Wrecking Ball

Stealing is bad... except when you're a writer.

For my fiction writing class, I had to develop a story from a stolen first line. Mine came from Ursula K. Le Guin.

"Wrecking Ball"

Worms shot like subway trains through the dirt of gardens, among the writhing roots of roses, while swallows shot like fighter jets through the dazzling digits of daylight and while minnows shot like brown bullets through the plishing plashing pool and while a tiny gray rodent shot like a wine cork through the undergrowth, not quite invisible to the hawk that shot like a wrecking ball through the canopy.

But there were no subway trains.

At that time there were no fighter jets, no bullets, no corks or wine, no wrecking balls. The worms simply did as worms did, which was all that worms knew how to do, and centuries later when subway cars came along one of them had the bright idea to impersonate a worm.

And one day when there was a war to be fought, someone thought it might be useful if people could shoot around the sky like swallows and they armed themselves with bullets that cut right through the sky like airborne minnows.

When someone learned that the nectar of grapes could be fermented and was good for making the head spin, they bottled it up and decided to stopper it with a little round porous thing that would shoot out of the bottleneck like a doomed rodent.

But at that time there was nothing like a wrecking ball. There were humans, but back then it wasn’t the same thing. Besides, there were only two of them, and they were at peace with the worms and the swallows and the minnows and the mice, and even the thrashing, crashing, swooping, scooping hawk.

They were like twin towers, the man and the woman, tall and sparkling side by side for each other and for the world and for God.

------------------------

I'm coming up on my 300th post here at Blogger! How to celebrate? I'd love to bake you all a fabulous yellow loaf of banana bread, but since I can't figure out how to upload baked goods I'll have to come up with something else. How would you, my readers (if you are still out there, you non-commenting worm-toed ninnymuffins, you), like to celebrate Post #300?

Peace, love, and Claymore (which tragically refuses to open),
Miss Rex