Susan in Paris 4

The  photo-prompts from  23. October turned into a very long tale. I'll have to post it in more than one installment. I hope to publish a little part of the story every day.

 After the visit to the flea market they drove on, down interminable roads, through fields of sunflower and corn, the sun was bright and hot, and both Susan and Linda slept curled up in the backseat of the car. Susan held the still swaddled gargoyle cradled in her arm all the time.
 A rapping at the windows woke up Susan, Linda slept on. Mum and Dad spoke to a customs officer, showed him their their passports, answered No or Nein to a couple of questions, and were waved on.
"Did you get us a stamp?" Susan asked.
"No sorry, Susan, I forgot to ask."
"Oh, well," Susan said, "I'll just have to satisfy myself with the ones from the service stations."
 She and Linda each had a small play passport from a gas station back in Denmark. It had a data page in front with spaces for name and so on, and the rest were blank pages, much like a real passport, and you could have a stamp from most any service station and customs officers all over Europe. And when you returned home and showed the passport to the service station manager, you were given a small prize.
Not much later Dad left  the highway and they entered a small German town. It looked like something from a fairy tale, timber-framed houses with flowers everywhere. Dad obviously knew something, as he drove straight for an inn near the river. It was a charming little house, all the wooden parts were painted a dusty spring green the walls were white and the roof was covered with green tiles. This green white theme repeated itself in the awnings, the flower pots and even the covers on the beds. It was so like a castle, that they began feeling a bit royal the moment they went through the door.
 Susan and Linda did not agree on who were going to sleep in what bed, They both wanted the one with a canopy. But in the end Susan just gave in. "Oh you take the canopy bed, Linda. I'm going to lie on my bed by the window, and pretend I'm a werewolf waiting for the full moon to rise over the city."
 Linda smiled. "I'm going to be a Princess waiting for my knight on a white horse then. You've better take care. He has a silver sword and a wonderful shield."
 Susan sat down on the bed by the window and was about to unpack the gargoyle, when Mom came in. "Are you ready, girls? No, I can see that you're not. Comb your hairs, pack your tote bags and wash your hands. It seems there's some kind of moon festival going on in the city."
 "Yes Mom!" Linda and Susan said as one. And hurriedly they did as Mum had told them. Susan put the bestiary, her drawing stuff and after a short pause also the gargoyle into her tote bag. Linda of course packed the Mario game and drawing stuff as well.  Soon they were done and walked out on the terrace.
 They walked down to a park by the river. The drums could be heard from far off over the waters' sounds. They arrived at a big, free space, probably the market square. It was bordered by trees on three sides, and the river on the fourth. Today it was topped with fresh gravel and flagpoles were put up from which pennants with strange signs flew in the breeze.
 "That looks a lot like Chinese letters." Linda said. "Just like the writings on the rice bowls you brought home from China, Dad. Am I right?"
 Dad had been a sailor before he met Mum, and they had many wonderful things at home from his travels. Also rice bowls and chopsticks, which Dad had taught them to use.
 "Yes," Dad said, "they do look Chinese to me as well, but they could be Japanese as well. They look very much the same to me."
 A bell was struck, or maybe a gong. After a while a loud male voice rose above the crowds: They could see a man dressed like an old fashioned town crier, carrying a megaphone on a small platform in the other end of the field. "And now we give the stage over to a Japanese dancing and drumming team all the way from Australia: The Prosperous Mountain Lion Dance! Give them a hand!"

I'm almost sure the Kanji on their tops say "Prosperous Mountain"

 And to the applause from many hands the drummers came running in, They were dressed in very colourful clothes, flowery pants and yellow tank tops with Japanese signs on them. A boy and a girl began drumming away and another boy dressed in traditional black Japanese dress began playing a flute. After a short while two persons with monstrous lion heads entered the scene. They staged a play in time to the music, but the symbolism and meaning were lost on most of the spectators.
 The drummers stopped, the lions stood still, and the Town crier announced in his megaphone: "The Lion dance is traditionally a new year's dance, supposed to bring good luck. During the next part of the dance, the lions are going to bite some of you. They are not trying to hurt you, but to ward off evil spirits. Do not be afraid to touch the Lions or to be touched by them!"
 The boy with the flute began reciting something that sounded like a poem, it could have been a cooking recipe or a spell for all they understood. But as he recited, the drummers began drumming wildly, the lions reared and began a stirring dance, moving their lower jaws, snapping after the spectators and generally behaving like wild, dangerous beasts. 

