Fiction Friday: Prophecy Collector

Prophecy Collector comes from last week's prompt, The Ironist, exercise 029 in The 3 AM Epiphany. This exercise encourages the author to play around with an unreliable narrator. The trick, however, is that this narrator knows more than she or he is letting on. The result is a twisted fairy tale told from the wry perspective of mantis bureaucrat Jacara Landfair Prentiss.

The image is from artofantasy.tumblr.com. I am trying to find and thank the artist for inspiration.

Prophecy Collector
by Celeste Hollister
Word Count: 796
Safe for work

My name is Jacara Landfair Prentiss. I sit at a desk, and I listen. That's my job. Listening. It's not up to me to interpret events.

Yes. Technically, my title is Prophecy Collector. I collect them and pass them Upstairs if they're worthy. Most of them are a bunch of 'woe-be-unto-earth' nonsense. Those I weed right out. On an average day, I'll hear half a dozen fuzzy forecasts from divining dragonflies and prognosticating pill bugs. But to receive a true revelation, an actual bonafide auguration, that is a rare thing.

In fact, in all my years at this desk, beneath the watchful compound eyes of Mother Moth, I have only seen it three times.

The first was the Prophecy of the Flood, and we all know how that turned out. Of course, that office is thirty meters beneath new sea level, so I suppose 'desk' in this case describes the job itself, and not the actual object. Haha, you catch my meaning, right? The juxtaposition of the desk as a symbol... Oh, right. Of course.

Would you like a morsel of mushroom while you're waiting? Tea leaf? No? Very well. Where was I?

Oh yes. The second. That was the Oracular Divination of the Bee Decimation. What a tizzy we were in over that one. I hear humankind went bonkers, but down here, we were more concerned with who would fill the niche. The moths lobbied for the job, but is was argued they were inadequately suited, given their nocturnal proclivities. Then the horseflies put in their bid, but can you imagine? Always playing about. Horseflies taking over for bees? Huh. I think not.

In the end, the contract went to the yellowjackets. Pity. Brutal blighters, the lot of them. Nonetheless, time went on and so did we. The insect kingdom adapts. It's what we do.

Maybe that's why I dismissed Miss Mouse. I don't go in for mammalians in general. Too hot-blooded for my taste.

And she was a pretty thing, too. Smooth and gray, with eyes like black water beetles. She wore a circlet of silver upon her nimble little head. Two pale pink ears poked up from beneath that delicate crown. I should have known, really...

Anyway, she fairly swept in, long whiskers twitching. “Please,” she said. “I must see the Weavers. It is a matter of life and death.”

I leaned upon my bent elbows and tsked. “My dear, you'll have to do better than that,” I said. “In this business, everything is a matter of life and death.”

Yes, I did say it exactly like that. As I told you, I dismissed her as a mouse. Well, you weren't here, were you. May I proceed?

Very well. She said, “I was not always a mouse. I was a girl, until two nights ago. I went to a wishing pool at midnight when the full moon reflected in its surface, and there I made a wish.”

I told her, “This is Prophecy Collection, Miss, not Wish Fulfillment. You'll find that department on the third floor.”

She went on as if she hadn't heard me. She said, “A fairy appeared and granted my wish. She gave me a flowing white gown and slippers made of snow.”

I know, I know. I thought glass as well, but she said snow.

The mouse went on. “The fairy told me I must return to the pool by midnight or I would return to my original form.”

She stared up at me then, her black eyes sparkling.

“You didn't make it back to the pool by midnight,” I said.

“No,” she said. “I did not.”

I leafed through the files on my desk. I thought wistfully of my home and my bed and the corpse of my last husband resting by the hearth.

I said, “If you don't have a prophecy, I'm afraid I cannot help you.”

She said, “Not a prophecy so much as a promise. For it is well-known that the Weavers serve the Fates and they should know, when I am restored, I am coming for them. Their curse made me their servant girl, and now I remember every vile thing they made me do.”

Yes, that is word for word what she said. I wrote it down. I stamped it. I sent it Upstairs.

No, I haven't a clue where she might have gone. She didn't exactly leave a forwarding address. My job is to sit at my desk and listen, which I've done. It's not up to me to interpret or judge. Now, pray excuse me. You've got your many hands full, and I've a new husband to behead.

Good day and good luck. You're going to need it.

