Wednesday Words – Nothing if not verbose

I have a Wednesday night writing group. We do prompts, and drabbles, and it’s a good time. Everyone comes out with something so different! They’re short snippets – the drabbles are only supposed to be 100 words, a warm-up for the later prompt. I’m trying to remember to post my favourites as I go. This is the first time I came up with three in the fifteen minutes… and yes, I have fallen behind on this, I plan to pick it up again! So many things have been set aside while I try to juggle the absurdity that is my life, but… I like sharing these. I want to keep doing that.

Drama 1

“All that drama.” The wave of a hand, dismissive. “Throw out the drama.”

You wonder how to throw away the heartbreak, the pain, the anger, the injustice; you wonder how not to throw yourself out at the same time.

You ask how it could have been avoided. Everyone’s full of ideas, until you lay it on the line.

It’s the line that’s important. Which side of it are you on?

Because whether what’s happening is a deep personal trauma or simply pointless drama always depends on which side of that emotional line you’re on.

Drama 2

He’s quiet.

From the wings, he watches the cast take their final bow. It’s closing night – someone drags him on stage, introduces him as the playwright, and between the stage lights and the applause, there’s a war between terror and exultation.

There are no small feelings. He’s quiet on the outside. The rest of it, he shapes. Every time an actor nails the delivery – even better than he imagined – every time an audience member sniffles, he thinks this is so much bigger than he imagined.

He imagines vastness.

And when he imagines drama, he is borne aloft by it.

Drama 3

I have a big voice. If I’m warmed up, if I’m living inside the notes, I can hammer volume, fullness, vibrato, liquid fire in my lungs. I don’t need the microphone.

I need the drama.

I can pour myself into the lyrics, I can leap intervals with precision and delight, as though I’m flying. Nothing feels like this, nothing.

But I can’t do it without the drama.

I can’t do the wordless cry. I need the words to launch me.

I can hit the stratosphere, if I have the drama.

Otherwise, I just drift, in a lost, precise, ambivalent note.

The First Dragon had died. Dragons do not stop growing, and he carried eons within him. He became more weathered, slower in his thoughts and words. Every thought was a deep, slow thought, because with so much memory, and so much wisdom, a thought had to travel a long way.

Eventually he passed from the world, as all things must. He felt relief, for who could follow him through such thoughts? He had been lonely.

Dragons also do not decay. The inkwyrms, those who prepared the dead, who recorded the words, deeds and songs of the dragons who died, took up their needles and their drills. He had outgrown his scales, and that was fortunate. There was a lot of ground to cover, and prying up scales takes time.

Underneath, he was just soft enough for them to begin their work.

They would record each of those long, slow thoughts on this good skin.

Post-Drabble Thoughts: do dragons only start out as fire elementals, and end as stone elementals? That is how planets are born: they begin as fire, and end as stone, with their history buried in their skin.

(yes, I’m taking some artistic liberties with astrophysics. Hush.)

Tag: Wednesday Words

Wednesday Words: Drama

Drama 1

Drama 2

Drama 3

Wednesday Words: Good Skin