 Susan stood still, lost in the splendor of the dance, when suddenly one of the lions sneaked up close and bit her soundly in the arm. Susan gave a short, shrill scream, and almost dropped her bag. She thought she saw a triumphant grin on the face of the lion before it whirled away to snap its painted jaws on another hypnotized victims.

...to be continued.

Susan in Paris 3

Now I've reached the words for Wednesday 16. oktober:

You can't judge a book by its cover; And/or The squeaky wheel gets the grease

And/or

For Sale.
Wedding Dress.
Never worn.


 When they hit the main road north of Paris, Linda once again concentrated on playing her Mario-game. Susan pulled the strange book from her bag, and took a second look at it. The covers were frayed, bent and worn. The book looked as if somebody had been reading it with ungentle hands and then in frustration thrown it against the wall, letting coffee cup or whatever beverage he preferred follow suit.
 As Susan already had found out, the book was written in German, it was hard to read it. She looked through the index, where the Latin names of the animals were printed in what Susan thought of as normal letters.
 She found the chapter on Gargoyles and looked up page 142.

Transcription see below ;)

 When Susan had read through this, they reached the last -- or rather first -- clue on Susan and Linda's "Look and See" list: A flea market in a suburb north of Paris. Susan suggested that they stopped for a cup of coffee and to look at the market. Surprisingly Mum and Dad said yes at once.
 Their first stop was the cafeteria. Mum and Dad had coffee while Susan wanted tea and Linda hot chocolate. All beverages were fine and the strangely shaped cakes were delicious.
 Susan quickly drank her tea, and slipped off to browse the stalls. Many of them were uninteresting. Farm produce, cheese and clothing, among these a gorgeous wedding dress with a sign in English saying: "For Sale - Wedding Dress - Never worn." Susan at once began making up a romantic story of a waiting bride and a lost lover, but then the further away stalls with brick-a-brack and old books awoke Susan's curiosity.
 She  looked and looked, and rarely touched any items until she reached the very last stall. This was obviously leftover from the renovation of one or possibly more churches. Processional crosses in mock silver, pictures of saints, none of whom were known to Susan, giant rosaries, stations of the Cross, holy water stoups, small stained-glass windows, stones from columns, chandeliers and strange vessels and paraments in bright and beautiful colours;  and gargoyles. Susan almost jumped. One of them opened an eye and looked at Susan.
 "Wow," she thought, "I must have read too much in that old book, I saw that gargoyle winking at me." Susan rubbed her eyes, and looked once more at the stone figurine. The eyes were jet black, probably some semi-precious stone. And then it happened again. One stony eyelid covered the black stone for just a second. Susan stretched out her hand. She caressed the stony wings, felt the tiny claws and admired the perfect scales on the lithe body.
 "La Gargouille te plait?" she heard a friendly voice ask.
 "Erm," Susan said, trying to understand. Plaitre, ... please? yes that was it. The man asked if she liked the gargoyle.
 Now for an answer. "Erm. Oui, la gargouille me plait beaucoup." Susan said slowly and distinctly. Her French had gotten a little better with  practice during the week in Paris, but she found it hard to remember the words, when she needed them.
 The man smiled at her and said something she did not grasp, except from "Church" and "Old".
 She shook her head and tried again: "Combien ça coute, la gargouille?" She said, hoping she asked for the price of the figurine, and fearing that it would cost much more than the few Francs still left in her pocket.
 "Normalement, les gargouilles sont tres chères, mais cette gargouille la est la seule que me reste de cette eglise, et les gargouilles se vents plus mieux en pairs. Tu peut me payer 10 francs pour elle!" Susan understood the 10 francs part, and emptied her pockets, She had 11 francs and 20 centimes.
 She gave them all to the smiling man, who wrapped the gargoyle in a square of soft, black velvet, then in a red linen cloth, and finally placed the ensuing bundle into a paper bag with drawings of churches on it.  Susan curtsied and sad "Merci beaucoup!" to the smiling man and made her way back to the café without further incidents. Mom asked her, what she had bought, and told her that she had been lucky to get the figurine that cheap.
 "He must have liked you - did you speak French to him?"
 "Yes, I did," Susan answered, "and I understood less than half of what he told me in return. But the important thing is, that he understood me." Susan concluded smiling. "And I got my gargoyle."


