Snippets from March

A brand new month (not so brand new now, sadly) has arrived, and with it a brand new "Snippets" post from Katie and her darling blog Whisperings of the Pen. So here I am to participate, mostly with The White Sail's Shaking, but also with a bit of Wordcrafter to start. Enjoy!

march snippets

He was crazy and it was a crazy thing to say, but if Ethan had asked for the moon and a constellation besides, Justin would have been leery of denying him.

- wordcrafter

"...You wouldn’t mind getting your head chopped off at the end, would you, Ethan?”

Ethan had drawn back into the corner and now he sat half in the shadows with his arm around the old harp, fingering the strings but making no noise with them. He looked up when Jamie addressed him, the darkness lying in strange patterns across his stranger face. “I am sure it would be a pleasure,” he replied coldly.

- wordcrafter

[Charlie] still held a musket with its stock in the hollow of his shoulder; the powder had stained but half his face in the course of the fight, and the effect put Tip in mind of a lunar eclipse.

- the white sail's shaking

A breath of thick hot air wafted into his face as he stepped out, stifling him and making his head throb worse. Even the seagull on the sign overhead looked lethargic in the summer twilight. He sniffed with a grimace, instinctively pulling at his collar.

“Come to enjoy the fine evening?” asked a nearby voice, tinged with softly laughing irony.

- the white sail's shaking

Of course every schoolboy knows never to try to separate a pair of fighting dogs, no matter what the outcome looks to be. Tip knew it; he was no fool. But in the heat of the moment it slipped his mind.

- the white sail's shaking

"...What made you go to sea?”

“Oh…” Tip tugged a thin-lipped smile. “That was my family’s choice. I’m a bully, you see.”

Even with her cap he saw her eyebrows go flyaway. “You, sir, a bully?” she repeated.

- the white sail's shaking

Charlie was beside him, left elbow to Tip’s right, one pistol in hand and another across his thighs; Decatur, farther down on the same side, held a cutlass naked before him to reflect a red-stained sky. Everyone was panting, through the mouth or through the nose, so that the ship itself seemed to be gasping for breath. The sound fingered Tip’s brain, agonizing as the waiting itself.

- the white sail's shaking

“God help me, Lewis,” he breathed aloud, “we have not seen the last of each other.”

- the white sail's shaking

Great and Small

It's no secret that I love cats, and if ever it was, my Favorite Things post dispelled it. Cats have been a part of my life for almost as long as I can remember, excluding a brief period after one of ours ran away and before we got our current ones, Buster and Esther. When I was little, the neighbors had a massive amount of cats (all one family, I believe) that Jenny and I were allowed to play with, and when they moved, they left one cat with us. At the same time we had Ashes, a big black devil-cat who used to lie in wait and pounce on me when I came around corners. My contact with cats, you see, has not been wholly positive.

But despite that emotional scarring at such a tender age, I grew up loving cats - and of all adorable and sweet cats, I consider my Buster to be the best. I've had him now for about eight years; he sleeps on my bed at night, gives me "kitty hugs," plays peek-a-boo with me, gets blue (so I am told) when I go away. Those who know more about dogs than I do say Buster is one, only in cat form. That may be true; I couldn't say. All I know is that he is one special cat.

I suppose, then, that he forms a large part of the inspiration for Sunshine and Gossamer. I have not "properly" begun this story, "properly" entailing research and Word Documents, but I keep a special notebook for it and write sections when the mood strikes. Right now it is merely the tale of a girl and her cat come to live on a Welsh farm for the duration of World War II - a coming-of-age story, of sorts. Mostly, however, it has shaped itself into a tribute to my love of cats in general and Buster in particular. I'm just finishing up a James Herriot novel, so what comes to mind is the song which inspired his titles:

all things bright and beautiful
all creatures great and small
all things wise and wonderful
the Lord God made them all.

Not deep or profound, but for some reason it makes me smile. And now, in the spirit of Sunshine and Gossamer, here is a snatch of the story for you.

Dear Father,

Today, in a sweeping naval battle that will go down in the history of Farrowdale, the Great Gossamer Armada was defeated by the Sunshine Fleet. The struggle raged for hours with great loss of twigs on both sides; the Sunshine Fleet (two noble bogwood corsairs and six bark galleons) was outnumbered by the Gossamer Armada (five corsairs, four galleons and a dinghy), but superior seamanship was shown by the Sunshine Fleet. Oh, the suspense was terrible! It looked as though the Armada would prevail, having sunk two of my galleons, but a stroke of genius saved the Fleet: I converted a corsair into a fire ship, and that was that.

Of the Gossamer Armada, only the dinghy sailed away. The Sunshine Fleet returned to harbor with a corsair and four galleons only slightly crisped, but the fire-corsair went to the bottom of the pond. Ho hum. The Navy Department will build another one.

With love,

Sunshine and Gossamer