The Little Paris Bookshop - Book Review

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The title is too narrow for all that this book encompasses. Though it begins with the quaint bookshop on a barge in the Seine, it rapidly expands beyond it, to the charming setting of the French canals, and then further south to Marseilles and Provence.
My critique of the book, however, does not stop with the title. Thought the writing is exquisite – truly masterful and lovely in some places – my frustration stems more from annoyance with the outdated notion that a man must complete a woman, or vice versa, in order to find happiness. In fact, the number of outmoded, non-progressive sex roles disheartened me, leading me to wonder if it is, perhaps, a cultural phenomenon. Do the French actually, readily embrace the Nina George's notion that, to paraphrase, 'women are horses that must be tamed by men, who must likewise use the rider's crop of their words and actions to soothe and cajole a woman's emotions?'
These narrow ideas about women and men triggered my involuntary gag reflex. That said and aside, the central relationship of the novel is surprisingly liberal. The author flirts with polyamory as a panacea of the romantic ills of the three main characters. Even at the end of the book, there is the suggestion of unfulfilled hopes and compatibility, so that in spite of its lock-step with present social roles and relationship dogmas, the author hints that there is a potential better way – more open, more accepting, and more forgiving.
There was nothing wrong with this book. It's a fine book with a fine plot. The characters live, love, and breathe within the boundaries of its pages. The only thing I disliked, apart from the  vaguely misleading title, was the somewhat cliched romance of its central plot.


View all my reviews

2015 Poem A Day, Day Eleven

Prompt for Day Eleven:

For today’s prompt, write a seasonal poem. This should be a snap for haiku poets; after all, inserting seasonal words is a rule for the form. However, you don’t have to write haiku to write a poem that references or happens in one of the four seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Pick a season or include them all.

I didn't want to write a rhyming poem today, even though that's been the mode for my poet mind since the beginning of this challenge. For this prompt, I opened Writing Down the Bones and read the chapter titled A New Moment. In this chapter, she writes about how it is important not to rest long on our successes or failures, but to keep the pen moving, to keep writing.

I found inspiration in the lines that went: “Continue under all circumstances. It will keep you healthy and alive.”

I love that. Creativity is a force that helps us meet challenges. It helps us work through insecurities and anxieties. It gives us hope and helps us meet our grief eye to eye. Goldberg goes on to write about not needing a reason to continue beyond our own will to create. Creation is reason enough.

So here is my seasonal poem, nurtured into existence by Natalie Goldberg, the small birds nesting on our patio, and a time I climbed Gwanaksan Mountain in Seoul, South Korea.

Each to Its Own

Suns rise

Kingdoms fall

Hearts break

Birds nest

In the spring,

new buds bloom

In the fall,

they gray

and wither

You may have stood atop

Gwanaksan

You may have flung

your arms wide

You may have been

an echo loud

against the wall

of time

It is not the same mountain now

New rains fell

bearing stones

and seeds

and sand

At mountain's base,

the city springs:

Each day new

and tomorrow old.

Yet the young

walk her streets

Alive and amazed.

From space we see

the churning veils

of illusive storms

Our cities etched

in the face of earth

like sandcastles

in the rain.

Season after season

we spin and spin

as we have always spun

in the dance

of the earth and the sun.

Writing Practice - No Hindrances

For two decades, I have used Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down the Bones as a starting point for my writing exercises. I will open the book to a random page, read it, and get down to business. It often surprises me that the same pages I've read over and over can strike me in different ways in separate times of need, offering me the precise insight I need to get to the next phase of life and writing.

Here is what came to me this morning:

When you accept writing as what you are supposed to do, after you've tried everything else--marriage, hippiedom, traveling, living in Minnesota, or New York, teaching, spiritual practices--there's finally no place else to go. 

I may be technically homeless and unemployed, but in truth, this lull between traveling and teaching is a gift. There really is no place else to go but to write. I have been running and running from it for years. I sat down and wrote a novel six years ago, and it is collecting cyber dust. The Universe has granted me this quiet time to write, to edit, and to submit (both literally and spiritually).

Goldberg goes on to say: You can't depend on its going smoothly day after day. It won't be that way.

This is also good news. Rhythms may vary. Life continues to happen all around us. Rain storms. Deadlines. Doctor's appointments. Keep pushing. Keep writing.

There is no place else to go.

Thank you, Natalie.