She is: warm charm and cool class, keen mind and sharp wit, unfussed pragmatism and uncanny self-control, haunted melancholy and hungry smile. Juste (Justine Sureval, that is) is a woman creature presenting a sophisticated collection of beautiful angles and aspects, immaculately fitted together into a whole that – while harmonious, with nothing out of place – is never exactly the sum of its parts.

A stained-glass woman, Justine is fascinating but so intimidating; easy to understand why most mortals (bless ‘em!) admire the cover and leave the book alone. It’s only if one were to start picking her apart, after all, that they may find the books don’t balance quite – but why worry over that, when the books are so beautifully illuminated?

Here is a secret: this book is not for you. The cover deceives for your protection.

Here is a creature ‘whip-smart’, ‘sharp as a pin’, with ‘razor wit’: note the words. This is a mind crafted into a weapon, a Soldier not of flesh but of thought, carrying no spear but words and Will. She’s blindingly intelligent, but hides her scorn when others aren’t. Well, usually: there are times her alienation and impatience are too great for even her to suppress, and crackle in the air around her.

Like any Soldier, Justine needs focus, a mission – without a target, this blade is panicked and pained. Her prowess and her appetites both are great, and like a shark (that perfect predator) she must keep moving, must keep that nose to the grindstone, must have an ax to grind – any ax will do.

She is gifted – impossibly, ridiculously gifted – in so many things, and yet there is always a restlessness to her, for she wants to learn and be and do and master moremoremore.
An example: She is fluent in dozens of languages, plays dozens of instruments, and has known dozens of interesting historical personages. This is not what makes her a paragon; she is very, very old.
She speaks dozens of languages, but has seen thousands fall from use. She plays dozens of instruments, but her fingers itch to play scales that haven’t existed for centuries. She has known (and ruined) so many interesting people, but without backward-cast eyes of history has missed the chance to touch so many more. All of this causes her immense frustration, and significant melancholy.

If she were a sour thing, pinched, twisted, bitter, hollowed out with resentment, she would make more sense. She is not. She likes many things; among them wine, the Blues, and traditional spicy chocolates. True, her sense of humour is so scathing dry that most never realise she has one – and yes, oft falls to the cruel side of sarcasm – but it is there, snuggled between a passionate love of music and a fascination with fine dining. Catch her halfway though a bottle of Pinot and you will find her laughing, her sardonic cleverness blossoming into lush, sparkling wit. She cannot be a true Daughter of Joy, but feels it important to at least manage enjoyment.

If she were a glutton for pleasure (a glutton for anything) she would make more sense. Let us be very clear: Justine has her vices, and enjoys every one unapologetically and without hesitation – but she never quite lets go. Always there’s that obsessive self-control, that need to keep herself together as if she’s afraid, somehow, of flying apart. Chemicals, sadism, sex, pain; she has the rapacity and passions to stamp her firmly Libertine, but so often seems missing the abandon that marks a true addict. Even sailing across society’s lines, she never crosses her own.

If she played one of those ‘career women’ so popular in the unforgiving public imagination (with blocky shoulder pads and a frost-blonde chignon), aggressively scathing, utterly focused on personal dominance, she would make more sense. Not so. She has played the Ice Queen in the past, has employed (and enjoyed) that unrelenting ambition and cold, cold air. Nowadays she mimics Ocean: unfathomable, mysterious, patient. True, her hair is slick black and cut in a bob, but too feminine to manage severity. She seems to prefer these days a softer road to power, one – as a long-dead poet once put it – "achieved by woman’s charm and yielding grace, not that clumsy mimicry of heavy-handed men".

Yet…yielding? If Juste had lost her edge, ‘gone soft’, that would make sense. She hasn’t. She is diligent, exacting, industrious and shrewd, as canny as ever. Her expectations for others are impossible high, but far lower than the bar set for herself. She is ruthless – or we could call it sensible – she does. She can be very cruel, she can be very kind. And true, her tongue cuts deep…but it’s hard to mind when her smile’s warm and sweet as morphine and even cruelty slips in soft as a needle’s kiss. Those who take the time to know her bask in a glowing charm, the sort that curls around the heart and nestles there, growing so slowly that one never has a chance to resist.

