WIP = “work in progress.” This group of bloggers publishes a snippet of work each week that somehow relates to the date. Your feedback is welcome so that I can become a better storyteller. I first heard about this concept through my dear friend ReGi McClain, so hopefully this shameless mention of her will successfully pressure her into participating next week. 😀
Yesterday was 11/9/2016 and 11+9=20, so I’m going to share 20 lines from my take on the “Frog Prince.” I hope you enjoy it.
Isadore occupied a unique position in the galaxy. As far as was known, theirs remained the only planet which hosted a life form known as kyrie, an unassuming, iridescent water organism which produced a secretion lethal to the deadly reptilian species. The kyrie were carefully cultivated in protected lakes, filtered not only to optimize the organisms’ happiness but to collect this precious byproduct which assured the Isadorians’ unexpected level of power in the galaxy. Their benefits had been found out rather unexpectedly when the banks of their rivers and lakes had become scattered with the corpses of dead reptilian warriors after their first albeit very successful invasion and slaughter.
Lily had only a vague memory of her sister being born to her mother almost immediately after their father’s death. That was the last birth of an Isadorian that was known in these parts. It was a very crude and almost totally deprogrammed experience. Her mother’s body had little interference with the task. She had no attendants other than Lily, who quietly observed, and the midwife whose face squinted like a prune.
She remembered her mother being very stoic in that undertaking. Her belly stretched taut and smooth like a ripe pear, her breasts pendulously resting atop, dark nipples readying to enter into an ancient rite wherein youngsters fed at the bodies of the females but without harming them. Lily occasionally pondered her own form, with its gentle initially budding curves that had since become more defined and more prominent, smooth apples that turned her body into the shape of a snake that she secretly found lovely.
On this particular day, the waters pulsated diligently along the river’s bank, whirling around boulders and capturing with it the falling leaves that floated at a slant through the air…
The election and my toddlers’ poor adjustment to Daylight Savings Time have made for some very tired days and not enough energy to wake up early to write, but this morning, I’m back to it and enjoying the idea that presented itself.
Have a good week,
Mindy
Mindy Goorchenko 