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Transcription of the chapter on Gargoyles:

 "Gargoiles are like golems usually made of magically animated or transformed stone. They have animal or chimera traits, and are often guardians of a place such as a cathedral or castle. They can also be depicted as vessels for demonic possession, or as a living species resembling statues."
 "The first Gargoile seems to have been brought to life by a medieval stonemason, who unconsciously infused his hate and lust into two gargoyles that later attacked the town of Vyones and finally killed him when he attempted to destroy them."
 "Not all Gargoyles are evil. Friendly gargoyles are known to battle monsters in order to protect humanity."

Poetry Monday :: Busy Days

 This Monday's theme is: Busy Days from Jenny at Procrastinating Donkey
 Also participating in this fun is Mimi, Merry Mae and last, but not least Diane - let's hope her technical difficulties are solved by now. 

  Well the theme is set.  Ready, start, rhyme!

An old person's goodbye. 

The busy days are left and gone,
All busy things are said and done,
I sit at home and wait for death.
I am now old and out of breath.

The busy days were sweet and many,
I savoured them, spent every penny
on cakes and sweets and travels too.
No reason to be sad and blue.
When soon I leave this earthly hull.
My life was never stale and dull.
The busy days were sweet and long.
No use for tears when I am gone.

I know, it's blue and sad, but there's something about Autumn and dark mornings (thanks for nothing DST) that makes me melancholy and black inside. Hopefully snow and Winter will come and paint everything in brighter colours once again.  
Next Monday's theme: Glasses from Diane. 

Susan in Paris 2

 Here's the first installment, using the prompts from October 9th. I even remembered the missing word curse from 2 October.
 Please forget that I rounded off the chapter on October 2nd with Susan and family arriving at home. Back to Paris we go! 

marble                     and/or                                   scald 
month                                                                    rake
ashamed                                                                simple
zealous                                                                   plain  
guide                                                                      grind
sassy                                                                       obsequious    


