You say you want a.....resolution? Vignette 1: Proserpine

Okay. So I know that it's almost a month too late to make a New Year's resolution, and this isn't really a full year one so I don't know if it'll count, but I'm better at making immediate resolutions anyway (i.e.: Buy Some Q-Tips, Go To Sleep Before 4 AM). So here goes: since I'm supposed to be work shopping in my Creative Writing course constantly, and it looks like I'll be put on the spot pretty regularly, I might as well write often to keep in practice, like jogging before the New York City Marathon if you aren't already Katie Holmes. So, once a day if I can, I am going to write one Vignette. In this case, a Vignette is a short written piece that focuses on character and setting descriptions as opposed to plot, and is usually a part of a larger story. It can have a general Beginning, Middle, and End, but usually I'll write something short and sweet that doesn't really go anywhere, just exercises my language skills. They are all going to be approximately one page, single spaced, give or take, say, five lines. They can be about anything I want, but I'd like to create a new character or place per day, just to see how far I can get before I scratch my head and repeat myself. The Vignettes will be named after the character or setting that is most prominently described in the piece. Like I said, this might not last all year, since I'm in Creative Writing for only 5 months and by the time I get out I might be able to confidently and completely work on Archer full-time (meaning without any side projects or distractions), so for now this is just to keep me in practice.

And after doing two days of it and two weeks of Creative Writing, it actually feels wonderful. Since my Literature classes aren't very difficult this year, I can focus pretty much all of my efforts on writing fiction for the first time in a long, long time. That, plus the general discontent of being here, is pushing me to write often. So I'll post the first Vignette here, and then after this the vignette entries will be titled and have the excerpt and nothing else. Here we go:

Proserpine

Proserpine lights another cigarette. The lighter makes her face a tiny portrait of a round nose and the bottom of two unfocused eyes that water as a spiderstring of smoke curls under them. Then it is dark. The glow worm of the cigarette tip flies in long circles; mouth to waist to chest to chin, to mouth. Two long puffs of smoke come out of her nostrils. Proserpine (her mother had called her Proserpina, it was prettier but it made her feel like a cut flower) leans back in the stone chair. She is going to do something we would call magic, but this was a time before magic (I know what you will say, the cigarette is there because she wanted it and it became). She puts out the smoke-it was burning her two fingers in their middle joint-and pulls one long, pale finger through the air. Something that was not light but still glowed, deep violet, trailed it. If it was brighter in her room you would see the flicker of a smile, but this is hell and there is no illumination here. Wails try to permeate the stone, but she has learned to be deaf, and the stone is as thick as she wants it to be. The purple glow becomes a solid circle, like a mirror before her invisible face. The circle is hardly any bigger than her torso, but to us, who have minds smaller than proserpine’s smallest thoughts, it is larger than the world and holds life in its image. There is a field of wheat and wildflowers. Proserpine sits more comfortably, pulling up the legs of her blue jeans (they are like the cigarette, do you see now how that works?) and she watches. A girl walks through the field, her breasts still growing and awkward under her linen robe (‘why did i let her dress me like that’, proserpine mutters to herself as she lights another cigarette). Te girl is, what, fourteen? fifteen? It is really thousands of years, of course, but she was not allowed to age into anything more than she was. You are a lady of Spring, you will be young as a lamb and fresh as rain. That is the way of things. Behind her are ghostly maidens, in white, with baskets, pulling flowers out of the ground without hesitance and crowning themselves with them, digging them out and cutting off the unattractive roots and forgetting that the flowers will soon be wilting and dead and limp on their pretty golden heads. The girl with earthy red hair and a fourteen-year-old form leans down to pull up a delicate red poppy, but there is a man. Proserpine leans forward. There is a man, dressed in black that is almost blue, with proud pale shoulders and a long lordly beard (he is a King in his own world). The girl turns, her waist moving in a way that is obviously unfamiliar to her fourteen-year-oldness. He has reached out to her, there is a red stone on his finger. Proserpine twists the same ring on her own hand, now, unconsciously. She inhales harder on her cigarette, and the smoke mixes with the purple mirror-world for a moment, dissipating the scene, but Proserpine won’t let it fade, Not yet. She’s almost to the part she wanted to see. There. The man is looking at her. His eyes are impossibly deep, you could throw a penny into one and never hear it land. Another drag of the cigarette lights up her face. Proserpine’s eyes have become the same. There. He has touched the girl, and she stand straight, now she is three years older, at least, her back arches and her lips move forward expectantly. He is touching her waist and something that we would call desire sets the girl’s red hair on fire. Then the man does something we would call magic, and the ground opens and swallows them, the man and the girl who is now a woman are gone into the abyss of the underworld. The maidens who are nothing more than fancy and imagination are screaming “Proserpina! Proserpina!” but there is no answer. They drop their flowers back to the ground and the stems are scattered like bones. Proserpine waves her free hand and the violet smoke-mirror is gone and darkness clings to her again. She knows how the story will end, and for a moment, as she licks her lips, she tastes pomegranate and does not regret.