Excerpt from the WIP Red House

Eek! I almost forgot to post, it's been such a busy day. Since it's late and I don't have a topic, how about an excerpt from my work in progress Red House.

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Wishing I’d brought an empty glass, I drank the rest of the tea and tossed the ice into the grass. I laid the book aside, along with my glasses. Drawing into a sitting position, hands resting lightly on my thighs, I did a slow grounding. Despite having spent a great deal of time here, I still wasn’t as familiar with this plot of land as I was with my own. Opening myself up, I reached out to the energy around me. The earth below, the sky above, streams and underground water sources, trees and vegetation, all of them flowed together into a natural rhythm. Beyond that was a hint of the man-made energy of the city itself. Point and counterpoint. Or if not that then at least two separate rhythms that somehow managed to work, like an improbable mash-up of two radically different pieces of music.

I expected all of that and had felt it before. What shocked me was the bang and clatter of something atonal, chaotic. Hard bop on meth, instead of cool jazz or trance blues. Concentrating on the discordant notes, it overtook everything else until its rattle was the only thing I could feel. A rushing wildness, dark and hungry, pulled at me. It pressed against my chest and tugged at my limbs. Fear exploded in my gut, followed quickly by recognition. That recognition saved me from what might have turned into a nasty panic attack. Reaching for calm, steady earth, I pushed away the chaos and took slow even breaths.

It was the flood. The land, the people, every source of energy in the area had been traumatized by the flood. There hadn’t been enough time yet for any real healing so the menace still lurked just beneath the surface of things. And if it was still at all present, that meant it could still affect things.

My breathing got a little out of sync as fear nibbled at the edges of my thoughts. I had to distract myself or pretty soon all I’d be able to think about was my destroyed home. Hard bop on meth, I thought, was not really a good analogy for this area. Well, the meth part worked. What other musical analogy might work to describe the flood’s leftover energy? I struggled to come up with something but the best I could do was “redneck Rammstein.”

I would not be sharing that tidbit in conversations with either Daniel or Blake.

*

Hee hee, redneck Rammstein. *runs away from editor who is a serious Rammstein fan*  But seriously, I actually do like this piece of the scene. The way Roxie feels the energy of magic is very tied in with the way she feels music, so I try to show that in little ways and sometimes, like in this moment, more overt ways. Why, you ask, does Roxie connect music and magic? Mostly because I'm a big music nerd, so, you know, I figure this falls under the heading of "write what you know."