🕊️

“There’s omens for magpies and ravens, but what about seagulls?”

They were sitting on a.bench halfway up the gorge trail, bare knees touching, looking at a flock of seagulls landing and taking off with no apparent rhyme nor reason.

“Oh, there is.” JJ bullshitted with the flare Dary loved. “It’s not as.well known because seagulls are kinda ugly, and so is the rhyme.”

“Oh yeah?” Dary challenged. “One for…”

“One for…”  The seagulls squawked at each other.  “One for the quiet of a morning spent alone.”

“Ah, solitude.”  Dary nodded. “Always a good thing.  So two would be a pair, then?”

“Of course.  Two for the comfort of your lover coming home.”  J found a grin growing. “Now, of course, in some versions, it’s two for the news of a loved one coming home, which is thought to be about the wars, but that’s not the version I was taught.”

“You have some good education going on somewhere.” Dary chuckled.  “I heard it was something like Two for the comfort when your dog brings home the bone, but I bet that’s something someone made up who didn’t have a loved one to come home to them made up.”

“Well, it’s nice to have someone to want you to come home, or at least visit,” JJ offered.  “Let’s see. Three for a foe and four for a friend, which is nice and tidy. But, ah.” JJ paused.  Sometimes when these conversations happened, when Dary fished for JJ to make something up, the things just came, and that could get, well, weird. 

Like now.

“And either way this sign means that something’s gonna end.”

Shit.  JJ blinked.  Where had that come from?

“Five for a voyage; your feet are set to roam…” Okay, that was okay.  

Dary’s knee wasn’t touching JJ’s anymore. 

Six didn’t come to mind, so JJ made something up.  “And six for the strength beneath the silt, the sand, the loam.”

It kind of sounded like death, but it could be interpreted in a number of ways.  Dary seemed to be relaxing again.  

“Seven for the feeling that something’s going wrong—”

Oh, no.  JJ really hated it when this happened, although normally Dary liked the sort of things that JJ “made up.”

“And, and.”  Come on, let it end on a good note.  “-and if you get past seven, then you need another song.”  JJ chuckled. “As I said, it’s a bit rougher than the magpie rhyme.”

They looked at the seagulls.  Four of them were pecking away at what looked like someone’s discarded sandwich. 

“Ah.  Ahem. Look, there’s one more over there.  I think, I think my feet are set to roam again.”  Dary stood up. “Shall we?”

JJ looked at the four-and-one seagulls and couldn’t help but fear that something was ending soon. “Let’s.  I hear there’s miles to go before we weep. I mean. Ah. I mean sleep.”

They headed up the gorge, leaving the seagulls and their omens behind.

 One for the quiet of a morning spent alone,

Two for the comfort of your lover coming home.

Three for a foe and four for a friend,

And either way this sign means that something’s gonna end.

Five for a voyage; your feet are set to roam

And six for the strength beneath the silt, the sand, the loam.

Seven for the feeling that something’s going wrong—

-and if you get past seven, then you need another song.

🕊️

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Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.

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A story of holidays! 

Yesterday, I was trying to finish a quest in 4theWords (and I did!) and I asked for prompts – here on Mastodon and here on Twitter. (Still open if something strikes your fancy; I’m having fun with writing prompt stories right now). 

🎃

She’d done so well.

It was nearly dawn on the tenth of December and Xamira was sitting on her porch, watching the world and, perhaps, gloating a little bit.

Moving it earlier had been the easy part.

The pumpkin spice had been a boon, she had to admit. Xamira sipped her latte and licked the slightly-cinnamon-flavoured whipped cream off of her lip. She owed her sister in the coffee industry a favor for that one — now, even if they had never tasted a proper pumpkin pie or carved a jack-o-lantern, people started thinking Pumpkin as soon as the first chilly night came.

The crafts industry had been a big plus, too. Xamira had three blogs where she talked about autumnal crafts, autumnal cooking, and costume-making. Her Gluten, Nut, and Dairy-Free Ladyfingers (shaped like real fingers and with only natural food colorings!!) were such a hit that at least once a year her server crashed. Ditto the $10 Costumes that look like $100+ and Beyond the Sexy Everything: looking Hot on Halloween without Fishnet.

There were even posts up now on r/HotHalloween — Started to plan next year’s costumes (yes plural). What do you think about the librarian from the Mummy?

This year, Xamira hadn’t even had to start the planning-for-next-year posts; they’d just popped up organically.

That part — and Seven Spooky Wreaths You Can Make in a Weekend, and then My Husband Decorated My House for the Holiday, Can You Top It? — those were all her, no favors to a sister or cousin needed, and Xamira  was pleased. The cinnamon on her tongue tasted like victory, like that PTA meeting where she’d first suggested they hold Practice Trick or Treating the week or two weeks before in the school, so kids “knew what to expect.” (which turned out to be mostly more candy). Xamira had done a lot on her own.

