Storytelling

It's late at night again.

I think I'm one of the few bloggers that doesn't have work email, so that I cannot write from work. Which is probably a good thing, in the end. Otherwise it would all be about perennials and annuals and price changes on bales of pinestraw and who's come out of the closet in the loading area and how did Shantae's husband get out of jail in time for the wedding...

Etcetera.

I've been writing a lot lately. Not just here, although that has picked up tremedously from the 'once-every-three-months' posting I was doing earlier in the year. (Thanks to everyone who prodded me along, you know who you are!)I have a huge body of unprintable story that I am currently thinking about changing enough to make printable-- just bits and pieces of it, simply because they're good scenes and can be worked in-- and incorporting them into an actual.....

Book. I want to write one so badly. The endeavor I began late last year I think might have been too overwhelming for me, though I have every intention of continuing on with it eventually. But after so much writing on the unprintable thing- which was solely for my own personal amusement- I realized that I had a couple of characters on my hands already, and with permission will have a couple more, and they're characters that I know a lot about. Enough to write about them believably.

I wanted to share with you all an interesting excerpt from something I wrote, simply because it's different and recently tweaked and edited within an inch of its life.

Feedback is always welcome, but if you're not in the mood to go over the bulkiness of it, I completely understand. It is, after all, late Saturday night/early Sunday morning. Still...how many times do you get to experience amateur writing frivolously thrown out for public viewing???

Oh, yeah. Often. Well, enjoy and thanks ahead of time for looking it over.


Time had passed, she knew.

How much time though, she could not say right away. And it was so quiet…

Let’s see if we can move, shall we?

The deep silence surrounding her was almost a tangible thing.

First one leg stretched out from under her heavy body, long and white and shaking a little. She took in a deep breath …

And noticed that her lungs felt like they could fill for an eternity. An odd sensation, that, she thought to herself.

Why am I so tired…?

But she knew she had to get up. Something internal was telling her so. Listening to her aching body, she unfolded a second leg, stretching it forward, feeling it uncurl and lengthen in front of her.

The thud resounding on wood as her foot contacted the table brought her around to reality a bit more.

Forcing her eyes open, she looked down her long, graceful nose at the sight in front of her. A tabletop, strewn with candles knocked over and various vials spent, a green velvet dress that still smelled like burning black holly…

I’m naked then. That’s an unsettling sign…

And the thought of the dress and the holly brought some of it back, crashing through her mind, causing her to panic.

Her back legs flailed out into space for several seconds before she bunched up powerful muscles underneath her and stood, still shaking slightly, listening in confusion to the sound of hard thumps and thuds resounding through the table beneath her every time she stepped.

It took a few more seconds before the whole ‘BACK legs?? What the…?!?’ set in.

She snorted with unease. Her nostrils trembled.

Lowering her head, she picked her way carefully to the edge of the table, eyeing the floor with trepidation.

Why??? Why am I horse? she asked herself, extending one tremulous leg down and then taking a leap of faith and hoping that the rest of her would catch on to the movement. Closing her eyes, she jumped.

Her back legs skidded out from under her as her hooves, feeling like strange little hard shoes melded around her actual feet, met with the slick stone floor with all her weight behind them.

Very graceful, she chided herself. Straightening was easy, though, as the large muscle masses moved beneath her skin with ease, catching her balance.

She turned, enjoying the intense peripheral vision that eyes positioned on the side of her head afforded her. There was no one in the room. The sun was up and shining through windows overhead, dust moving like mist in the rays. She flicked her ears forward and back and took in a deep breath.

Nothing more than the smell of old and dusty things, and the burnt smell, of course. She turned back to the table.

Lying there where she’d woken up, she saw her dress, the choker, the hairnet, her shoes, her cloak… All laid out as though she’d disappeared from underneath them.

Putting her nose to her cloak, she snuffled around, pawing at the bottom to hold it taut while she poked her nose into the pocket where she’d concealed her wand.

Feeling the smooth wooden handle between her sensitive lips, she grasped it gently and pulled it free with a tug from her large head. The abrupt motion tossed a flap of the cloak over her eyes causing her to freak out for a second. Grace responded by squealing and rearing up, knocking it back with her front hooves.

Panting heavily she began to calm herself, coming to the realization that she had a more horsey sense about her now, and could apparently panic at the drop of a hat.

Still breathing deeply, she shoved the handle of the wand underneath a pile of debris on the edge of the table and stared down at its tip protruding out into thin air with a sense of doubt.

How do I wield a wand without hands?

She tried simply touching her nose to the tip, concentrating on transfiguring back to her human form. It did nothing but make her sneeze. Her nose was, of course, ultra-sensitive.

She turned around and poked herself in the ass with it. Still nothing, though she did get to experience that strange, quirky thing animals with hides could do when something was biting them just out of reach. A layer of muscle just beneath the skin allowed her to shimmy her skin, vibrating it of its own accord as if to rid itself of a pesky fly.

Fascinating though being in a horse’s body was, she was beginning to worry.

And then it occurred to her to call on Gwyneth, to see if she could help in some way.

Turning her thoughts inward and wandering around in her own mind, she searched for her twin, calling out to her, but there was no answer. Even the spot that Gwyneth holed up in behind the curtain so reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz was gone.

No Gwyneth, not a trace, not even a whispering giggle.

Thinking back harder than before on the things that had transpired last night, it suddenly became quite clear that Gwyneth was a part of her once more, like she had been before she’d broken off from her core being. She was gone, in a way, even though she had been permanently absorbed back into her psyche.

Grace was overcome with the feeling that she’d lost someone very dear to her. Her heart squeezed tight with the thought of Gwyneth no longer being a separate presence in her mind.

And who knew where she was, or even how she could begin to search for Everett? He might have been the only person that was able to help her now. She couldn’t even transform herself.

With a deep snorting sigh, she grabbed up the wand in her teeth and turned, walking down the length of the room, her hoofbeats echoing off the stone walls, mocking her the whole way.