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| − | {{TOCright}}''This [[webserial]] is set within [[ghyll:|Ghyll]]. Knowledge of it will not be required.''
| + | A [[ghyll:|Ghyll]] webserial. |
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| − | ''The dated headers within are for the weekly reader's benefit, and are not part of the story.''
| + | {{Fiction |
| | + | | author = [[User:Morbus Iff|Morbus Iff]] |
| | + | | genre = Fantasy, Humor, Mystery |
| | + | | rating = PG-13 |
| | + | | frequency = Weekly |
| | + | | image = The Penny Dreadful.png |
| | + | | image_link = http://tpdonline.wordpress.com/ |
| | + | | image_size = 160 |
| | + | }} |
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| − | == 2010-04-13 (#silentwriters) ==
| + | * 2010-04-16: [[The Guardian of Aloons/1]] |
| | + | * 2010-04-23: [[The Guardian of Aloons/2]] |
| | + | * 2010-04-30: [[The Guardian of Aloons/3]] |
| | + | * To be continued? |
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| − | ''This is the initial draft and needs heavy heavy heavy revisions. I didn't know what it was until halfway through.''
| + | [[Category:Fiction]] |
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| − | When I came to, I was kissing the gravel, and she was gone. I tried to raise myself up, and that’s when I noticed a few of the rarer things in life: getting clocked by a six-inch heel feels much like a jab from a two-bit thug, and this was the third time my pants were missing. You’d think that I’d be getting used it by now. The beatings, not the pants.
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| − | It was about two weeks ago, that first beating. I had walked into her yard like each blade of grass was mine to trod upon, a flattener of crops whose message was more theatrics than mystery. Her back was to me as she planted begonias, sitting on her knees and leaning forward like a polka-dotted bloomer ornament. I waved her letter like a white flag, and asked when I could come home.
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| − | A gardening trowel, when properly wielded, sits at the far end of blunt sharpness: a fist has none, a heal narrows lethally, but a trowel, well, whether it’s a slice or a jab, there’s going to be a cut, and there’s going to be blood. Mine didn’t taste so good, but seeing her eyes burn the way they did, her blouse ruffling in the wind, it was worth it. I still loved Olivia Birns and I was sure I could sweet-talk her back. After she invited me in to atone for the trowel, it’d be downhill and fireworks, y’ know?
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| − | That time, however, she must have forgotten to clean the house, because she tried to match her artwork on my right cheek. I caught her thrust with my left hand, and pulled her in with my right. I could see the midday sweat on her neck, escaping the loose folds of the kerchief she wore. There’s something special about a lady working up an effort, doubly so when it’s her own initiative.
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| − | “What’s that, Liv?” I nodded down to the letter that had fallen when she threw herself at me.
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| − | “It’s over, Henry.” she said, as she pulled away. “We’re through.”
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| − | “You know you won’t follow through.”
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| − | “You’ll get the paperwork tomorrow.”
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| − | “I’ll wait you out. I’ve more patience.”
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| − | “You’re right, you know that, Henry?” She turned back to me, a begonia in her gloved hand, new roots poking through sod and soil. “I have lost all patience. With you, your business”, I could see the air quotes, “your lifestyle. You’ve yet to create a single puzzle! To broach a single conundrum!”
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| − | “The margi...”
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| − | “Oh, I know all about the margins, Henry.” She had a talent for dripping the sort of acid one would gladly swim through. “Venn ain’t got nothing on you, Henry. But it’s not enough. Children need these challenges, Henry. I need a man who can provide them.” She turned away, giving me a good look at her long neck. “Go away, Henry”.
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| − | I turned to go. I’d wait her out, like I said. I’d give her an question. I’d go home right now, I thought, and give a sprout a question that’d take months, no, years!, to answer. That’d make her proud. I turned to tell her as much, when I felt a wind ruffling the hair on my legs, which I knew somewhere deep inside shouldn’t have been possible. She noticed it first.
