Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Friday already!
(Don’t tell anyone, especially not Doug or Misky, but of the three bloghops we participate in each week, this, the Unicorn Challenge is the most daunting of them all.)
While generally-speaking we do not indulge in serial stories, we do admit to having ‘come across’ a couple of characters that exhibit that rare and wonderful quality of ‘writing themselves’. I refer to ‘the Crone and the Stone’ who we first met here and, subsequently here.
This week our hosts, jenne and ceayr offer the photo below as inspiration for a story of no more than two hundred and fifty words.
“We’re too early!”
The woman shuddered impatiently, eyes scanning the empty train car, the platform and station and, finally, the man looming over her. Looking down on his companion, he exhibited the restrained power of a mountain snow-mass teetering on the edge of Spring.
“Find us an alley nearby, preferably with a streetlight you can put out with a stone!”
The stolid intensity of the man’s face softened at the hint of a compliment, lumbered off the platform. A half a block to Anchor Ln and, after a glissando of falling glass, awaited his companion in the dark alleyway.
Together in the shadows, the Crone leaned against the man; a drier and, arguably, more protective a wall to have at her back.
“Remember, back when you’d bring me a Saturday Evening Post from the canastair sgudal down at the train station and we’d leaf through it waiting for closing time to push the unfortunates to the sidewalks where they’d totter homewards like a desert cart with one bad wheel?” The old, grey woman retreated into her mind, leaving her tattered body to sway in the artificial breeze of cars racing past their hiding place, driven by the 21st century imperative of faster, faster…
The pair who, subjects of whispered tales of fearful parents to innocent children, were referred to simply as the Crone and the Stone waited for the crowds to be pushed towards the empty train car by the social peristalsis of last call on a Glasgow Saturday night.
About clarkscottroger
You are in fine fettle these days, clark, and I look forward to such gems as ‘leaving her tattered body to sway in the artificial breeze of cars racing past’ and ‘waited for the crowds to be pushed towards the empty train car by the social peristalsis of last call’.
Thanks, Doug. fun with words, no?
One would almost think you’d experienced a Glasgow Saturday night, Clark!😉
A fine partnership, the Crone and the Stone, and your story conveys the ‘ease’ of their long friendship through your signature descriptions.
An excellent snapshot of their – and our – life.
And a new word, which, given that it comes from Scots Gaelic, I blush not to have known: sgudal – thanks for that.
thank god for google streetview… (and for google translate… always a calculated risk, there were three or four words for trash bin and this one, on the basis of the examples provided seemed closest to a rubbish bin found on a sidewalk in a city… (though, Full Disclosure: didn’t see one when I was ‘walking up and down’ St Vincent Place looking for a suitable alley.
“a glissando of falling glass”
Can someone please pick me up off the floor?
lol
ty SS
You had me at ‘restrained power of a mountain snow-mass teetering on the edge of Spring’ and got better and better after that.
But you’d be better with ‘chib’, we don’t have shillelaghs in Scotland!
thanks for that… I knew that shillelaghs were, like, one country off… but I’d exhausted my sense of risk-taking with the trash can thing… I do not have as much faith in google translate as it may seem.
I’m just relishing the flavour of the images in your story, Clark – ‘a mountain snow mass’, ‘a glissando of falling glass’, ‘totter … like a desert cart with one bad wheel’, ‘social peristalsis’. Phew. And I do like these two characters – I can well believe they were whispered about by ‘fearful parents’.
thank you, Margaret! That’s where the fun is… for me the imagery/metaphor etc (
You do conduct a fabulous symphony of words.
Grazie