The haze stings.
There is a rush and the air is full of seagulls fleeing with klaxon cries towards an invisible shore. Bryn follows for a few steps, inking a story into the snow.
Down the street, a column of colourless lizards and amphibians cascades into a wet twitching heap. A slow car pulls up. Bryn retreats a step, catches a stark chameleon in one loose palm, backs up a step further. The wind gasps ice.
White hail drops from a white sky: the size of tears, the size of lost dimes, the size of blank eyeballs. The people retreat under rooves. The ones in cars huddle. The hail is the size of a child's fist. A wrestler's fist. A severed head. Car crowns buckle. Bryn backs into shadow and begins to hum, below the threshold of ear’s hearing. The baby kicks.
The hail is the size of basketballs. It is the size of globes. The stones grow as big as the doubled self before it is split. They drop like stopped helicopters. They crash like felled blimps. They swell as large as the geodesic dome on Science World. They grow to the size of city blocks, of small towns, of metropoli. They erase islands. They fall as big as Greenland and then Australia and then the continental United States. They hurtle the size of planetoid Pluto and the moon. They match Mercury, Mars, Earth, then Neptune. They approach the size of stars.
Stuck to the side of an ice world flung out of orbit, Bryn sucks up ropes of shredded haze and hums. Hail the size of whole universes falls through possibility. Bryn’s hat blows by.
Here in the heart of nowhere yet, faster than the swelling hail the emptiness expands. The greater the stones grow, the smaller they shrink. Bryn sings.
Singing, Bryn leaps.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Mostly I was wishing for the lyricism of a recent post of
aldersprig's.{rf}
Audio version of this post here.
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Date: 2017-02-25 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-02-25 01:27 am (UTC)