And so on, and so on, and on. For every page-fragment, every shard of this stained-glass puzzle, there’s another facet to consider in another light and it all suggests something too fractured and complex to understand without looking far too hard, for far too long and we all know what happens to people that do that.

Close the book now, and walk away. Some books things people just don’t add up and never will. Get up, put the kettle on, and count yourself lucky to leave this book unread next to tea gone cold.

A story came to my mind:
It opens with a young woman, late for a party.  She is talking to herself, all the thoughts in her mind, her little frets and hopes for this party which, she hopes, will give her a lovely holiday from her dreary school semester.  There is a tiny rip in reality, and she doesn’t notice slipping through.
There is a woman that lives in a farmhouse.  Her children are all grown, and it’s been a long time since she felt beautiful.  Her life is governed by time, time, time, time. She doesn’t feel she’ll ever escape from the big clock over her kitchen sink (or the one in her pocket, or on her fone, or in her dreams…) and she feels more and more trapped, more and more withered every hour.  She finds herself becoming numb. It’s comforting to listen to the car pass outside her kitchen window. She’ll head it, and look up – on the hour, near every hour.
It takes her a week to realise that a car passes by with perfect regularity.
It takes her a month to realise that it’s always the same car.
At first, she is horrified. Her life, her very being, her ragged existence narrowed down to such an inexplicable, arbitrary fluke, like a dropped stitch in the fabric of the universe. She comes to dread the car’s passage; she pulls her blinds and turns up the music.
Still.
Still, she finds herself noting it’s passage, and some time after that, finally, starts to notice little things about the car. It passes every hour: always the same giddy careening around the corner, a startled slow-down just after skidding on some loose gravel. Then a slow increase, until – on the hour, exactly – it sails past the house.
It is winter before she realises that if she concentrates, and gets outside in time, she can see the driver. It’s a young woman, with hair so light it’s almost silvery-white. Her lips are moving, her eyes giving the road a careful once-over, confident and reckless as only the young can be.
The farm-wife makes a point to watch the car, now. She sets down whatever she was doing, and slips outside. To see the car, to see the girl. It’s same – the passage is always the same, every time. She spends weeks searching out any variability, and can find none.  It’s as if the car – and its passenger – aren’t making an hourly trip at all, but one passing repeated over and over and over.  After a while, the woman (standing in her coat, shivering as snow collects on her eyelashes) starts to believe that it is only one stip, looping over again like a skipping record. A strange recording, played just for her, to mark the passing of the hours.  Or perhaps…to fill them.
This isn’t where the story ends, of course. Something happens – it has to. I think I know how it ends, I think I know what comes of the lonely woman, and the gay young girl, and the drive, the dropped stitch, the tape loop. Do you want to know?
You shall have to wait for me to write the story!

The feed dogs whirred, eating up the fabric under their insatiable momentum, as the needle tacked a strait, strong seam into the fabric. Shulie let her mind fly far and wide, trusting that her hands on the seam and her foot on the treadle would do the job she felt as familiar and easy as breathing. Her mind seemed to expand, taking in so many thoughts at once. The Rings. That had been on her mind lately, the lost wedding bands that Ink had carefully formed. This time, however, instead of resolutely pushing the thought away, she let herself follow it, like a shining thread stretching off through the air. The thread shimmered, flying out of the packhouse, out of the physical world as Shulie entered that strange trance that so often made the long hours of housework pass in an instant. For a moment, her mind swung far and wide, scenting and tasting the spirits of the city, the land. After a moment, a scene shimmered and resolved.

It was the wood.  Late afternoon sunlight slipped in wide bands through the treetops, and pooled in a rich dappling pattern over the clearing. She looked about the place, trying to recognise it. It was certainly local. Tall, stately trees, wildflowers growing…yes. The wood…but where? And what was God trying to show her? She pressed herself into the vision, willing the sight into clarity.  Slowly, the clearing swam into sharp focus, the rich colours and beauty of the scene filling her mind. There was something in the clearing.

