10th Daughter of Memory: The Short and the Long of it

The Short of it:

Tenth Daughter of Memory Theme this week:  White Lies Belie a Darker Truth.  When I read that theme I could think of only one thing.  A short snippet of a song that my husband and daughter recorded a while back.  You may not think it fits and that's fine.  And, I'm not sure if you should really vote for it because I didn't write it.  I'm just sharing it for something different and, like I said, it was the first thing I thought of when I read the theme




The Long of it:
The other day I was sitting in my living room while my son was drawing in his sketch book and my daughter was working on a poem or a song; she writes both frequently.  Brian was either playing his guitar or researching music online.  It struck me because I did not come from a creative family.  As a family of engineers, there was no encouragement in the creative process.  To be fair, there was no discouragement either.  My parents supported my decision to go into theater but I think it's telling that I'm in one of the more non-creative jobs in that field.

The few posts I have done for 10th Daughter of Memory have been so much fun.  I thought I would die of embarrassment because my writing is so poor; I have little experience with that genre.  So, I did what anyone in my position would do, I asked my creative family.  They have offered great suggestions for the previous posts I have submitted.  I even wrote a poem along the theme of White Lies Belie a Darker Truth and both my daughter and husband nixed is as too cliche.  And they were right.  So in full disclosure, my 10th Daughter of Memory posts are not entirely my own which I guess is why I feel it's okay to post a song I had nothing to do with.  And that is the darker truth...

The Tenth Daughter of Memory: Neptune's Payback

So, I'm entering the Tenth Daughter of Memory again, this time fully intending to vote!  I have to give a shout-out to my daughter who gave me part of the idea and the first lines for this.  For more 10th Daughter Stories, click here.

NEPTUNE'S PAYBACK:

“A hurricane?”


“A hurricane?! That’s the best you could come up with?”

“TWO hurricanes?”

“My brother would swallow the hurricane and burp it back up just to laugh at my incompetence…Do you smell salt?”

Turning around, Neptune spied his wife, Salacia, shimmering in the doorway. Her flashing blue/grey eyes told him that she had heard some, if not all, of his conversation. The eels wrapping her body next to the seaweed and shells woven into her hair made her anger all that more beautiful. Knowing that she wouldn’t say anything in front of his assistant, Fons, Neptune just gave her a sheepish, ‘caught me’ look.

Turning to glide away, she paused, “Oh, your son, Triton will be joining us for…”

“Hellooooo! Anyone home?” The voice interrupted Salacia and soon Triton, newly shaven and in a spectacular coral necklace, swooshed in with his ever-present dolphin.

“I just love what you’ve done with the place,” Triton exclaimed, water kissing Salacia before turning to his father. Glancing from Neptune to Salacia, Triton guessed immediately.

“Ooooo, Mommy and Daddy are fighting again!” Triton turned to his dolphin, “Be a dear and go help Sally in the kitchen.”

The dolphin and Salacia slithered away as Triton turned to Neptune.

“What is it this time?”

“He took Vesta! Knowing full-well she was mine.” Neptune could barely get the words out. “He knew I had been planning for weeks to seduce her and take her for myself so he had to have her first.”

“Well, perhaps you need to be a little more discreet in your bragging. Uncle J wouldn’t have known you wanted her if you hadn’t been shooting your mouth off about your impending conquest.” Triton admonished as he tidied up his father’s wardrobe. “And, please, blue coral is so last year, daddy, we need to update your wardrobe.”

Neptune loved his son but never really understood his…well, his mermanishness. And yet, Neptune always felt he could be himself around Triton and he valued that more than anything.

“Jupiter always thinks he can take anything he wants: I’m god of the earth, mom always liked me best, here take the oceans.” Neptune whined. “This time, I’m going to get him though. And, not with a hurricane.”

Fons just shrugged. He thought it was a good idea.

“Okay, now I know why mummy has been redecorating.” Triton laughed to himself before turning to his Neptune . “To humiliate the big guy, you’ll need to do it on a grand scale, a spectacle for everyone to see. Something that will make him wish to be mortal so he could die.”

Neptune laughed at how much his son resembled his brother Jupiter. Neptune sat down at a table to plot. He put his head down just as Salacia appeared and slammed down a cup of hemlock in front of him.

Looking up, Neptune stared straight into the eyes of Socrates, his teacher.

“Sleeping again Aristophanes?” Socrates smirked as Aristophanes shook off his dream. Socrates brought his ever-present stick up over his head as if to strike again but thought better of it.

Aristophanes groaned inwardly. “I, uh…” Aristophanes didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. He definitely didn’t want to be there, under the flashing eyes of his teacher, the greatest mind in Greece.

“Perhaps Plato would care to answer?” Socrates turned abruptly toward his star pupil with a wide smile.

Aristophanes rubbed his eyes and nursed his sore ego, muttering: “Yes, let the star pupil answer, he’ll know it, he knows everything. No wonder Socrates likes him so much, he probably goes home and writes down everything he’s heard here.” Aristophanes was sick of everything, this school, not knowing the answers, this new-fangled method of teaching. Who asks questions in order to teach? “I’ll show them. Socrates thinks he’s so smart. I’ll show him. I’ll do something so spectacular…but what?”

It would be difficult to bring down such a man as Socrates, for while Aristophanes didn’t think he was the wisest man in Athens, he knew he wasn’t the dumbest. “If I could just make people see how annoying he really is.”

Aristophanes eyes flashed as a seed of an idea popped into his head. The beginnings of story, maybe best told on stage in front of all of Athens…yes that’s it. Total humiliation…Socrates will be begging for hemlock.

Aristophanes stared straight ahead, his mind tumbling with ideas, his eyes fixated on the story in front of him. Socrates continued questioning his students, ignoring Aristophanes, and never realizing that this was the beginning of the end.

Tenth Daughter of Memory: A First Time Post

This is my first attempt at a Tenth Daughter of Memory Post.  The subject is "A Cat May Look at a King."  For other posts and for the blog itself, click here

Well, here goes:

A Cat May Look at a King  

Cold, clammy night yanks the coarse grey blanket over him as rosy fingered dawn tries to draw it back

Through streets bubble wrapped in cobble stones, a skinny, sure-footed cat skirts half-dead drunks and slips by hags who sweep out the night’s remains.

Slowly, a city awakes, rising unsteadily to its feet like a newborn calf.

“It’ll be busy for sure today.”
“You won’t see nothin’, there’d be too many”
“Still, I wouldn’t miss it.”
“I can’t go it’s not right.”

The symphony of day begins its first movement.

The mangy pile of bones and fur makes its way north and then east pushing through smells as thick as molasses of day old fish and beer mixed with feces and perfumed with the stench of blood

Yellow sunlight finds a group of men standing outside a prison, anxiously waiting for someone else to take over their task.   The cat ignores them and continues on finding an immense stone structure across town.

Soon the streets fill with men, women, children…there are too many, too many.  A carriage rattles over the cobblestones pushing its way through, parting the crowd like the red sea.

As the cat climbs staircase, the faint sound of drums wafts through the building.  The woman, not sure that she had heard it, looks up from her morning prayers. 

The drum beats increase in volume and now the woman is sure.  She looks down at her hands, now wrinkled and old.  They used to be so smooth and pretty, she thinks.  The envy of all… Her thoughts drop as the knowledge that her past is dead sinks deep into her soul.  Looking up, she notices the cat staring at her son, already showing the disease of his older brother, another dauphin.

The woman falls to her knees, “The king is dead, long live the king.”