Sunny Days & Scribbly Things

  

Well, for all my handing out maps with directions on them pointing telescopes at April for the purpose of spotting Scribbly Posts on the horizon, time has flown me by once again, and we are now in the very deepest depths of April. (If April can be said to have depths; sparkling shallows with minnows flitting through them seem like a more fitting description.) This is several weeks later than I had intended for it to be, as posts tend to be when one plans on them at all. (Should I have expected this to happen? Very possibly XD) This in spite of the fact that I've had my snippets of story pressed, polished, and neatly laid out for weeks now. But they are being gotten out of the closet at last here, being aired in the spring sunshine! (Hence that part of the title, you know.)

And so, without further time-wasting or even much ado, I present to you...

The Scribblets. 

                                            ~*~

(Now, just in case you would like to know a little about the characters in the world you are about to be plunged into, let it be known that she's the Senator's daughter at a ball, and he's either a reporter or a detective undercover at it. If that helps you at all in the identification department :P)

"She looked at him perplexedly, and on glancing up and seeing her, he bestowed upon her a small smile that came with altogether too keen of a glance. He knew that she was watching, and moreover, that she was seeing, and yet he did not seem at all flustered by it. In fact, he winked at her, and taking unobtrusively from his pocket a small packet containing something that looked very like sugar, tipped the contents into the glass he held. 

This concoction he poured unconcernedly into the nearest potted plant, affecting a decided wobble in his walk as if in explanation of his actions. And coming away, he took her unexpectedly and firmly by the arm, piloting her away from it at a considerable rate of speed.

She tried to ask him what on earth he thought that he was doing, but was quelled by the penetrating whisper he aimed in her ear while pretending to helping her to unloose a curl that had apparently  moored itself too tightly on her hat for any comfort.

"No, don't ask. But if they do, I was axel deep in champagne, and didn't like the taste of the latest glass of it. That's all you know."

She stared at him in bewilderment, and nodded dazedly. 

"I'm not altogether sure you're not."

She contemplated this for a moment.

"Except that you clearly haven't had a drop–you'll excuse my noticing that while you ruin my hair–so it must be something else you've had."

He grinned wolfishly at her. 

"Yes, something else." 

He half looked as if he would like to tell her what it was, but seeing one of the guards coming down the hall, he went back "helping" her with her hat.

She hissed at him from behind an artificial smile.

"Have you almost done? I'd like to keep what's left of both my hat and my hair, you know, my maid is already going to be extremely upset with me for this."

She shuddered. "And you don't know wrath until it has tripped lightly off a tiny french tongue at you. It's terrifying."

His grin deepened for an instant, and jabbing a hairpin back in roughly the same neighbourhood that he had drawn it out of, he gave her hat a quick pat. 

"There. Finished."

She scowled at him delicately.

"Well, now you've done it. You add insult to injury with great agility, sir, I applaud you. Now will you please let go of my arm and go bother someone else's coiffure? Miss Martinson would do you nicely, I believe." She pointed across the room to a brilliantly clad creature in crimson and lace.

He had his own artificial smile in place now, though his was a trifle more glassy than hers had been. However skilled an operative may be, they are not in it with debutantes when it comes to artificial smiles.

"Ahh, but I need you though, see, for camouflage. You're my alibi. And the nicest one I've had in a long time, I must say."

He cast her a sideways glance, the flash of a real smile in his eyes supplementing the one on his face.

She looked back at him, dazed. She had guessed she might be something of that variety, but hearing it straight from him was still just a trifle jarring, and her voice was a decibel fainter than it had been on her previous remark.

"Have you..." She looked warily at him over her fan. "Have you been doing anything truly dreadful?"

She paused as if marshalling her determination, and looked at him squarely.

"Because if you're going to drag me into it, I really think you had better tell me what it is. It will give me a chance to prepare myself for—" She swallowed a small lump of apprehension. "—For whatever happens."

At that moment, an explosion rocked the vicinity of the potted plant which had started their acquaintance, and he swept her out into the garden with the rush and confusion of hastily evacuating party goers that ensued.

They were pressed close together in the thronging crowd, and he took advantage of this to aim another whisper towards the much mistreated hat and chignon. 

"That answer your question?"

He laughed at the look on her face.

"Oh, it wasn't so very dreadful, someone had to do it. They decided that up at the top, and I was just the bloke who got pinned with the job."

He nudged her with his elbow, and she glared at him.

"You've done your part well, by the way. Been quite a help, I'll have to tell them that at the office."

She smiled icily.

"Yes, well, I'll tell that to my maid when she asks me why I ruined her handiwork."

He raised an eyebrow.

"That serious, eh?"

She laughed, a light, tripping thing that sounded grim in the present circumstances.

"You haven't the faintest notion of how just serious."

