Heather Hayden's Blog, page 20

Saturday Shorts: Mist Dancers

Today’s Saturday Short is late, I know. It should have been posted yesterday. I’m pleased to have found a picture to go with it, however, thanks to A.J. Flowers’s blog and book cover resources post.

A.J.’s post led me to Pixabay, which offers beautiful images under the CC0 license, meaning the images can be used and modified without need for permission or attribution for any purpose, including commercial, for free. In the past I’ve been wary of using images in my blog because I don’t want to run into royalty issues, but this site has beautiful images that are free to use.

Now, without further ado, I offer a beautiful picture to accompany a drabble (short short story) I wrote called Mist Dancers. Mist Dancers was inspired by a view I’ve seen many times on my drives through my home state… Mist dancing across a lake’s mirror-flat surface.

Mist Dancers

They drift upon the dark water, savoring that sweet time between predawn and sunrise, the single moment they can survive outside their watery home. Spreading their soft clouds like white flame, they flicker, then vanish as the sun peeks above the horizon, unable to return until the next quiet morning.

Saturday Shorts: Upgrade Excerpt #2

This week is another excerpt from the first draft of Upgrade, the sequel to Augment. It’s also quite late… And I haven’t even had a log update in weeks! Expect one forthcoming in the next couple of days.

For those of you not familiar with the Augment universe, Viki is an Upgrader, and the main character of the series. The sections in her POV are told in first person, including the following excerpt.

Upgrade, Chapter Two, Excerpt

Chairs clattered and the door hinges squeaked incessantly as students started to file into the classroom. Still no sign of the teacher—other than glancing up occasionally to see if he’d arrived yet, I kept my attention on the paper on my desk. A few of the whispers around me caught my ear, but I ignored them stoically and continued drawing the cat that was slowly filling my paper.

“Is anyone sitting here?”

At first I didn’t realize that the question was directed at me, since I was so focused on ignoring the rest of the class. A slight touch on my shoulder made me jump, and I looked up to find a guy with green eyes looking down at me. Very green eyes—he was probably wearing contact lenses.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“I asked if anyone was sitting here,” he said, gesturing toward the desk next to me. “I wasn’t sure if you were maybe deaf or not. Please excuse me.”

“No one’s sitting there,” I replied. He had to be a transfer; I didn’t recognize him, and he was speaking with me. James’s words came back to me, make new friends. I took a deep breath and held out my hand. “My name’s Viki. What’s yours?”

“Dell,” he replied. “Nice to meet you.”

“You’re new to this school, right? I haven’t seen you before.”

He nodded. “Just transferred in.” He brushed his blond bangs out of his eyes and offered me a tentative smile. “I don’t suppose you’d mind showing me around during lunch? I tend to get lost in new schools. My last one took me almost two months to remember where my classes were.”

I nodded. “Sure.” Two months? Just how big a school had he been attending? And did he travel a lot, if he was attending new schools regularly? Or was there another reason for his transfers? I hoped he didn’t have a criminal record or something. He didn’t look like someone who would, but that didn’t mean anything. I shouldn’t jump to conclusions, anyway. “What classes are you in?”

He pulled up his schedule on his phone, and by the time the teacher arrived, I had determined that we had the same math class, English class, and history class today; he had a different art class, one of the advanced ones. I was in music again, because anything involving paint or clay usually ended in a disaster for me.

“You can follow me to history,” I said. “Then we can grab lunch and I can show you around. If you want, that is.” I gave him my number in case we got separated.

“Thanks, I really appreciate it.” Dell tucked his phone away and took a seat just as the teacher arrived.

I did my best to focus on the blackboard, but I couldn’t contain a smile. Maybe making a new friend wasn’t that hard after all. Dell seemed nice, and he hadn’t recognized me. My smile slipped a little; someone was going to tell him who I was eventually. And then he might change his mind about wanting to be associated with me. I snuck a glance toward him, but he was busy writing down notes, his hand jerking across the page. Well, there wasn’t much I could do about it right now. In the meantime, I’d do my best to be friendly.

Saturday Shorts: Valentine

Yes, this should have been posted yesterday. On the bright side, it’s fitting that it come out today, given what today is. And, no, I’m not buying into the commercialism-ridden holiday of red hearts and chocolate.

The following is something I wrote some years ago, when I was participating in the Story a Day challenge, and it probably still exists somewhere on the internet, but I wanted to share it here, with you, today.

The story is told in a series of short flash fics that can each be read on its own, or together as one story. (The prompt itself involved stories told in 140 characters. This was back when Twitter was becoming a thing. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize then that character count for Twitter included spaces. Not that it matters, since I don’t plan on tweeting them directly.)

Edit: I forgot to mention this in the original post, but I was inspired to write this by Linkin Park’s song “Valentine’s Day”. One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands, sad and beautiful.

Warning: This isn’t fluffy sweet romance. This is darkness, and sadness, and, yes, pain. Because not everyone gets to live happily ever after. Or, indeed, speak the words they long to say.

Valentine — A Story Told in Seven Parts

Thorns tore into her palm but she did not care, indeed, she welcomed the pain of his final Valentine, a single black rose with a center red as the blood from a broken heart.

Standing aboard the ship, he stared northward, unable to watch the receding shoreline of a place he could never return to again, not if he wanted to protect her forever.

Dark was the veil that wreathed her face, hiding the silent tears that would never stop until the day he returned for her, as she believed he would, someday in the future.

Though he kept that locket with her picture next to his heart for as long as he lived, he never looked back, knowing the penalty would be her very soul, far too high a price.

When she died, only one flower would ever bloom on her grave, bleeding hearts that echoed her grief, which whispered through space to find him, wherever he was staying.

He heard it, and spent a long day alone away from his loud companions, knowing they could never understand what he felt when the wind hissed the sorrowful news in his ear.

Upon his long-awaited return, he did not set foot on land for long, just a moment that allowed him a chance to speak the words he never could have said before. “I love you.”