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Russian RouletteThey take her on her honeymoon.

The wedding was lovely, or as lovely as it could have been with a couple that were more polite acquaintances than anything else and two sets of in-laws as stuffy as a dusty pile of money. They grab her when she sneaks out for a walk one night, two men, beefy, not even bothered to arm themselves. Her last thought before the bag is shoved over her eyes is to wonder how much this would ruin her parents' plans.

She comes to in a small brick room on a sallow mattress, windowless and lit by a cool yellow lamp. There's a man there, standing just outside the barred door.

"Kelly Shale," he says, voice nasally, greasy
SolsticeOnce upon a time, when you were still sunlighthouses and shimmering existence wherever you were needed most, you found him. He was November, shaky on his first last legs, and you saw through the mind-twistings he feigned to the mind-twistings that were really there, knotted up in his dreams.

You were still birdsong then, and thunderstorms, and your bodyheat melted the frost claws that held him tight. You held onto him as his November deepened. When he howled, you howled with him, and the wind played with your voices and pressed the softness of your lungs against your cageribs—and then against each other's.

November became solstice, and
Down By The SchoolyardThere is a rather cliched phrase that states that some people live double lives. I have always found that to be an intensely misleading statement and I guess you can call it a bit of a pet peeve of mine. No one leads "double lives", they just lead fucking lives. That those lives are more complex that the singular one-track existence of lesser creatures shouldn't be a matter of duplicity, but of common sense. No one is exactly who they seem to be.

Julio is one of those who they would later say lived a double life, but it is no more true for him than anyone else. The difference in this case is that there are two of him, rather than one.

Perha
The Substitution ParadigmThe Substitution Paradigm

Ramu came up to our table. Glaring at me, he said, “You either order something or get out.”
I glanced away from the threat, and turned to Raghav. A single drop of sweat was running down his brow. Ramu saw that too and identifying his prey, he sprung.

Swinging around, he faced Raghav, “Order something or get out.”

Then Ramu just stood there. It was not as if we had rehearsed it before hand, but he knew. He knew that my co-occupants generally folded in the first round. Only the stout made it to second level, but they too buckled under Ramu’s relentless gaze.

I always had a policy of n
Send Me the Raintoday, they're all talking about the fires.
the people on TV, the voices on the radio,
the mouths that open and whisper
and softly touch tongues.  even the sky is

revealing black plumes of smoke,
flaunting shameless and seductive curves.
the rain's been too dry and the lightning
isn't wet enough, panic is
rising out of control in this
burning city.  that's

not all;
we have a crisis on
our hands- the balloons are
running out of air and even

the experts don't really know why,
and on top of those sinking rubber toys

my soul is losing moisture
faster than the crackling grass under the duress of flame.
i'm sta
When your hands can mimic birdsWhen your hands can mimic birds,
you lose the need for sound.
A flight of words that bear no chirp
are none the less profound.

They don't perch on a pitch.
They don't possess the need .
They fly until you've seen their song,
then silently recede.

No one could find more freedom than
the freedom granted flight.
No one can see more beauty than in
words passed left to right.
chromaWe were merely children when the stars came.

They rained down from the sky in a burst of light, like shards of glass pouring down from the heavens. Supernovas blooming in the night sky, petals raining down onto the barren earth - angels, falling with their wings sheathed, glowing, as they glided down. We watched, starstruck, as the glow overtook us - we were mesmerized. We waited with bated breath as the meteors landed, the celestial light subsiding as dark forms started to pick themselves up from the dust.

They moved towards us with an otherworldly grace, their steps leaving no marks on the earth as they descended upon us. Frozen to our sp
A Pocket Full of SkyWhen I was young, my father would take me to the highest tower of Notre Dame precisely once a year. It would be cold. Freezing. But we'd stand there, and take deep breaths of air, and peer down, towards the tiny ants of people below. Down, towards the sprawling city beneath us. It was always winter, when we'd go. Always cold. Freezing, freezing. But however cold it was, and however dull and bleary the weather, my father would ask one thing, and one thing only: that we adhered to tradition.

"Lucie," he would say, with the fond smile and kind eyes I always remember. "Lucie, my peach. Whatever you become, and wherever your heart and mind leads
The PullWhen I was younger, someone showed me a video game—too weird for me, but it made her laugh, and she was pretty. You played as this little guy with a squishy hammer for a head, and you rolled a sticky ball around in front of you. As you rolled it, things got stuck until the ball was gigantic. And then... I don't know. I don't remember the point of the game, nor do I remember the name.

