O my little Chickadees! Our first week of Training together is drawing to a Resounding Finish. My Thanks and Admiration to all who Joined us.
Your Task this Day: Review your Beginnings from Exercise #1. Now, write the Ending for each Tale.
Do not Fear. For although your Beginnings were most Excellent, these Exercises remain mere Practice. Even if you do not Believe you can approach the Magnificence of your Beginning, write the Ending anyway. Or Else.
1.) The rag-doll didn’t make a bad princess, all told. True, she’d always been a yacker, but now that her voice came from a deeper chest cavity and actual vocal chords instead of the cricket meeps of sawdust stuffing and magic, her yacking didn’t sound so bad. The prince was obviously enchanted.
And that, thought Mala, satisfied at a spell well done, was very satisfying.
2.) They spilled a carpet like blood at her feet. They flew the banner of the Empire of the Open Palm above her throne, and the silver hand embroidered there looked like bone. They crowned her in copper, silver and gold for the countries she would rule, and Mik felt a crushing weight, but she managed a grin. It was a stretch, but she managed it.
“So, okay,” said the High Queen Mikiel unto her gathered chamberlains, her haughty seneschals, her hungry warlords, and all the arrogant ambassadors of the Audiencia, “first order of business… You’re all fired. I’ll be accepting job applications in the morning — if you think any of your credentials will impress me. Frankly though,” and she surveyed the startled crowd with her ghost-blue eyes, “I seriously doubt it.”
3.) And Jack Yap watched the city drown.
I am ash, now, and it is said that ash may not have a voice, that all voices come to ash, as do all bells and flutes and drums, all tongues and air and skin. This is a lie, and you know it to be so. For what else have I been telling you while this pencil trembled in your hand, while you tried and tried to still the spill of an unfamiliar script forming on your pages?
You must learn to hold me more steadily, my friend. I long to sing and sing.
~
She closed her eyes, and the taste of almonds and burnt amber drowned her tongue.
~
One by one, Dar slipped the knots in her belt, and walked naked into the West.
Naked, Labrys, AND knotty???
Fun, fun, fun!
1) Of course, I was never followed and the ends surpassed the means by far. The house was burned to the ground and the inhabitants were paid their insurance premiums in full. The girls were returned to their rightful countries and the police….well….the police never came.
2) Gone were those days. She never knew. She never figured the fortune came from those years when she was passed from house to house as her mother paved the way. She now understood what it took for her to make such a sacrifice. Such an inheritance. Such freedom.
3) I pass on the knowledge to other girls now. The same patience of waiting. You have to smell the hair and judge the drink. It all matters. Everything matters.