Picture courtesy of my ramblings on the Internet. Source unremembered, title and creator unknown.
"...Late at night when you are sleepin' Poison Ivy comes a-creepin' all around..." The radio crackled, static from some distant storm. Here it was dry as a bone.
She sat atop him, the reflection of the light across the street bathing her in glow. She was fertility, promise, growth, new life. "Suppose it'll rain tomorrow?" he asked her, eyes closed, feeling rather than seeing her wetness spread over his stomach where she squatted, planting herself.
"No. No rain." The warm mellifluence of her accent was a contrast to the sere air around them. "The sky still stores her tears."
Desire grew in her, a humid longing, to plant seeds, to watch the black earth bring forth green shoots. Nectar coursed in her veins, and she eased herself back until his stalk was enshrined in the hothouse of her womanhood, a transplant that felt natural. He was growing too, his own cycle started, spring in his loins.
"Ay Madre," she swore softly. "It was so dry without you. The air was like razors."
Laconic, he merely ran his hands, coarse and calloused, over her shadowed flanks, gripping her like he was about to uproot her. His succulent. His thirsty jungle flower.
Jade plucked a lotus in her garden and pondered the clouds, always in motion, restless. Some days felt like that.
"And is it not so that all things change?" asked Kong, knowing her mind better than any other. "Are we not all as the clouds."
"Heaven is unchanging," Jade said. "What seems to be motion is really stillness. If a rock is in a stream, does it move because the water moves around it?"
Kong laughed. It was a good laugh, without malice or mockery. Jade remembered why she had brought him here. "Mistress, when I was born I was not fully made. Not until I met you did I become whole." And he kissed her, audaciously, ignoring boundaries, ignoring propriety. She let herself be kissed, let his hands remove her robes and his, and they coupled in the grass, in the garden beneath the ever-changing clouds. She felt him move inside her as no man had ever done. His deep truth grew in her.
After, as they lay in the grass, sweat glinting off his skin, she asked, smiling, "So, Master, was it you who entered me, or did you stand still and merely allow me to surround you?"
Your challenge for today was to use the picture above to write a flash fiction of exactly 200 words ('cause I'm a stinker). To further add complications, you filled in the Mad-Lib below and used that phrase in your writing:
"...[A FEELING] grew in her..."
As usual, nobody's checking word counts (really, because I can't count and can't be arsed to try), or the key phrase (because I complain about it so much it would be hypocritical), but you only cheat yourself if you break the rules. I don't give spankings; I will merely voice my disappointment in you in such a way as to make you feel far worse. Far, far worse.
Click here to skip my ramblings and get straight to the other players.
Two this week, mostly because 200 words on the nose is a tough nut to crack. I was being cute and it cost me. Well, no, not really. Actually, I realized that I hadn't used the phrase in the second one even though I thought I had. The word count was just a matter of removing a word or two here or there.
Two, neither of which are what I started out to do. My original phrase, for those interested, was "doubt grew in her" and I riffed on similarly grim topics in my brain while looking at the picture, until I realized that insisting on that as a phrase would pretty much steer a certain course, and I didn't want to do that. So I Mad-Libbed it up, because feelings growing seemed easier to deal with than any particular feeling growing.
So you'd think that I would have at least used "doubt grew in her" once. But no. The first one was sort of the atmosphere I was going for in my mind, but instead of being dry, it got all wet, which I didn't mind. The verdure of the prose may be a bit much, but it's really more of a tone poem than anything else. It's fairly open-ended; it's a moment in time, rather than a whole arc. We just dropped in to see what condition its condition was in.
The second... well, I'll postpone discussion of the second for a moment. If you don't know the song being played on the radio at the beginning of the first one, it's a classic and you should, not because it's the greatest song ever but just because it's something people should know. I've heard various different versions of it, and I wish I could find the Coasters doing it way back when, but in any case, that's the song if it helps to have the soundtrack playing.
Okay, now the second. Astute readers will notice that Kong and Jade's names bear a striking resemblance to certain characters in Chinese myths. Please don't hate me because I made the August Personage of Jade a woman. Or that I had Confucius have sex with her. He's a product of divine and mortal in some stories, and I didn't do Confucius/August Personage slash fic.
Confucius, or Kong Fu Tze (and Fu Tze is a title of respect akin to Master, not actually part of his name, like how Jesus' last name wasn't Christ) was a fairly important person in China, if you're unaware. He didn't just write corny sayings in fortune cookies. Heck, look him up; I'm not a scholar.
The August Personage of Jade is the Emperor of everything, according to Chinese mythology (simplification, I know). In religious Confucianism, the August Personage is the top of the pyramid, because Heaven is organized in the same way that Earth should be, with a hierarchy of benevolence. This concept is also echoed in the ideal family, so it stands to reason that the August Personage is also the head of the divine family. Again, not a scholar, please consult the oracles on the subject.