But that image comes back to me every time I am anxious. I am that little person running around, pushing a ball, and things stick to it. Only they aren't cows or trees or parts of buildings: they are things that make me nervous. The attention of people. My
earth circuitAnd when the sun sinks, the earth's skin crawls:

I.
I wonder if this awkward creature would notice me the way I notice him.
He's so tragic at his throne
I stare after him longingly.
And yet,
He never realizes that I'm the one
Who forever basks in his brilliant beams.
If only he knew how much brighter he could burn
[with me]
He'd light up the universe.

II.
I heard him speak of thirst, once.
The quenching lust of the stars had run dry.
So that night, I brought along a jar of acid.
(And how it gleamed in his glow).
I handed it to him, wrapped in taffeta ribbons,
screaming
I wish curdling joy
On my gurgling boy

 
Automatici.
"So where are you from?" The boy leans toward me, questions swimming in his eyes. I smile.

"Oh, I'm from Boston."

"No, I mean, where are you from?" My smile falters as I realize where this is going. It's an all-too familiar conversation, one I've been having since I was old enough to reply.

"Do you mean where was I born?"

"Yeah."

"I was born in China."

"Do you speak Chinese?"

"No."

"Does your family speak Chinese?"

"No."

He looks befuddled. I sigh.

"I'm adopted."

"Oh!" I see the light bulb over his head go off in a shower of sparks. "Do you know who your real parents are? Like, your real parents?" My temper flares. I stifle th
The SleeperIt was strange.

Surreal, she realized, as she turned the repetitive thoughts of earlier over again in her mind.

How normal everything seemed in light of what was about to come.

Her candle was burning low. Even the longer one she'd requested of the bar maid and paid the excess coin for didn't seem long enough.

But then, she told herself ruefully, the candlemaker couldn't have likely made one long enough to be suitable, even if he labored a century's worth of days and nights over it. She watched beads of wax slide down the sides to pool in the middle of the wooden tabletop, the smell of charring wick ripe in her nose.

If, she then reminded
Reverse Culture ShockFlying home was not flying home. Flying home meant grabbing the homing pigeon inside of me and twisting its imaginary magnet one hundred and eighty degrees to the north instead of southwards to Australia. The magnet still twitched stubbornly north even as the plane droned over Darwin, five hours before I finally reached home. Except it wasn't home. Sydney now looked as foreign as the glossy travel leaflets I grabbed from Singapore, its shine not quite matching the missing substance of my once childhood home.

"Thank you for choosing Singapore Airlines…I hope you will enjoy your stay in Sydney, or a warm welcome home."

Winter air slapped
darwin's revengein the embryo of the city
in their cage
they paint their nails not
knowing

that the sun is watching
from his trap door
in the cloud ceiling where
whales can't swim but go

to dream
and drop down their weight in rain
not measured in pints
but lives overflowed

in lost archipelagos full
of automatic islands
that catch the eyes like needles
when viewed from further away

than the end of the world
mosaics.sometimes unique
is not loud;
or bright, alive and raging,
possessed of a hunger for the atypical,
up front and too close,
or thrice-pierced and drenched
in the rebellions
particular to the latest generation.

sometimes it is a girl with
mouse brown hair and eyes
the color of weak tea,
who stands with her schoolbooks clutched
to her chest, in uniform shades of grey-blue
like the midmorning autumn sky