Of course, she did have a cousin in inflatables who had pushed the first “spooky” lawn decorations for the season — Xamira smiled across the street at the neighbors’ yard, where a dragon taller than their first floor puffed menacingly at passers-by. And once you got people to decorate, especially outside, then inertia would help everything along and those decorations would stay up longer, and longer…

Xamira had managed to take a small holiday whose influence lasted a few days at best to a season-long extravaganza of pumpkins, candy, and being someone else for a while.

She sipped her latte again as the sun crested the horizon, and sighed as a sort of pepperminty swirl touched her tongue. 70 days. She had managed 70 days.

But on the 71st day, no matter what she did, Christmas reigned.

Across the street, the neighbors’ dragon became a giant tree. Xamira wrapped her shawl around herself and headed inside before the cold really came.

70 days was quite impressive, she told herself again. Nobody else had managed that much.

Maybe next year she’d aim for a post-Labor-Day sale. Back to School with Pumpkins?

Dress Up for your First Day … as a cat!

She had time. Even redditor CostumeFreak only had two sketches and one costume prototype done yet.

For non-USians, Labor Day is generally considered the end of summer in the US. 

It’s the first Monday in September & is one of our Federal Holidays.

Inflatable Dragon.

Inflatable Christmas Tree.

Ladies’ Fingers.

Pumpkin Spice Latte – now earlier than ever!

I was listening to “Home” on the radio last night – turns out it’s originally Michael Bublé but I listen to country – and, not for the first time, it struck me that the narrator sounded a little cursed. 

So here we have this. 

🛬 ✈️ 🛫

The taxi smelled strongly of mould and smoke and seemed to hit every bump on the way from the airport to  the hotel. Blake tipped the driver $20 anyway. It was probably not the lady’s fault, after all.

The hotel was a nice one — they always were — but the building next door was undergoing demolition.   The banging followed Blake up the stairs — he’d learned, about elevators — to the tenth floor and into his room.

His next plane tickets and hotel reservations were waiting for him.  Only once in all his time had they not been there, and that time didn’t bear thinking about. 

He shook out his clothes from his carry-on — after losing checked luggage three times, he’d given up — and hung them in the bathroom, put a laundry bag put for Housekeeping, and sat down at the rickety table.

He picked up the room phone and dialed.  555-908-7857. He’d dialed that number so often he called it in his sleep.

In his dreams, someone picked up.  In the good dreams, she picked up.

“The number you have dialed is unavailable.   Please hang up.”

Blake hung up.  He pulled a tiny bourbon from the hotel minibar — legit Kentucky bourbon,  here in… he checked the hotel stationery — Rome. He drank it straight straight from the bottle, finishing it in two swallows, before he considered the hotel stationery again. 

He pulled the curtains open to look at the demolition,  opened the window, and let the dusty air wash over him.

The hotel-branded ballpoint pen worked.  He pulled over a clean sheet of paper and began.

Aug 12, 2011

Rome looks like dust today,  but the sky is bright blue, like the river down past Johnson’s where we used to fish.  

I want to come home.

I slept well on the plane, despite the crying baby.  I feel bad for the kid. It wasn’t her fault.

I want to come home.

All in all, it’s a good day.  I hope yours is going well, too.

I miss you,

Why won’t they let me go home?

Blake. 

He folded up the letter carefully, smoothing each crease.  He dug the box out of the bottom of his carry-on, a cookie tin he’d bought, sharing the cookies with the pigeons in — he thought it had been Paris, it might have been Versailles — until he had the perfect size for his rubber-banded stack of letters. 

He had to push the lid shut over the letters now.  It would be time for a second tin, soon. 

Just let me come home. 

“I want to travel the world.”  He tested the words. They sounded dirty, dusty now, now like they had when he was twenty and full of himself.  Forget this stupid town.

Who knew the elders of his hometown were quite so temperamental — or quite so magical?

According to his tickets — and they were never wrong — he’d be here for almost three whole days.  Blake changed his shirt and headed out for a drink, giving the tin of letters one last pat on the way out. 

Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.

originally posted Jun 14, 2018 on Patreon⭕

Mr. Reginato had been teaching 10th-grade advanced mathematics for a very long time.  A very, very long time, but the old paper records were long since gone and, since students enjoyed his class, he didn’t seem to be a line-item on the pension fund, and the school’s test scores in mathematics grade 10 and above had always been superb – or at least as long as people knew Mr. Reginato had been there – nobody was going to talk to him about retiring.

As a matter of fact, they were paying him, it appeared, approximately $100 a year, which absolutely couldn’t be correct, but that was the number that the accountant had in her files, and nobody really wanted to ask her any questions either.

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Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.