one word, one story, each day

Notes
Personal stuff and indulgence of the resulting blues has kept me from posting my words. It's time to get back into the swing. It's been too long. I have 15 minutes before it's tomorrow and must get cracking.

Word: Linctus
Meltitia stirred the linctus in the pot above the fire, its sweet, thick, berry fumes filling the room. The scent wafted toward Barty, who lounged beneath a blanket on the chaise across the chamber from the fireplace where Meltitia worked. Barty could only see her back silhouetted by the fire's glow. He coughed violently.

"Hold your horses, I'm coming," said Meltitia. She spooned the mixture into a shallow bowl and trudged across the room. Barty watched her come, gripped the knife beneath the blanket, fingered the wire-wrapped hilt. The anticipation was almost sexual, wondering what it would feel like to slide the knife between the apothecary's ribs.

She'd been poisoning him for weeks. The time had come to return the favor. Barty coughed again. Maltitia picked up her pace.
-----------------------------

linctus
n. A syrupy liquid medicine, especially for treating coughs.

The night of my mother's death, I polished the dining room table, a mahogany oval split down the middle to accommodate expansion leaves. I don't know how long I polished the wood. All I know is that by the time I stopped--mainly because I was tired, my hand cramped up, and the rag was in tatters--the wood seemed like glass, and the light shining upon it made the grain appear like crepey layers of filo baked crisp and fine. Mom would have approved. Wish I'd done it years ago, when she first asked. Who would appreciate it now?


----------------------------
polish

1. (verb [used with object]) to make smooth and glossy, esp. by rubbing or friction: to polish a brass doorknob.

...will come this evening. Late night last night, not a lot of sleep. Can't write, I have teh sleepies.

"Poor baby. You work so hard. I don't know how you do it," Lila said, and slammed the door behind her as she left the house. Through the window next to the door, Barnard watched her--blond ponytail bouncing behind her large, pudgy, jean-and-tee-shirt clad form--stalk down the path to her antique Volkswagon Beetle, get in and tear away, leaving clouds of dry summer dust in her wake. Barnard hmphed. He waddled back through their vintage 1958 kitchen, past the basket of unpaid bills and the sink filled with dishes. At some point, he'd have to tack up the top corner of that NASCAR poster curling down from the basement door, he noted, as he continued back toward the den. He sat down at the desk, fired up "World of Warcraft," and got comfortable. What did Lila care? She was always at the office anyhow. He had a campaign to wage.


-----------------------
sardonic
1. adj. Marked by scorn, mockery, and cynicism.

-----------------------

Observation: I don't know if what I'm posting are stories per se. In the fanfic community there's a word that might apply: ficlet, which might be defined as a glimpse into a life, without necessarily including plot. I think I've been posting ficlets more than stories. The point, here, I guess, is that I'm at least striking the flint, which is more than I'm doing at other times during the day. It's something anyway.

The century's longest winter kept us indoors day by day. Margot stalked the house wrapped in her thick, lilac cardigan, her arms folded tightly across her chest, her slowly silvering hair pulled back into a severe and sloppy ponytail. Her path was identical, predictable each day: bedroom to bathroom, bathroom to kitchen, kitchen to living room to den to bedroom, round and round. She spoke to no one, usually until dinner. Heaven help the one of us who got in her way, interrupted her endless pilgrimage to who knows where. Before she'd begin her daily circuit, Bart and I would make sure we'd stake out our own perches, his by the fireplace with whatever he was reading, me in the wing-backed chair by the window and the radiator. With the snow so deep outside, the only thing visible, the only break in the monotonous view were the periodic stiricides that pierced the snowpack just outside the window -- like the one that had taken Casper from us. He'd been trying to clear the vents one warmer-than-usual day. I hated to think of him out in the snow, layered in like a Pompeiian caught in pyroclastic flows. But there would be no retrieving him until the thaw.

Maybe we should have let Margot go get him when it first happened. But then she'd be gone, too.


------------------------
stiricide (1656 -1656)
1. n. falling of icicles from a house

Since this all started with jaylake's community, and since I contributed to that community every now and then, I'm adding here links to all of those contributions in the interests of completeness.

• Uxorial
  
• Empyrean
  
• Damascene
  
• Interlining (This is now officially the ironymaiden Memorial entry, in honor of her gifts as a quilter.)
  
