It's overcast here in Vancouver, and cooler, so I'm feeling great! (seriously, I am such a wimp when it comes to heat...)
Mine, for sure, won't go up until much later today, since I'm heading over to meet the *roomie* after I scarf some breakfast and walk the dog. We're going to figure out everything we want to do to the place... and then perhaps head out and get some of the supplies.
...I'll have to head home in the afternoon for more walkies with Eva, but the planetarium tonight is showing the movie 'The Fifth Element', and since that's one of my favourite movies, I'm going to see the 9pm showing with some friends.
Any fun plans this weekend?
Here's the sentence for today, enjoy!
She held a gun to my head, and asked one question.
good sentence - have a great day!
ReplyDeleteI thought it'd be a good one to have fun with ;)
DeleteYou too!
She holds a gun to my head and asks one question. "You can bring back my son?"
ReplyDeleteWhen you ask questions with a gun, they aren't really questions at all. I settle on, "No."
She pulls the trigger, misfires, pulls again. "I just cleaned this shotgun. You jammed it," from clenched teeth. "You did that, magician."
"Stopping a gun from firing and bringing the dead back are not remotely the same thing." I let her see how often it is asked, let her hear the exhaustion seeping into my voice. "You don't think other people don't, Brenda?"
She lowers the gun, hands trembling over it as if it was a baby in need of comfort. "I've heard about you. Things you've done. You walk in miracles."
"Small ones. Only small ones, no matter what people think of them. If desire alone could undo death, don't you think there would be many alive now who had died? If magic could bring the dead back as easily as stopping a gun from firing, no magician would lose anyone they care about. And we do care in our own way, no matter the stories you've heard."
"But –." Breaking hope strangles her to silence.
"Your life would not be enough. A hundred might not be, a thousand: even if you could – and one would-be god had enough followers to do try it a hundred years ago – what comes back can't help being ... changed."
She says nothing, naked yearning pouring from every pore.
"Even if I could, even if the cost of such a thing was only one life, perhaps two: he died. You had a funeral. I have no right to take away grief like that. Magic can't make suffering meaningless. Even time can't always do that."
"No mother should outlive their child." Her voice is an empty thing but she does not raise the gun to herself. The world is littered with small miracles of survival that aren't acts of magicians at all. "He died and I died with him, and my body has kept on living."
"Yes."
"Magician: can you offer me anything," she whispers.
"No." And I should stop, but don't. "Magic answers need, not want."
She stiffens, opens her mouth to speak, and raises the gun in place of words.
I wait.
"Go. Go now," she says, and threads her furied pain into her words.
I turn and walk away, but not fast enough to avoid seeing the ghost of her child out of the corner of my eye. I pause to make it so Brenda will never see it and the ghost follows me, but is far too small to catch me.
I should have put this on my blog instead, but it would have made the series appear out of order.
Delete"You don't think other people don't, Brenda?"
Yeah, fixing that now :P
I love this magician series :D
Delete"You walk in miracles." AWESOME line :D
She held a gun to my head and asked one question. Will you marry me?
ReplyDeleteI was quite taken-aback.
Hah :) Awesome for sheer brevity, that.
DeleteHaha, indeed ;)
Delete