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Right folks. Two things that featured heavily in my weekend were Encanto and storms … so those are my inspirations for this month’s challenge. I want a scene with 2+ siblings interacting & a weather or astrological event. 400 words by the 28th, bonus points for Encanto easter eggs!
Have fun!Byrd
‘Somewhat overshadowed by Tallis.’
‘Sorry?’
Janet looked up from the score at Penrose who was holding his copy at arm’s length. His other hand grasped his lapel as though he was striking the pose of some learned patrician. Probably just what he was doing, she thought. She felt a twinge of guilt, but also resignation. If only he hadn’t involved himself in the discovery.
‘William Byrd.’ Penrose continued, addressing his remarks to the empty auditorium, ‘A great composer, but overshadowed by his friend and tutor, Tallis. There you have it. Had we uncovered an unknown madrigal by Tallis, I fancy that this evening’s performance would be at the Albert Hall or the Wigmore, rather than—’ he waived his papers, indicating the inferiority of the town hall.
We! Janet bristled in silence. We uncovered! He uncovered nothing apart from the opportunity to have his name splashed over her research.
‘The BBC will be here, Dr Penrose.’
‘Ah yes,’ he said, with a sneer in his voice, ‘Radio Swindon will be here.’
***
That evening, the other singers arrived with the musicians who were to accompany the English Songs following the new madrigal. Her brother, Tom, a gifted tenor, embraced her warmly.
‘You must be thrilled.’
‘I am,’ said Janet, ‘I love Byrd, but this piece is magical.’
‘Magical.’ Tom nodded vigorously, ‘And I fancy we have the right voices for this performance.’
‘Mmmm,’ Janet smiled through clenched teeth, ‘The right voices.’
***
The audience settled. The tenors, Tom and Penrose, launched into the opening lines.
‘Let virtue be its own reward.’ They sang. Janet realised that a single tenor, her brother, would have sounded cleaner, more honest. But she had no time to ponder this before she started in with her opening.
‘And wicked men be driven out, from time and all creation.’
It struck her that she had no idea quite what that meant.
A few coughs from the audience. She looked but the stage lights dazzled her. The coughing merged with their singing and then the musicians were tuning up. Were the audience joining the song? On and on, louder and louder grew the cacophony, but the sweet harmonies of the singers were louder still until it felt as though a storm of sound filled the room. What on Earth was happening?
Silence.
Then thunderous applause.
Janet looked around. She turned to Tom.
‘Where’s Dr Penrose?’
‘Who?’
Under 400 (even counting the asterisks as words)
A question of perception
After, naked, panting; towelling stinging sweat from our eyelids, we stepped outside through the open French windows into the still-warm August night. A quick sideways glance: he as relieved as I to no longer be the focus of intense female attention. Relieved it had ended – honourably? Yes. That could honestly be said. I’d refused to claim a recent-mended humerus as handicap, even knowing he’d been training. I far more needed an honest win. To gain victory over my all-but-blood brother. In order to forgive him. To let go the ever-present – and illogical and unnecessary conviction that only by doing so could I accept the possibility of his blood flowing in the veins of one or both of the babies Fran would very soon be giving birth to. To accept, black-haired or not, it was mine.
This wrestling match – I’d known, to be sure of lasting four two minute rounds (that the only compromise) I’d needed to force the first fall soon as possible. The naked bit had been Annabel’s idea: she did paintings of the male torso. Wanted models. Not a problem: as infants, we’d rolled naked together, blankets on a summer lawn; bathed together as winter-muddy schoolboys, comparing scabs. Teenage, we’d checked ourselves against Baz’s elder brothers – size; the advent of hair – and later, when it looked likely to matter, each other.
In part (and shamefully) it still mattered. Because, not that I ever asked Fran, it further prompted us – me – here today.Unnecessarily. Because now, standing side by side after what had, been perhaps the most unexpectedly exhilarating fifteen, twenty minutes of our shared lives – bodies striving, as they’d done when we were boys; now more muscular and, in Baz’s case, hairier, each to subjugate the other, I’d come both to understand Fran’s claimed sexless appreciation of the pleasure of such fleshly contact and to realise it a privilege to have the upbringing of a child of Baz’s loins.
Knowing it important, I turned to say this to him, but he was gazing skywards. Pointing to where the heavens glittered, beneath a shower of silver dust.
‘Look.’Ed came out, informed us it the promised Perseid meteor shower, followed by a glowing, triumphant Annabel and our wives. Fran relieved: she’d feared me further damaged. Madigan uncertain what she’d witnessed.
Baz’s problem.Hands joined, we stayed watching; our problems further shrinking to insignificance.