                                        ~*~

                      

"This latter creature had, by means of determined abstinence from that fortifying pleasure known to the race of mankind as Food, been transformed into a very slender toothpick, which, by all appearances, would fit in the holder of any given dinner table."

                                        ~*~

"He paused and looked at the book accusingly. What right had it to call him Gentle Reader? For all it and its beknightedly presumptuous author knew, he might be the fiercest lionheart, or the biggest bully. (which latter, in fact, he prided himself on being.) And it had the nerve to call him gentle, lumping him in with all the pasty faces and lilly livers the world over. This rankled, and the book narrowly escaped being hurled into the fireplace over this misdemeanour, for all its being a library copy.

Thinking it over, however, he reluctantly decided that the rest of the book, which was made up more of pirates and lighthouses than cheeky assumptions, was perhaps not entirely to be consigned to a fate of being swept up from the grate in the morning, and went on reading."

                                        ~*~

"A welcome party made up of tree limbs decided to make themselves known to his middle on his way down, and while it was a hearty introduction, he did not feel inclined, afterwards in his hospital bed, to remember the making of these acquaintances with over much fondness. 

His ribs ached at the recollection, and they had occasion enough to ache without having remembrances heaped upon the bandages."

                                       ~*~

"Only fancy," she said. "He knows whether a thing is funny directly he hears it. Some folks might stop and wonder a moment, but not him. Out he laughs like a church bell right that blessed same minute, and never a second thought does it take him. Folks hereabouts look on him as a sort of genius."

There was a preening, peacock-like pride in her prunish face, and the travellers suddenly found it a difficult thing to keep their own faces quite straight under it. The young man in question would, no doubt, have known whether to laugh or not to laugh, but though they felt a keen inclination towards that particular course, there came with it a premonition that things might not fare well with them if they did. For all they knew, this might be the mayor's own wife, (or grandmother, if he was a youngish mayor; towns had them from time to time,) or yet the Sheriff's, and it bodes ill for those that cross the female relations of holders of either of these lofty posts.

They held their peace. 

One of them even went so far as to make congratulatory sounds in the back of his throat, and the old lady's hearing caught these and held to them.

"Eh? What's that? Speak up, sir. We'll have no mumbling in Monkston."

The cowed stranger owned, in a louder voice, that he had only observed that it must be a very nice thing to be gifted thus. He was then pinned by the eagle eye and glass of the lady, as if to see if he was having a joke on her. Seeing no suspicious traces of merriment in his own, (these tended to flee under the weight of Mrs. Matilda Pickwit's gaze,) she gave a satisfied harrumph.

"Well. I dare say it is. Though there are few, I fancy, that knows it firsthand."

The strangers allowed that this might very well be true."

                                        ~*~

"And she was right. They all laughed. Granted, some chimed gently as if they still remembered the joke, and other times it was more of a condemning peal, but everybody laughed."

                                        ~*~

"One hand was tidying away the jam-pots in a model of industry while the other introduced to her rosy mouth at intervals a thick slice of toast  liberally spread with marmalade. Such was the efficiency of the little wife he had married, and his heart swelled within him at the remembrance of the accomplishment. There wasn't a young buck within fifty miles who hadn't scowled darkly at him when he drove into town for the wedding, and that, as he was wont to say with self-satisfaction, was established fact.

In her flowered and be-ruffled dimity, he thought that he had never seen a sweeter picture than the one she made with the breakfast dishes.

Chancing to glance over her shoulder just then, she smiled brightly back at him, and went back to her dishes. She was getting used to his staring at her as if he were thinking things, and she did not mind it. He looked as if they were pleasant things."

                                        ~*~

"The porridge did not seem to him to be thickening. At least, it thickened only at the very bottom of his pot, and there it turned slowly into a deep and discouraging mass of congealing blackness. This had the effect of rather diminishing his appetite, and he looked into the bubbling pot with a distrustful eye.

He ladled it into a bowl nonetheless, there being no other breakfast on the premises, and stuck a spoon in it. Upon transferring it to his mouth, however, his courage gave out just a little as it bit him. At least, it seemed as if it bit him. Really though, it probably only burnt his tongue. Still, civilized porridge did not behave like this while Janet was at home, and he firmly suspected his of being a heathen specimen. The taste confirmed it, and he sat looking dolefully at his bowl. It tasted very much of black, rather too much of sugar, and he had a strong and sneaking suspicion that he had forgotten to put in some essential ingredient."

                                   ~*~

And that... Is that. And rather a lot of it; the longer scribbles wanted in on this post, and would not be denied! And so, them having now had their day, and being suddenly and unaccountably sleepy, I believe I shall end this post before Winken, Blinken and Nod take it too firmly into their heads to kidnap me. (More efficient that way, you understand.)

Au Revoir, Kindred Spirits, and happy scribbling to the lot of you!

~Emi