Ink Notes #1

This is in response to Ink Notes #1

Obviously, I need the practice. Listening to the music, I saw water dripping from branches and went from there.

Sadie was crying and she wasn’t quite sure why. The tears welled up one after the other, and she watched them fall into murky pond. The clear drops slip off the end of her nose and she watched them with an almost curious detachment. A wind rustled the bare autumn trees around her, and the dark clouds rumbled. Sadie looked up, the muted light of the stormy sky reflecting in her clear eyes, and adding a glow to her pale skin. It was a thoughtful face with clear, blue eyes. People sometimes remarked to each other that it was a shame that Sadie was not really pretty. At the moment, Sadie was not thinking about being pretty or plain, she was watching the rain, her tears now dripping from the end of her chin, her willowy arms wrapped around her long legs. Like the sky, she had been gathering the tears drop by drop for sometime, little sadness and irritations until she could hold them in no longer and slipped out to the old garden to let them out privately. Letting her dark auburn hair fall over her face like a curtain she sobbed into her knees, feeling that she was a part of the weeping sky, that nature had drawn her there to fill her with its comfort and sympathy. Even as she cried, she relished the strange loneliness of it, the sound echoing sharply back from the stone pavilion in which she sat. At last, the tightness in her chest eased.

Sadie wiped her face with the edges of her sleeves and drew her long hair back, tying it in a knot to keep it out of her way, scooting the edge of little stone pavilion, cupping her hands and letting the runoff fill them, and washing her face with the refreshing coolness of the rain. The cool water soothed her eyes, irritated from her personal maelstrom, and she took a long deep breath, listening to the wet dripping of the leaves around her. The air was cool and tasted sweet and sharp and damp. The soft green arms of algae in the stagnate water was obscured again and again by the jump of the drops as they hit the glassy surface.

Across the pool a black statue, a dancing pan, looked to be crying from mirth as water dripped down his pointed beard and curly hair, as it made a river of his wavy goat legs, and a made a fountain of his little pan pipe. His expression was witty and wise, and there was a look in his eyes as if he knew what was troubling Sadie better than she herself did, as if he could see the woes and triumphs of the woman she was soon to become.

“Being thirteen is harder than I thought it would be,” she said softly, ordering her thoughts into words and then trying them out in the open air, the sound of them veiled from the world by the patter of the storm. The clouds rumbled again, but this time the sound was softer. The summer storm was leaving her, and the tears had been poured out. Curiously, she reached down to dip her fingers into the rain fresh water of the pool at her feet, enjoying the feel of the water against her fingers.

“Sadie!”

Sadie looked up to see mother standing just beyond the trees. “Sadie!”

Sadie stood up and shook out her clothes, running her hands over her face, as if to smooth away its expression. “I’m here mother!”

Her mother was beautiful, her face a little wider, her brow a little higher, her blue eyes clouded with maturity. “What are you doing out there, Sadie? Is . . . is someone with you?” The woman peered further into the trees, her brow momentarily furrowed.

“No one, mother,” Sadie replied, her face a picture of innocence, picking her way through the trees up to her mother, who embraced her impulsively.

“Of course there isn’t,” replied the woman, looking into the young face, sighing softly and then adding to herself, “But soon enough.”

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I know I've posted about this book twice already, but this is just in case someone who has not read it and does not want to read the spoilers is curious.

Hunger Games follows the story of Katniss, a tough cookie whose main priority in life is providing for her family. In this world, a North America that has been torn apart by natural disaster, and then civil rebellion, only end up under the thumb of the modern metropolis, the Capitol; life is rough for those on the fringe, like Katniss, but sweet and full of technology and distraction for those in the Capitol. I found this to be a perfect illustration of how the 1st world seeks diversion while the 3rd world countries dies slowly of hunger, which is a key theme. This book is deep, engrossing, and ridiculously entertaining. I found the characters easy to identify with, and the dark story told with just enough touches of despair to be effective, but not so much that I closed the book feeling depressed. I look forward to the squeal.