who has a wide mouth prone to nervous smiles,

pale lips and pale cheeks
and words that don't always come out
the way she means

who holds the universe
in the intricacies of her fingerprints
and laughs in treble clef notes
and u
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a speech for thornsThe deviantArt literature community has been disappointing me lately, to be honest.  There has been a rash of insensitivity from many of the community leaders; however, there is one who has remained steadily encouraging throughout all of this:  thorns. 
I first met thorns when I became an admin for BetaReaders, and she was also one of the first people to invite me to become a “squashy.”  Since this time, she has gone on to become a senior member, a CV, as well as a recipient of the deviousness award. 
Thorns is, always, a person who encourages.  She puts so much energy into the DA community without expecting anything in return.  She, in essence, embodies all that is good about the community.  She is dedicated to the people within it, from the newbies to the long standing members. 
If DA was a bar, she’d be my favourite bar tender. 
(I’d say except for Grimface, but I’m certain he would be drunk on the stool
for all intensive purposesi am accused of being
a category five--
    but i will not excuse the way my skin aches.  
i want storms.
    i remember the way Katrina screamed &
    if you press your ear to my chest you will hear the same.  
the moan turning into a pitch, the pitch
screaming until the throat is too raw to be
more than a whimper.  
the way it stops
and pauses,
silently racked until it bursts forth once more.  
i will not apologize for being demolition.  
scars exist on every woman
too powerful to contain herself. 
How I Learned To Part My HairI can’t tell you exactly how old I was when it happened, but I suppose I was five or six. 
I was at the neighbor’s house, my brother and I.  The neighbors were still my cousins, I think at this point.  I don’t really remember that part.
What I do remember is that I tripped.  I was running and my foot caught on something, probably the lacquered glass top coffee table, and I fell.
I can’t claim that there was anything graceful about my falling, I cannot describe it poetically as if it was significant.  The trip-and-fall is not metaphorical; I was six or so, and it happened.   But what made this particular fall so much more important than any other fall was that my head collided with the corner of the neighbor’s brick fireplace.  It was not a rounded corner, and the house was older and this was before people began to childproof everything in their homes, turning them into padded cells, training kids early for their Freu

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November 18, 2012
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4,600 words approximate.

So this is what happened to "Science of Icebergs."

CRITIQUES PRETTY PLEASE AND THANK YOU?
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Daily Deviation

Given 2012-11-20
A Little Bit Ruined by *linaket is warm and cold all at once, mixing dark feelings of loneliness with a hopeful sense of being. ( Featured by ^NicSwaner )
love 3 3 joy 2 2 wow 0 0 mad 0 0 sad 1 1 fear 0 0 neutral 0 0
:iconlacewinged-beauty:
~Lacewinged-Beauty Nov 23, 2012   Writer

I liked this a lot but I really do think there needs to be a gentler transition into the flash-back. I especially like the section about the burrito. Well done!
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:iconlinaket:
*linaket Nov 26, 2012   Writer
Yeah, the transition to the flashback and out of it is really wonky because that was written before the full story :blush: Still trying to work out the kinks there. Thank you for reading :heart:
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:iconlacewinged-beauty:
~Lacewinged-Beauty Dec 1, 2012   Writer

No problem!
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:iconnicswaner:
^NicSwaner Nov 22, 2012  Student Writer
I was glad to feature this, and originally had The Science of Icebergs lined up to be featured earlier but I pushed it back several times. I'm glad I did, the day before it was to be a DD, you submit this and I saw how much of an improvement was made. There are still some areas that could do with some work. As one commenter pointed out, you started a good portion of your sentences very similarly, and it is an easy fix. Does it detract from the story? I don't think so. If anything stood out to me as needing the most improvement it would be the hotline operator, I'm not sure if you have had experience with them, but they have experience with those types of situations. I would reconsider how that part of the story plays out if you are to rewrite it in the future. However, the rest of the dialogue throughout was fantastic, and really pulled the story together.

Keep writing,
Nic :heart:
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:iconlinaket:
*linaket Nov 26, 2012   Writer
I wanted to go thank you on your page, but I will thank you here! It was such an honor to be featured, and my first DD! I had pretty much accepted that I wasn't one of those people that get those, so thank you so much :heart:

I'm glad you waited for this, too, and I almost didn't post it :XD: I wasn't able to edit this as much as I like, and the trouble I always have with first person is trying to switch up the start of my sentences so I'm really going to comb through it now and try to work that out. The thing with the hotline operator... I actually called my local one as research and it was pretty uneventful. I actually made this character more sympathetic that the person I talked to... but then again, it could just be regional differences. About halfway through the conversation I kind of panicked and just banged out an ending for it, so I'm definitely going to revisit that area.

Thanks again for the feature and the comment, it meant a lot to me :heart:
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:iconnicswaner:
^NicSwaner Nov 27, 2012  Student Writer
=) Am glad you appreciate it!
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:icongricken:
~Gricken Nov 20, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
This was a wonderful read, Lina. :happybounce: A DD well-deserved!
The characters. The details. The everything. I loved all of it!
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:iconlinaket:
*linaket Nov 26, 2012   Writer
Thank you, you gorgeous, gorgeous gricken :la:
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:icontaylrock:
Mood: Bliss ~taylrock Nov 20, 2012  Student Artist
A well done DD
There is so much to this story and the things you typed provided so much detailed imagery

Thank you
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:iconlinaket:
*linaket Nov 26, 2012   Writer
No, thank you for reading and commenting :heart: I'm glad you enjoyed it! :)
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