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| − | “Henry! Seven sisters, put some pants on and get the hell outta here!” She had raised the trowel again, and I ran back to my wheels. Not because I was afraid, mind you, but because the blood from my right cheek was starting to soil my shirt, and I couldn’t really afford the repair. As the creak of the wheels cracked the occasional stick in the road, I remember staring down at my undergarments and thinking that was the funniest thing. Me, a Hive-Lord, wandering around town unclothed. I couldn’t help but laugh but, on the other side, I couldn’t help by wonder if it would improve my reputation. I could pass it off as research for one of the tougher questions. That’d gain me respect.
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| − | I never did find out where my pants went that there, but I sent Liv’s piece of paper to the same null and void. Tattoo removal was an expensive proposition, and I knew she couldn’t afford to have hers removed. I wasn’t quite sure she’d be ready to lose the austere of being branded a Hive-Lord’s wife, either.
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| − | A week later, I was mulling over the commonalities of fefferberries and interrobangs when a knock broke me out of my reverie. It was one of the children, Lenvard something-or-other, wondering if I had come up with his challenge yet. I beckoned him in, being certain to look lost in thought, the weight of the orthogonality spread out unevenly upon my shoulders. I pointed to a chair, returned to my desk, and went back to staring at fefferberries.
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| − | I’d say it was about thirty minutes or so before I remembered he was there. By then, the berries had started to drip a little, and the enthusiasm of the ‘bang was on the wane. “Yes,” I murmured, as if some great insight had come to me. I nodded to myself. Menward was impressed. Lenvard. Edward? Something or other.
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| − | “Nothing today, boy.” I said.
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| − | “Sir, I’m nearing five years.” He wouldn’t stare me in the face, and I took his statement of fact as just that. I’m the one who implies the questions, not him.
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| − | “I said, nothing today!” and, for theatric effect, for it pays to keep the children in line, I swept the fefferberry jar to the floor. It smashed, the dying light from the glass giving a nicely poetic light show to the juice that sprayed. The boy ran out the front door like he had received the answer he was looking for, not the one he had received. I chuckled and rubbed my mandibles.
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| − | And sisters be damned if I didn’t feel something dripping down my legs.
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| − | That was the second time my pants disappeared, and I wiped up a track of fefferberry juice with my finger and savored the sweetness of it. I wasn’t too worried about my missing pants - not only was I in my office where few could see me (but, fie!, the missed opportunity to proclaim a breakthrough in my research), but I happened to have another set in the wagon. Liv had dropped a suitcase off the other day, hiding her kindness and love under excuses of cleaning house and asking whether I had signed the papers.
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| − | As I ruffled through the back of my wagon, parked outside my office, I heard the whistling. So did Mrs. Gurptshonis, whom I caught from the corner of my eye, taking her gaze off of me to look at the sky. I shared her fixation: it was a bi... no, a flock of birds. On fire. With mail bags. This would be slightly abnormal, but I hadn’t a chance to state as such before they slammed into the roo... no, make that through the roof, of my office. Things started bursting into flames.
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| − | “My margins!” The thought tore a hole through my carapace and became sound. Pants or no pants, I ran in the side door, only to be rebuked by a wave of heat. My papers, my scrawled side notes, all were aflame. So too were the avians, a dozen or more, broken wings, charred talons, and in the air was the soft flit-flit of undelivered mail as they flew through jetstreams of heat.
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| − | Somewhere in the roar of heat and flames and exasperation, I felt a jabbing sensation. It was Gurptshonis, poking at me with that damn hook of hers. Her lips mouthed something about “getting out of there” and “pants”. Then she yanked hard and I found she wasn’t merely poking with her hook, but scrabbling for a hold. She found one, and as she pulled me back, I clutched at anything to keep me there, anything to comprehend what was going on. All I got was two or three scraps of burning notes.
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