• Obloquy
  
• Entelechy
  
• Seismic (This one comes with my deepest apologies.)

I shouldn't do this to myself, but I'm going to anyway. Remember, how jaylake used to keep his storywords journal, taking a word each day and writing a quick little piece around it? Back in March I started to do this with a separate LJ devoted to the purpose. Then I stopped, started and stopped again. A couple of days ago I started again. I'm going public with it now to keep myself honest, to make myself keep going. If I set up a public expectation for myself, maybe I'll keep doing it, and push myself into writing again. So that's what I'm going to do. Posting this here and over at my public, personal journal. We'll see what happens.

He stood in front of the mirror, the pale light from a single bulb shedding over the bruise spreading beneath his left eye. He twined the skein of balbriggan around right his hand, once, twice, three times, until it was a thick, firm wad of fabric that would protect his knuckles. He flexed his fingers and folded them into a fist around the padding. He punched the heel of his left hand, a sharp jab to make sure the wrapping was tight and secure. Then he looked at the mirror again. "Never again," he whispered, and with another sharp jab, punched out the glass.


---------------------------------
balbriggan (bal-BRIG-uhn) noun
A knitted, unbleached cotton fabric, used in hosiery and underwear.
[After Balbriggan, a town near Dublin in Ireland, where it was first made.]

Mother's rimestock sat there on the shelf. I'd left it there after she died, watched it glow every single night since then, calling me to pick it up, pore through its pages, use the magic accumulating as it waited. Tristan would arrive soon, my first visitor in literally years. There would be no way to hide that glow. Even wrapping the old book in fabric and stashing it in a drawer wouldn't quench that sickly green light. What to do?

--------------------------------
rimestock (1662 -1834)
1. n. old almanac with runic writings

I'm not writing the way I ought to be. I'm dilatory in my writing habits. I procrastinate when I ought to just do. This stops now. Now, dammit.

-----------------------------
dilatory \DIL-uh-tor-ee\
1. adj. Tending to put off what ought to be done at once; given to procrastination.

She leaned back in the hard wood hair. She was done fighting. She had no choice. She was staying put. The ropes around her wrists were already rubbing her skin; the ropes around her knees and ankles, binding her legs so tightly to the chair left her legs nearly numb. She could hear the stone in the next room, screeching under the knife blade. When she closed her eyes, all she could see were sparks and a sharp, cutting edge.

---------------------------------
staycation
1. n. A stay-at-home vacation.

Like Odysseus on his ten-year trip, I travel the clouds seeking home. I hit speed-bumps sometimes. Sometimes those speed-bumps slow me down. Sometimes they scorch me, spew steam and mud and bring down mountains from the air into which they reach. I must be quick not to get caught up in such turmoil, such terrible tumult. I live amongst thunder of a different kind: audible but intangible, unlikely to toss -- or more like, pull -- me to the ground below.

----------------------------------------------------
nepheliad
1. cloud-nymph

The doctor examined her patient carefully. Fibers threaded through the wound in the man's thigh. She folded back the limp flesh from the wound opening. Strands had already begun to knit themselves to the muscles. It looked like cotton there in the leg, strings of cotton, knitting themselves into replacement skin and muscles. She'd never seen the like before.

-------------------------
fabrefaction
(in common use between 1652-1678 CE)
1. act of fashioning or making a work of art

I couldn't name her. It was on the tip of my tongue, her name, but every time I looked at her I was distracted. As though a frictionless field surrounded her against which my gaze slid away, looking directly at her was simply impossible. That being the case, even though I couldn't remember her name, I couldn't call her by another. Being unable to look at her was bad enough, but calling her by some word not her own seemed to make it worse, disrespectful somehow. "Nameless," was a misnomer. But named, she'd be human, and in her state, so badly burned she was unrecognizable, I couldn't let her be human. That would be too much pain to bear.

-----------------------------
misnomer:
1.    a misapplied or inappropriate name or designation.
2.    an error in naming a person or thing.

The plan for this journal, which takes its cue from jaylake's storywords community, is for me to pick a word each day and write a short piece of fiction about it. I need to keep my hand in, keep writing, and it doesn't take much to write short little bursts of fiction; I just have to stay disciplined about it. I may end up doing more than one piece per day if the one I write seems to me to be good enough to try to send to someone else in the hopes they'll pay me for it. But one way or another, my intent is to write something each day. We'll see how it goes. Wish me luck!