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I've never done one of these before but this prompt seems like a good starting point for me.  In please
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Sep 26, 2018 20:48
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 04:24 |
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Looking/Seeing (629 words) Object: an antique hand mirror She smiles at me. Her lips are the color of the duvet across the room, spread smooth and velvet-red as the petals of the roses that she sometimes sets beside it. Her eyes are shining, lustrous-dark. She tilts me this way and that and the light catches us both, her skin radiant, lashes gossamer-fine, curtains that shimmer against half-open windows. What day is it? What time is this? When was I last outside this room? My mistress sets me down again, face-down, and once more I have nothing. The wood of the vanity is as dark and infinite as her eyes but not nearly so bright. I hear a voice – not hers. Her mother’s. I remember her mother. If I had a heart it would leap. As it is, I do nothing. Nothing but lie here and hope to be touched again. “Are you ready?” I hear my mistress laugh. It’s close to me – so close! Why is she not holding me? I feel the faint stirring of air as something moves past me. A spritzing hiss. The touch of settling perfume-particles, softer than dust-motes, caressing my back. “I’ve been ready since the day he asked me out.” They both laugh at this. I realize what is happening now. I remember when her mother married, too. She looked just as beautiful. I wonder what she looks like now. “Oh!” Her mother’s voice again. Surprise, and pleasure. “You still have it!” “Well, yeah,” my mistress says, half-amused, half-flummoxed. “Duh.” I’m being lifted. She’s still beautiful. “Oof,” says the woman holding me. “The last time I looked in this thing I was your age.” “You still look my age,” teases her daughter. I know it’s teasing because I see the woman holding me laugh, watch her eyes crease, her teeth flash in the way I used to know so well. I see her half-glance over her shoulder at her daughter. I’m angled slightly as she looks and so I see her too, resplendent, a glimpse of dark-haired ivory across the room. They look the same. She is exactly as I remember. “I’m glad you still have it,” says the woman holding me, and she smiles again – at me. Directly at me. Her free hand touches my frame, ever so lightly. “Your grandmamma gave it to me, you know.” “Of course I know,” from across the room, with gentle good humor. I know, too. I remember her grandmamma. I hope she is well. “I only use it for special occasions, actually,” says my mistress, and her mother glances at her again, startled, amused. I’m still held facing her and I still think she looks the same as when I last saw her. Perhaps more weary. Perhaps more wise. But she is the same woman that looked into me for more than twenty years. Who held me. Polished me. Loved me. “It’s a mirror, Josie,” says my holder, laughter in her voice. “You can look at it any old time.” For a moment there’s silence. I can’t see Josie, but I can see her mother. She’s curious, affectionate, vibrant. She hasn’t changed. “Sure,” says Josie at last, and then she’s here. She takes me from her mother and I have a moment’s fierce reluctant longing, the bedroom’s furnishings flashing before me, but then I see Josie again, and it’s all right. She is wonderful, too. “I know. But it’s special. I mean – it’s yours. You got ready with it on your special days. Grandmamma did too. And her mom, and her mom,” she adds, quickly, and I hear the suppressed laughter in her voice. “I only look at it when I want to remember what I look like for something. Really remember.” She squints at me for a moment. “You know?” I know.
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Sep 28, 2018 17:50
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Last minute ready-up. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's lush yet pointless description!
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Dec 15, 2018 08:16
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Dec 15, 2018 12:10
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Okay I guess I'll double-post and get this thing rolling  An event. I hope the dialogue callbacks didn't violate the not-current-time rule. Future/Past 578 words The night had been chosen well in advance, and the moon and the stars had been kind enough to oblige. The former hung, serene and pendulous, in the velvet-black sky; the full silver coin of its face had smiled down upon the rooftop all evening. Its cool, bright glow had rendered the candles nearly unnecessary – but then, they were really just set dressing, after all. They had all burned down into fat waxy stubs, by now, but when they had been lit they had shone with a vigor that outmatched the innumerable glimmering stars, each itself a tiny prick of fire, and strewn across that void-black sky like so many scattered diamonds. Echoes of laughter still seemed to shimmer in the air, like the fading redolence of the long-since devoured meal for two: baked salmon, fragrant with herbs and lemon and butter, good crusty bread with two small dishes of oil, broccolini sautéed with wine and garlic until it was just tender. The empty plates and wine glasses -- and it had been very good wine, too – were still scattered over the little folding table, forgotten at the climax of the evening. At least they’d remembered to blow out the candles. A breeze was beginning to pick up, now; it carried with it the tang of the sea that lay, dark and tranquil, a stone’s throw from the little rented cottage. Seaweed, fish, salt, and something deeper, something primal. It was her favorite smell, she had confessed to him over dinner, and he had smiled because he had known that, of course. It was one of the first things she’d told him of herself. The edges of the tablecloth – white, good quality, and much nicer than the card table it covered – ruffled lightly in the sea-scent breeze, like the wings of doves settling themselves to rest. A few of the rose-petals that had been scattered across and around it lifted as well, borne fluttering away on the wind to new and grander adventures. The live roses that twined up the trellis, connecting the cottage’s stolidly planted feet to its little rooftop terrace, nodded their great soft heads slowly in approval. They were her favorite flowers. A little cliché, she’d admitted, a year and more ago, when he’d asked her; but -- as she’d made her immediate ferocious aside -- she couldn’t help it. She liked what she liked. He had, like the roses now, nodded in agreement, all the while thinking to himself: he liked what he liked, too. And he suspected that what he liked was her. A napkin skittered, fluttered at the edge of the terrace, caught by the sea-tang breeze, trying to escape before it was noticed and set too firmly in its role in the history of the evening. A print of lipstick (Raisin Red) was pressed against the skirt of its folds. Just above that was an olive-oil-stain blossom. On the other side, it held a few greasy fingerprint smudges. The napkin despaired of ever being insignificant again. The lipstick print was smudged, too; she’d been dabbing her mouth, unselfconscious, when he’d asked her. At last the napkin spun free, released of the confines of the terrace and the table and the rented beach-front cottage, flighted like the rose-petals, and the scent of the sea, and the joy in her voice when she’d answered his request. The night was fading, but the stars seemed to shine yet all the brighter. They were diamonds.
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Dec 16, 2018 03:42
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