A sword. It was thrust into the ground, the pommel and grip brushed lightly by the flowers growing all around it. She recognised the Harmoniser instantly. The silver thread she’d followed there wrapped around the sword, continuing down into the earth, under…under. Her heart beast fast, feeling the tug of this place, the need to be there, to need to find whatever was there, hidden in this beautiful clearing. The emotion it sparked in her tugged her out of the vision, back into that unsure place that was no-where in particular. Her mind flew back, following that glimmering silver line, until Shulie found herself back at home, sitting in front of her sewing machine. She looked down, giving a cry of dismay, seeing the effects of her brief trance. Still, her mind touched upon the clearing and the sword she had seen. She pondered it and sighed, reaching for her seam ripper. Though most of the seam was strait and perfect, there was now about a foot of tight, tiny stitches to undo.

This little bit of microfiction didn’t start out that way.  In fact, it didn’t start out as anything at all. You see, I’ve recently gotten a little Android tablet, mostly for pulling up Ukelele chords and recipes in the kitchen, and other such fun stuff. I was just playing about with it, getting used to the keyboard, I started tapping away, not really paying attention.  I’d done about a paragraph of this when I noticed a theme to the nonsense sentences. Enjoying the experience (experiment, if you will) I kept writing. Something like to a story came out. It was disjointed and awkwardly phrased, but I found I liked it that way.  It worked for me. I named it “The Shore” and decided to call it a tiny story.

Skip to today – I’ve decided to do everything for this story on my tablet. So as I’m using the WordPress app to post it, I realised- in a flash, if you will – that it woks with the title I’d picked out for my friend Chuck’s Booze-themed microfiction challenge. One title change later, Chuck has another story! …only three weeks late.

Your swallowing motions tell me all I could possibly need to know.  Won’t you come to the shore with me? I cannot imagine anything better, truly. I don’t think I should like anything so much as your love and approval.  Failing that, your blood soaking the sand should do.

Imagine us, together, with our big picnic basket. Don’t worry yourself about a thing. That?  Why it is only the wind. This is a place for rest and ease and healing. This lemonade is freshly-made. Shh, just lay back, there’s a good love. The doctor said the seaside would do you good.

I rather think we ought to listen to the doctor. Don’t you?

Don’t sulk, my love. No-one likes the silent treatment.

“I want a bitter grl and a cheeky boy and a night with fireworks just after a dance in a decade when everyone thinks the world is about to end. “

I.

No-one past graduation thought it was worth a damn, but the fireworks were going ahead. Important to keep morale up, the radio said. So barbecue charcoal spread its scent through the neighbourhood, and in the firefly-fussed evening the kids and dogs and parents came out of their houses, to pay homage to the patriotic display. Perhaps it was the last rally in a doomed battle, perhaps it was a modern try at banging pots and pans to keep night-haunts away. Whatever the reason every face tipped up, every pair of eyes to the south sky that smokey summer evening. After all (said the silent voice in every head) even with the fireworks, the sirens are plenty loud enough to hear.

II.

It was cold. The girl was cramped, and she was cold. There was metal above – smooth and cool. Concrete below – solid, bonechilling. To either side metal, and a wall of damp, crumbling plaster. She crouched there, calves cramping and knees aching; she was listening to sirens out the window and her own quick breath. The sirens wailed a slow song, a song that would take years to resolve into a tune. They had been going on for centuries.
There was a scuffling of feet – she pressed hands over her ears and screwed her eyes  closed tight.
III.

The air hung heavy; maybe it was the summer humidity or the smoke from burning leafpiles or the threat of utter annihilation, but he didn’t feel it. Saw it, pressing sweat into the skin and dogs back onto their haunches flattening smiles into thin-lipped masks – but he didn’t feel a thing. Immune or fool-headed he was lifted up by a greater force than even The Atom, one only a teenager in love could tap. Busted sneakers and ratty shoelaces left on the verdant lawn, bare feet took him tenterhooked to her door. Three knocks (no more) and there stood the Knave: big goofy gap-tooth grin topped with a smear of freckles, eyes full of promise armed and ready.

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