[396 words]
Sarita
Clouds thicker than Peruvian fog, vaporous specters rising across the shifting mirror of the sky. The day’s restlessness calms my peregrine heart, part of the patterning and paradox of life I’ve come to cherish. Chilling drops of rain splatter like surprises on my upturned face, not unpleasant, like a birthday party you didn’t expect but appreciated, despite not caring much for the attention it brought. And it reminds me of home, all the homes that I’ve lost, in people, places and ideas, almost forgotten.
“Sadia.”
I turn at the sound of my name on the lips of Singita, my sister; at the grey sky mirrored in her kind eyes, as much in natural colour as in mood, even under the umbrella she holds overhead. I start as she moves to wrap a thick, knitted shawl around my shoulders, its bold, symmetrical patterning as twin to the one already draped around her, as she was to me. Her eyes glance towards the door she left open; mine follow.
“Mama said to come in before you make yourself sick standing out here. She wants you to check the upstairs shutters before Sari–before the storm hits.”
I nod as I move towards the door of our home – Burro Casita – and the warm, spiced scents of mama’s dinner wafting through an inner archway, pulling me further inside. If comfort had a scent, it would be this. Tugging the shawl tighter around me, I make my way up the endless flight of stairs great grand-uncle Bruno was said to have built almost two hundred years ago. The future is in the bones of all who walk this way, reads the plaque at the top of the landing on the ninth floor. Two more floors after that and I would have made it to the top of our house – eleven stories and five generations tall – despite its modest appearance from the outside.
Entering each room, I inspect the storm shutters for breaks, lubricating their tracks in preparation for Sarita.
Sarita.
The name of the oncoming storm . . . and my vanished, younger sister.
The sister whose lips I cursed to never kiss again, the day I caught them on Milo, our neighbour and childhood friend. She was always taking – and breaking – my stuff. He was no exception.
“I hate you!! How could you kiss him?!”
. . . I love you. How could you leave?
(400 words excluding title)
The Mooring (325 words)
The two sisters were in their twenties. They stood on the kyle’s shore in their Puffa jackets and looked at a small yacht moored to a buoy, hatches closed. The yacht floated as calmly as a swan.
Although the sisters were dressed in similar clothes their personalities were opposites.
“They were lucky,” said Lena, about the yacht and the people who owned it.
“They’d listened to the forecast,” said Harriet.
Lena hated Harriet’ s explaining voice, her practicality which denied something called luck. Luck would be too wishy-washy for Harriet, who was probably going to mention anchor chains or some such.
Lena wanted instead to study the kyle’s far side and the hill rising beyond it. The hill was dappled with heather and sunshine and somewhere above it a curlew called. She saw beauty there, fresh and enchanting.
“The yacht was moved,” said Harriet, “to a mooring for a heavier boat.”
Lena looked around her own feet where the pebbles were patchy with hurled seaweed. She spent a minute considering this fact. She breathed slowly. There’d be nothing wrong with peace-making. After all, a big event had taken place.
“That boat on the headland,” she said. “I suppose that boat didn’t change mooring.”
On dark rocks jutting out along the shore, a yacht lay stranded, it’s hull smashed, a large gap showing the cabin. The table and bunks slanted steeply and only the galley-hob, hanging from its gimbels , was level. It was obvious even to Lena that the mooring hadn’t held.
But Harriet had lost interest. “What a lovely morning,” she said. “So magical. So calm.”
“It usually is after a storm,” said Lena, wondering where her snappy words came from. And then she forgot to see that her tone might have annoyed Harriet. Her mind had become flooded with pragmatism, all romance gone.
In the kyle the slack-tide turned and the small yacht on the mooring began its swing around the buoy.
Thank you guys for entering! And for writing such fun pieces – they all have something special to them, I think.
@athelstone I love the details and voice of yours, the small touches that make each character so recognisable.
@sandradavies well, naked men wrestling, what more can anyone ask for really?? Love the balance of violence and tenderness between them.
@knickylaurelle ALL the bonus points for Encanto references! The whole concept of this & that last line was just perfect.
@libby lovely sense of place in such a short piece which is so impressive. Clever subtle tension too, really nice.Well, it honestly could have been any one of you but I’m going to go with @athelstone mainly because I think we’d all like to sing a few wicked men into oblivion just now.
Thank you all 🙂Congratulations Ath, an intriguing tale and well-deserved top place. And thank you Raine for providing me with a very useful opportunity to work out a scene in my current wip as well as inspire others to provide entertaining tales.
Gosh, thanks Raine. I think there were some really excellent entries this month. I put my win down to luck – and sneaking “Madrigal” into my story.
Each of the entries for February was so evocative, provocative and moody; it was a great selection of theme from @Raine, and great flow of words from everyone who participated. Congrats as always, Ath, can’t wait to go peek and see what you have in store for March ?✨
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