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Monday, November 3, 2008

Sudden WIP

So an interesting thing happened last night at The Haunt... We were having a lovely chat and celebrating the holiday when I started an email and--as is common--I got completely distracted by something, but my fingers kept going. Has that ever happened to you? You're still typing and you have an idea of what you want to say, but you end up typing a word you here on TV or in a song.
Anyhow, it happened to me and the words "a sharpness wife" appeared on screen when I think I was trying to say something about a person's sharp wit or sharp tongue. When I saw the phrase, it obviously made no sense, so I deleted it and sent my happy email. Next thing you know, I had the phrase stuck in my head and from there, came the WIP below. It's odd how 864 words came out of a nonsensical phrase, but it's a demonstration of where a writer's ideas can come from. Now that I've started, I think the story deserves to be finished, so I'm going to make as much of it (PG-13 rating there) as possible available in weekly serial form at the Amused Authors Blog on each Sunday. My first post will be tomorrow... And the below text will have been edited just a bit! What do you think of it? All thoughts and opinions welcome...
Completely Rough and Unedited Start of "A Sharpest Wife"
Prologue: Clayan's Escape
She was unremarkable. Even as Ananda alerted me softly of death from the sirens and opium and weapons of Babylon , she was unremarkable. Her words were lost on me as was her face and form neither of which I elected to commit to memory.
Excitement. A roar not a whisper. Primitive flesh, instead of education, institution, I wanted.
And so I left her, my arranged wife, thirteen days from the night of our wedding. I left her, my Sharpness Wife, ill and chaste. I did not regret it. Remorse was something for the free. I had not been free to choose, and thus felt nothing for her. She had not been free to choose, and so should have been pleased to be free of me, free of this construct.
I was—am selfish.
Leaving a Sharpness Wife to a cold bed kills her.
Unless she is a Sharpest Wife.
It is impossible to know which Sharpness Wife will be a Sharpest Wife. Speculation targets beauty and intellect and softness of which Ananda demonstrated none. Her warning whisper had been a hard scratch in my ear, even. Poorly formed thoughts contorting a plain face and sputtering in a fast breath.
Invisibility she had in the span of mountains, canyons, and clouds. But for those moments, those rasped moments, when she cautioned me against all that I desired, I was unable to make her out from the walls, the cabinets, the drawers, the tables, the chairs, the floor. A living ghost, my Sharpness Wife.

When I closed the door on Ananda, that day thirteen days from when she became my Sharpness Wife, she became a Sharpest Wife. And so began one hundred and sixty-nine days of my Atonement.
Ananda's Journey through the Film
For near two weeks, Ananda’s family did not seek her.
Ananda is certain that she did not seek herself. Oh she ate, drank, made use of the privacy, but did nothing else. Including think. Save for the one time when she wondered what grief felt like. When finally her mother and three of her sisters came, it was with a Sharpness Priest in tow, there to bless and burn her body.
“How were we to know you would live, Ananda?” Her mother asked.
“Yes, how were we to know?” Her sisters, three of four, the third dead of abandonment, followed.
How were they to know?
Ananda had been no better. Sitting there, waiting to die like abandoned Sharpness wives before her, like her sister, Anya, before her. Ananda had waited, ignoring her household duties, ignoring her evening prayers. Doing things that sustained her life, passingly curious as to why. Waiting for her eyes to close and her chest to move no more.
But then…
Instead…
Her appetite grew, and the house became sticky, and she couldn’t stand the smell of sweet things.
And the fourteenth day, was the day they came… with a priest. Her sister Aisha was the first to say it. And she said it fear and reverence as she kneeled, dragging her two sisters with her. The priest and Ananda’s mother kneeled clumsily, too.
“Sharpest.”
Ananda didn’t care to regard them in that moment. She was, after all, suddenly ravenous. And she did, after all, have a husband to eat.
~
Nearly two weeks after she discovered what she was, Ananda had been granted deed to all that was Clayan’s and his father’s. Had one of his brothers in his family already discovered he'd married a Sharpest Wife, then she would have been granted deed to all that belonged to an uncle or a brother, whichever was next in the line of wealth. For now, she was traveling through The Film. She was seeking Clayan as Sharpest Wives did with their husbands. To be truthful, she did not seek him out of law, moral right, or expectation. She sought him as a Sharpest Wife did. Out of nature, need, hunger.
“Why do they call you Sharpness Wives?” The foreign maid queried. Ananda stilled the movement of her hands and gave an almost imperceptible sigh. The question was impolite and phrased poorly.
Ananda reigned in the hypersensitive beast that reared its head within her. The girl was tired, curled at her feet, and ready to give should there be a need. With this one, the circle of metal around her throat was unnecessary. Even though she had been stolen from the land they traveled to, Mari did not care for her homeland.
Law dictated that she wear the thick metal collar anyway.
“It is vulgar and it is old, this term,” Ananda answered as she stroked the tapestry she’d been working in her lap.
“Tell me?"
“It is because the Sharpness Wife longs to be pierced. Between her legs, she must be. At her throat she must be. We are born this way to ensure our kind survives. The Sharp within us has a strong will to live on.”
“And a Sharpest Wife?”
Ananda ran slender fingers through the girl’s coarse hair. “The Sharpest Wife longs to pierce. She discovers the Teeth of Life typically found only in our men.” Ananda grasped her chin and tilted it upward. “A Sharpest Wife is a hungry power, more ravenous and devastating than our men. A Sharpest Wife craves what she is owed.”
Grayson Reyes-Cole
author of Bright Star
When evil is done for the greater, a price must always be paid.
http://www.graysonreyescole.com/

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