Rhodes and an eclipse
May. 5th, 2023 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321I am going on holiday to Pefkos on the Greek island of Rhodes tomorrow! It is my first solo holiday in all the sixty years of my life on Earth. I've been on hols with others. I've been on research trips and conference trips by myself. But never on an actual beach holiday.
So I have to get All The Assignments done before I fly. Here's my latest assignment, this one from the follow-up course to Dean Wesley's Smith's Writing in Depth course, the Writing Into the Dark course. The brief: 500 words of an opening, no dialogue, no action, a character and a solar eclipse.
Erica sat in her garden. It was four in the afternoon and the garden was still bathed in sun. By six or seven, the sun would have moved to the back, away from the wooden table and bench. In preparation for its movement, Erica had placed her folding chair at the very rear, right next to the conservatory where the grass was high and ants crawled across the hot paving stones. Yellow flowers whose names she didn't know crowded into the shaded bit under the birch tree.
A frog plopped into the pond that she'd made out of an old Belfast sink. She could see it from where she was sitting, underneath the rose bush, her naked feet on an upturned bicycle basket, a mug of milky tea balanced on the left arm of her chair. She hadn't bothered to dig a hole for the sink, just plonked it on the earth by the fig tree and waited for vegetation and wildlife to take over.
Her black cat stood at the edge of the pond, with its front paws on the rim of the sink and its back legs stretched long. Somewhere behind her, in the unweeded undergrowth, came the rustling of a hedgehog.
Erica took a sip from her tea. She'd forgotten to put the sugar in but couldn't be bothered getting up. An ant hurried across her shin. It felt like a little feathery kiss. She remembered when she used to lie face-down in the grass, among the sour smells of the soil, blades of grass tickling her nose, all manner of critters climbing over and around her, humming in her ears, biting her arms. Now that she was sixty she found that lying on the ground gave her an ache in her hip that could last for weeks. She preferred the folding chair.
She squinted at her phone. It was hard to see the video in this sunlight. She held the hand with the mug above it to shade the display. The video showed the solar eclipse that was happening across the world right now. Right now but not right here. It was eleven a.m. in the United States. People crowded onto balconies and rooftops and parking lots, all with dark glasses on their faces, some with pieces of cardboard that had one pierced hole in them. The light, as far as she could tell, was a dusky orange colour. She'd have thought an eclipse would plunge everything into total darkness but seemingly that wasn't so.
Odd to think that half-way round the planet from England, far away from her terraced house and garden in eastern Cambridge, there was a major celestial event happening. And all the while, here she sat, with nothing happening at all. Nothing much ever happened in her life. An ant on her leg, milk in her tea, sun glaring off her phone, the cat pouncing on something, a wasp trundling past her face -- that was about the extent of her life.
Orig fic. Whoa.
So I have to get All The Assignments done before I fly. Here's my latest assignment, this one from the follow-up course to Dean Wesley's Smith's Writing in Depth course, the Writing Into the Dark course. The brief: 500 words of an opening, no dialogue, no action, a character and a solar eclipse.
Erica sat in her garden. It was four in the afternoon and the garden was still bathed in sun. By six or seven, the sun would have moved to the back, away from the wooden table and bench. In preparation for its movement, Erica had placed her folding chair at the very rear, right next to the conservatory where the grass was high and ants crawled across the hot paving stones. Yellow flowers whose names she didn't know crowded into the shaded bit under the birch tree.
A frog plopped into the pond that she'd made out of an old Belfast sink. She could see it from where she was sitting, underneath the rose bush, her naked feet on an upturned bicycle basket, a mug of milky tea balanced on the left arm of her chair. She hadn't bothered to dig a hole for the sink, just plonked it on the earth by the fig tree and waited for vegetation and wildlife to take over.
Her black cat stood at the edge of the pond, with its front paws on the rim of the sink and its back legs stretched long. Somewhere behind her, in the unweeded undergrowth, came the rustling of a hedgehog.
Erica took a sip from her tea. She'd forgotten to put the sugar in but couldn't be bothered getting up. An ant hurried across her shin. It felt like a little feathery kiss. She remembered when she used to lie face-down in the grass, among the sour smells of the soil, blades of grass tickling her nose, all manner of critters climbing over and around her, humming in her ears, biting her arms. Now that she was sixty she found that lying on the ground gave her an ache in her hip that could last for weeks. She preferred the folding chair.
She squinted at her phone. It was hard to see the video in this sunlight. She held the hand with the mug above it to shade the display. The video showed the solar eclipse that was happening across the world right now. Right now but not right here. It was eleven a.m. in the United States. People crowded onto balconies and rooftops and parking lots, all with dark glasses on their faces, some with pieces of cardboard that had one pierced hole in them. The light, as far as she could tell, was a dusky orange colour. She'd have thought an eclipse would plunge everything into total darkness but seemingly that wasn't so.
Odd to think that half-way round the planet from England, far away from her terraced house and garden in eastern Cambridge, there was a major celestial event happening. And all the while, here she sat, with nothing happening at all. Nothing much ever happened in her life. An ant on her leg, milk in her tea, sun glaring off her phone, the cat pouncing on something, a wasp trundling past her face -- that was about the extent of her life.
Orig fic. Whoa.