If plants came immediately to mind in the first one, the second was a bit less straightforward. I wanted to write two because it seemed like there had to be more than one way to look at the picture (and I'm sure our other players will oblige you in that regard as well), but nothing sprang to mind. Maybe she was an alien? Maybe the Incredible Hulk? Then I remembered that I'd lamented a while back that I was being entirely too Western in my fantasy, so I said to myself, "Okay self, how about an Eastern fantasy?" And then I thought, "Okay, she's green, jade is green, no one will ever forgive me if I make the August Personage of Jade a woman, but what the hell, I'm doomed anyway and there needs to be some feminism in Confucianism."
So I imagined a story where Confucius arrived in Heaven and found that he'd been sort of right, that there were rulers in Heaven and they were ideal in the way he thought they'd be, but he was also wrong because the ruler was a woman. And unlike living humans, dead humans can sometimes be flexible in their approaches to the situation, so Confucius, being the wise man he was, realized that it was okay. His ideals of humanity and law were still perfectly fine and good, but instead of "the father" being the ruler of everything, maybe mothers might get to rule things too. And he laughed at himself, and at how blinkered he'd been and how much better things were when there was more humanity, and the August Personage heard his laughter and fell in love with him.
Obviously, that's not quite what happens in my story, but that's sort of what I was thinking. The black background of the photo fights a bit with the idea of a heavenly garden, but that's okay; it's the green and the flower that matter. I tried to think of it a bit like a sexual koan too, or a piece of Chinese poetry where there are many levels. And who's to say whether the August Personage of Jade isn't both a man and a woman; it would make sense that way. Or perhaps divinity transcends gender (no perhaps about it, in my humble opinion). But it's more fun if she's a hot woman for this scene.
Your words of the day are mellifluence and sere.
Here's a list of the people who I know for a fact are playing this week. If you're not on the list, it's because you didn't tell me you were playing and I didn't happen to see your entry when I made my rounds of the usual suspects at some point (possibly not even Friday, but I'll try). But you can be on this list even now; if you let me know you played, I will put you on the list, even if it's Sunday evening. Monday I'll probably give up on anyone else letting me know, mostly because it'll be time for a new challenge, courtesy of the hostest with the mostest, PB, whose enormous shoes (and we all know what big shoes mean, don't we ladies?) I could never hope to fill. The list is in order of when people let me know, because it's easier that way, and because last isn't always least.
- Rozewolf - http://wordwytch.wordpress.com
- Advizor - http://advizortoall.blogspot.com/
- David - http://dsinvegas.blogspot.com/
- Max - http://mystic-satyr.blogspot.com/
9 comments:
I love love love your second take. Very creative and quite lovely!
Here's the original Coasters' Poison Ivy, which I agree is a classic.
Thanks again for coordinating this week. Happy FFF!
Interesting choices Lexi. I enjoyed both, but the first is my favorite. Hmmm, maybe because I was reading the Dryad and the Woodsman last night. Who knows. Very nice brush strokes.
The various myths and legends of the world are rich fodder for new expression and I enjoy being exposed to non-western ideas and stories. Interestingly enough, most, but not all, conceive of a heaven, of benevolent rulers (for some), punishment for others, and happiness of some sort. Excluding the Calvinists, this usually involves some kind of family relationship.
I loved the picture though, the green scream fertility, and a little bit of Shrek, so that made me giggle.
New Rule: Turn off the radio when composing FFF stories. I like them both, altho I think the first appealed more. Amazing on how much the green tint affected us all.
And, thanks for hostessing.
@Max: Sounds a bit more like the Hollies' version to me, but that version is a fine one as well. I'm glad someone besides me enjoyed my second one; I was a bit worried that it was too cerebral.
@wordwytch: Interesting, eh? ;) I think the first one may be my favorite too, actually, not that I don't like the second one.
@Advizor: My two-cent summation of Confucianism was about as accurate as saying that Christianity is the worship of a single parent and his son living in a a haunted house (give it a second to sink in), but it was as much context as was needed, I guess. I could easily have gone for Mezo-American myth since they liked jade too, and they were much less sure of the divine's benevolence ;)
@David: Turn off the radio? But why? Actually, I rarely have music playing when I write; I was thinking of the song and it worked in context.
Aye Madre! I enjoyed both versions.
@TemptingSweets: Not that you actually brought this up, but you reminded me that I had a certain amount of difficulty deciding how to spell "Ay" in the story. "Aye" is affirmative, but this is more of an "Aieeee" type thing, the way it's said in Spanish, or at least the way I've heard it. I toyed with "Ai" but in the end settled on "Ay" because I believe that's actually how it's spelled when Spanish-speakers spell it. As onomatopoeia it's probably not that important, but I did want to get it right, even if I failed.
All that crap aside, glad you enjoyed both versions :)
LOL! Yes, you most definitely used it correctly. ¡Ay, Madre! Makes me appreciate your story even more, since you paid extra attention to all these details. ;-)
@TemptingSweets: Oh, but you've got the whole upside-down punctuation thing going on ;)
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