November Short Stories: Wednesday Edition II

The moon reminded Lorelei of tears.

Soft as silver, they bubbled up in the wake of the crescent moon. The lady-in-waiting who found her pillow soaked felt her forehead and called for a doctor. Lorelei, as perplexed as she, lay in bed while the bespectacled man lifted her eyelids, prodded the fleshy underside of her arms, and peered down her throat as though into a cavern. He gave Lorelei a viscous green syrup to take every three hours, and billed the castle.

Her royal parents watched from the doorway, worry in their eyes.

Soon, a steady flow of tears bathed Lorelei's cheeks. They slid down her cheeks in curling rivers, unquenched by the steady flow of people who called with offered cures. Servants stripped her bed of the salty sheets from tears she'd shed in sleep. The king and queen called in philosophers and astronomers, foreign wizards and shamans who spilled bones across the carpet and danced through smoke. Jesters came with silly stories and tumbling acts so ridiculous, the ladies-in-waiting held their stomachs and grasped at chairs to keep from fainting of laughter. But Lorelei's tears continued. She listened to the troubadours tune their instruments and hazard the first notes of sad songs about her.

"Ahhh," said someone at last, an old woman with filmy blue eyes. Her forehead relaxed with compassion. "I understand. You know that he loves you, don't you? And you feel it."

"Who loves me?" she whispered into the midnight shadows. Her lids burned with salt.

The woman smiled gently, unwrapping a handkerchief from her pocket. "The moon does. He's pining for you, isn't he? No, these tears won't stop, I think, until you climb to his kingdom."

A tear rolled off of Lorelei's nose, but she took the handkerchief and turned her face to the window. Moonlight gleamed silvery along her tear-stained cheeks.

"The question is," the old wise woman said as she rose, "how to get there?"

November Short Stories: Wednesday

Hopefully Lost

After their fifth wrong turn, Monica began to feel the pressure of the growing dark.

Henry chuckled quietly, steering wheel revolving beneath his hands.

"Cornfields and more cornfields," he said, nodding out the window. "I don't think we're anywhere close to Pittsburgh."

Monica laughed nervously, tugging at a wrinkle in her pantyhose. "Maybe I should call the office and let them know we won't be making it."

"Oh, we'll make it." Henry made a slow left turn. More cornfields. "The meeting isn't until eight o'clock tomorrow morning, after all."

Silence. The pantyhose were making her itch.

"Besides," he added after a long moment, "you know.....it's been nice to finally spend some time with you."

Monica's heart skittered beneath her work blouse. "I guess we had to wait for a six-hour car ride for that, huh? I mean...um, it has been. Really nice."
The Honda revolved slowly around a turn. Henry flicked his lights on. 

"I've heard that the city by morning is quite the sight," he said quietly. 

Monica stared at the passing cornstalks and pressed her knuckles to her mouth, trying not to smile. "Is that a proposition?"

"I'd really like it to be. Though, it should be said, only the most honorable of propositions. Breakfast and a city sunrise?"

"That," she said softly, "sounds perfect."

It was darker than dark now, but she didn't jump when the tips of his fingers curled around hers. Henry sighed. "I am sorry about that wrong turn."

Monica smiled at the window. "Let's just drive."

A new kind of reading

I miss the days when I had time to read. College has a knack of keeping me busy. It's a blessing, because more and more, I'm finding that I prefer to be so.

I'm not just busy with classes and assignment, but also with household, clubs, work, planning internships and getting just a little bit of breathing time in between.

But the busyness has changed the way I do a lot of things.

In the last few years, I've realized that reading has, frankly, become something that's no longer a part of my life.

There are a few reasons for the change. Firstly, of course, I'm busy. College doesn't (and shouldn't!) allow me time to lay back and doze. Except when I really need it. I've given up coffee, after all. Sigh.

Secondly, I'm finding ever-growing conflicts between what I want to read and where I am in my life. At nineteen, I sense that I'm a little too old for YA novels, but I still read them. They fill a hunger for wonder that I still have and still remember. They're universal in that way. At the same time, we need both old and new favorites.

More and more frequently, I find myself browsing the adult section of bookstores and coming away dissatisfied. I want something with substance, something that is wholesome and wonderful and well-written and enticing, but still part of the adult world. But often, I can't seem to find it.
Recently, however, reading has come into my life in a new way, and it's a way I never would have expected.

I am a lazy reader. I want to relax into a story, not work to understand it. Most brutal would be to ask me to read new stories - and yet, lately, newspapers are my reading material of choice.

Seems legitimate. I'm a journalism student! Through the semester, I've filed into the university Mac lab twice a week to learn to write news stories.

Reading the news is challenging. It doesn't allow my mind to sit back and go aaahhh at the end of a long day. Often, I struggle to understand. My eyes jump over passages when the lines blur. I have to be patient and go back, making sure I'm fully processing everything on the page.

The point is to draw my own conclusions, so I can't rest while I read.

It's a discipline to read real-life issues, and yet it's fulfilling.

To look at it from one angle, journalistic and creative writing seem two completely opposite ends of the spectrum. Journalism is pure information, stripped of poetic devices, of all the delicious language, and yet it's an art form. Moreover, it's an important one.

I'm reading about things I never would have wondered about or cared to know. Controversial vaccines. Chinese filial piety laws. I'm even dipping my shy toes into the political spectrum.

It's a discipline that's pulling me from my reader complacency. Right now, I'm growing as hungry for news as I once was - and, I hope, still am - for fiction.