Waking Giants

Festivals, food, and the unrelenting cold

Hey! What’s on the menu?

The cold’s creeping in as we step past autumn and into the real rough weather waiting at the end of the year.

Of course, for those stateside, this week also means it’s time to celebrate a harvest festival in the form of Thanksgiving.

The otherwise muddy history behind the holiday does contain a thread of the common end-of-autumn seasonal elements. One that has been on my mind as I reinvent a harvest holiday for my new book, Significatorius.

Like Besnowed, the story takes place in the southern hemisphere. Wrapping my mind around how that switches when “the big harvest” happens has sometimes been a struggle to keep consistent in my north hemispheric brain.

While I find it easy enough to imagine flipped seasons, remembering that March is in autumn still trips me up occasionally. Relevant to where I began this tangent, that means the big harvest festival is during the northern hemisphere’s spring.

I know all this, but I still struggle to really internalize it.

In Besnowed, I was at such an extreme it was less important, but I’m having fun making sense of my world flipped upside down — or perhaps right-side up.

Besnowed — The warmth of winter in a book: Food, family, meals, and snow.

Getting into that spirit also brought me through the familiar fight with inspiration and motivation. As I shuffled around thoughts, painting and repainting the setting, I was reminded of the frozen temperatures of life in Yakutia that helped inspire Besnowed.

As luck would have it, I stumbled upon a new video by Kiun B, offering a glimpse into what everyday life is like in one of Earth’s coldest climates.

I enjoy the feeling of everyday life and everyday costs being so easily understandable and accessible. It’s a reminder of how different even the simplest of tasks can become with just a quick trip around the world.

That slice-of-life and the “forgetful hours” mean a lot to me and are always something I try to shine a brighter light on in my books.

But rather than getting bogged down in the details, I’m just going to jump right into today’s flash fiction.

This one came from a prompt

shyam

gave me:

The elephants were sleeping

We were waiting. There was always so much waiting. The time we thought was lost to the wistful hours.

“Sluma?” Elle spoke in delicate tones, at least when she spoke to me. Her faint blue dress lit up like neon signs against the iron bars of the cages.

“Elle! We can’t talk here!” I moved my hand up to grasp at her light and caught the air in my hands. She fluttered as she rose back into my vision. A fairy in all but name or a figment of my imagination — she was my friend.

“Sluma! Be careful!” Elle’s wings were in a similar shade to her dress. Transparent translucence in that magical way, with specks of light mirroring the infinite darkness found in the sky.

“I know what I’m doing.” I shook my head and she was gone. Well, she was almost gone, the specks of light were still there. The little blue dots that clouded my vision. It got worse at night.

“Do I know what I’m doing?” I asked myself that old question as I tried to peer deeper into the cage. I could see the beasts lying asleep on their sides. A new exhibit at the local zoo. The city spent a lot of money to import animals from abroad.

I reached in and tried to pet the grey skin. That’s why I was there — I broke in to try and meet them — we did. Elle convinced me we wouldn’t get caught. She was a guiding light through the off hour turnstiles and mazes of pathways and caves.

I would never have found the elephants without her help.

“Sluma!” Elle suddenly reappeared inside the cage and lit up the enclosure in that neon blue light. They were all sleeping. Nearly a dozen giants slowly breathing in and out. A rhythm to match their calm dreams and measured strength.

“Elle! I know what I’m doing!” I reached out and touched the elephant closest to the bars of the cage. He was strong. Just a baby, but I could already feel his wild power. “Wow… incredible…”

“That’s enough for now! We need to leave before they all wake up!” Elle fluttered back and forth between the bars of the cage, but I was too mesmerized to move.

“Just a little longer.” I ran my hand across the baby’s back and could feel his life force within my own. I would take what was needed and nothing more. “That should be enough.”

“Good, now let’s get out of here!” Elle disappeared and her blue stars clouded my vision again. “We have a lot of work left to do.”

“I know — I know what we’re doing.”

Significant

I changed some of the story from what I wrote a month ago, but mostly just small mistakes I noticed upon rereading.

In any case, I hope you enjoy a taste of something different this week!

I’m focusing more on writing my new story, Significatorius, so these newsletters are likely to be shorter for the foreseeable future.

And who knows, maybe everyone prefers them that way.

Until next time.

—JMB