The next morning Susan woke in a bad temper. She always felt unhappy when a holiday was drawing to an end and they were returning to the plain, drab everyday life. They still had a whole month of summer holidays left. Susan hoped she would be able to go to Unicorn Farm soon again.
 The zealous innkeeper's assistant showed up in the doorway and asked in his atrocious English if the family was ready to "consume their small breakfast in ze restaurant?" Susan smiled to herself and almost bit her tongue trying not to make some sassy remark on the size of her breakfast. They followed him to the restaurant of the hotel - a small, plain room with tree tables laid for breakfast. An old woman silently worked behind a counter. Her job was obviously to grind the coffee beans and pour scalding hot water over them. Whatever, it was the best coffee Susan had had for a long time, and even dad, who normally did not drink coffee in the morning, usually had two cups. The obsequious waiter as always tried to make Susan and Linda have scrambled eggs, but just as every morning they feasted on croissants with liberal amounts of strawberry jam. The waiter satisfied himself with raking in their coins for an extra croissant, and told some jokes, that made Susan feel happy that she had not fallen for the temptation to use her language understanding spells.
 Dad paid the bill while mom, Susan and Linda carried their luggage down from the room. Linda's small suitcase opened and spilled marbles all over the entry hall. Linda went red from embarrassment. All the marbles were beautiful. Bought  by Linda in a wonderful stone shop-cum sculptor's studio. Susan had seen some marvelous Gargoyles there. Yes she was a bit obsessed with gargoyles, they were such poor looking critters, just like a magic experiment turned awfully wrong, and them ended up being petrified. Of course she knew it was not like this, She had seen the sculptor's hands and tools carving the bat like wings of yet another gargoyle. "21," Linda said, "we have all the marbles now." "Merci beaucoup," Susan said in her best French to the maids who had helped them collecting the marbles.
 Finally they were off, Dad pulled the old guide book from the glove compartment, and handed it to Mum. "Head for the Arc de Triomphe first. Then turn right into the 7st street, Avenue Foch ..." she said. Linda began playing her Watch and play game and Susan looked through the mess on the car seat after some paper to write on. She wanted to write a poem on Paris and the curse of the gargoyles. While looking she found some candy boxes, some of them were already torn open and the inside filled with her own and Linda's scribbles. She looked at it "A tall chimney with blue flags to the right; left lots of trees and a cast iron fence."
 Now she remembered, It was an old driving game. She and Linda took turns seeing a thing with Susan usually writing them down. They had played this game coming into Paris. Susan looked out of the window. Wondering whether they would pass the big chimney once again. And yes Bois de Bologne, the signpost said. Mum had told them that the cast iron fence fenced in the campsite in there. And there was the tall chimney with the blue flags. Susan made a check mark next to it and looked for the next clue. A peculiar telephone booth. Found and ticked off. Susan followed their clues backwards for a long time. Suddenly Dad said "Hey. Elin, why don't you say anything, where do I go from here?" Mom shook her head. "I don't know, this road is not on the map. I can't understand. We came this way in"  Dad stopped the car: Here, let me see!" He looked at the map, at the road-signs and back at the map. "Yes. Now I see, he said slowly," he looked rather lost and ashamed. "This book is quite old, almost 20 years to be exact. The road was built after the map was printed. We're lost ..."
 Before Dad could draw breath to swear over old maps or stupid newfangled roads, Susan opened her mouth: "No, we're not lost. Linda and I played our 'Look and See-game' when we arrived, and I have all the clues right here. Next one is a large greenhouse selling tomatoes."
 "It's over there," Mom said. "Brilliant Susan, let's follow your clues until we find a road-sign we can use."
 And they all looked for a broken flagpole, a blue roofed clock tower, an overfilled clothes line - not overfilled today, but Linda remembered the apple tree next to it, and clue by clue they left Paris behind.

Cheating :: NaNoWriMo WfW and Susan in France

Since October 2, I have not been posting Words for Wednesdays. Neither the prompts, nor any written words. I fully intended to amend my ways, but sore writing and neck muscles have stopped me from writing.

It's November 1st. Normally I don't do NaNoWriMo, but  ... Now I post my ideas, draft, synopsis (call it what you like - its short and sketchy whatever you call it) for chapters to Unicorn Farm using the prompts from October 9, 16, 23, and 30 and hope to flesh it out in the weeks to come.

Synopsis -  chapters of Susan in France

9. October:

marble
month
ashamed
zealous
guide
sassy

And/or

scald
rake
simple
plain
grind
obsequious
 
 Susan and her family prepares to leave the hotel in Paris, Packing the car, getting lost on their way through the city being saved by Susan and Linda's game notes from entering the city a week ago.
 An intermezzo with marbles on getting ready to leave the hotel.

16. October:

You can't judge a book by its cover And/or The squeaky wheel gets the grease

And/or

For Sale.
Wedding Dress.
Never worn.
 Driving northt through Paris, they stop at  a flea market in the suburbs.
 Susan reading the magic book to find out more about gargoyles etc
 She might buy a gargoyle at the flea market.

 23. October:

In the town on the German border where they stop for lunch break, a Japanese wizarding society is showing off Dragon dance or lion dance. Susan gets to know some of them.
They drive through Germany and stops somewhere to admire the full moon and sleep.
Susan lets the gargoyle loose. Werwölfe?

30 October:

mild
uncertainty
haircut
consultation
mystery
movie

And/or

joy
surface
agreement
freckle
fixture
solo
Next morning somewhere in Germany. Susan needs a haircut, they agree to watch a mystery movie while waiting for the ferry. All look forwards to getting home - only not Susan. They stop over at Unicorn Island.