Effing Feline has no baggage #wewriwa
I, Effing Feline, has no baggage. Or luggage. Or stuff of any kind. If a cat wants to prowl from one place to another, do we pack dental floss and jammies? Do we buy a special box to carry our things in — and make up a word for the box? “Luggage.” Something you have to lug around. Ugh.
And, since humans think one word is never as good as two or ten, you have to go to the bother of making up other words. Luggage. Baggage. Bags, Cases. Suitcases. Belongings. Then you need books to define each of these words. And of course, online dictionaries in case some people don’t know what ‘stuff’ is. It’s insane.
In Alien Contact for an Enhanced Nutcracker, Holly Jansen, an out-of-work orchestra conductor, gets a job offer from the king of Kwadra Island — a nation from an alternate earth that the inhabitants had “hopped” to our earth to escape environmental collapse. He wants her to conduct a performance of The Nutcracker ballet as a surprise Christmas present for his American-born wife.
In today’s snippet, Holly has just arrived at the arts center, where she and the performers will be sequestered until Christmas. She makes a request of the two young men escorting her into the building.
“First,” Holly said, “a telephone. I need to call my brother now that I’ve arrived.”
“Telephone?” The youth carrying her luggage frowned as though he had to search the database in his implant for the word.
She took a deep breath. “Oh Lord, don’t you have telephones here? I know there’s no cellphone reception on the island, but—”
“We choose not to be swallowed up in your communications universe,” Suko said. “Your salesmen alone outnumber everyone on Kwadra, and you have ten times as many spies trying to steal our technology — even your tourists are thieves.” He glared at her as though he meant her personally.
Effing Feline here again. The human obsession with ‘stuff’ doesn’t end with words. Once you have luggage, you need to buy a weatherproof building in which to store stuff until you need it. Bah!
The proper use for a house or apartment is not to hold your ‘stuff’ — it’s to keep your cat warm and dry. Remember that!
Be sure to visit the other great writers in Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday.
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Alien Contact for an Enhanced Nutcracker
[image error]The Nutcracker ballet performed for and by aliens?!?
Holly Jansen, a young orchestra conductor down on her luck, is secretly hired by an alien king to conduct The Nutcracker on Kwadra Island as a Christmas present for his American wife. This big break seems like a Christmas miracle, but after she meets the lead dancer, she wonders if it’s a curse, instead . . .
. . . because the Kwadran queen has secretly ordered superstar dancer Rafael Sekwa to produce a potlatch dance honoring her husband’s ancestors — on the same date, time, and stage as The Nutcracker. The stubborn genius is determined to do so, no matter what, and Holly finds her ambition melting in the face of her growing admiration . . . and love.
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NanoWrimo update
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To help keep myself on track this November, I’m going to try to post my progress. As always, I’m starting out full of vim, vigor, and words. And as always, I’ll probably slow down later.
After 9 days — 20,855 words
