Friday, January 6, 2012

"Each Heart Has Its Reasons, No Matter How Still"

Hair in the bathroom sink. Muddy footprints on the tile. A mirror smudged and smeared. Tatiana swiped stinging eyes. Papa would've grumbled about feckless foreigners, their family tree's weakened branch, how the old country held many suitable mates.

But she'd fallen for Lucas like a body into a grave. Never mind his preoccupations with astronomy, romping monthly in the woods, eating solid food. Tatiana loved him, despite the dictates of her people's prejudice.

The bathroom's tiny window framed a harvest moon, fat and full. She grimaced at it, taking a rag to the mirror -- which reflected only an empty bathroom.

Postscript: To listen to audio of this and other stories, please download Season One of the I Saw Lightning Fall podcast here.

7 comments:

Jackie Jordan said...

A love-struck heart is like a dove with a tattered wing, barely able to fly yet determined to be aloft in the sky. Forgiveness of a mate’s transgressions is but an attempt to prove that true love will be not be overcome by faults. But to bond with a foreigner against the clan’s wishes is like the dove falling in love with an eagle; such differences can never be forgiven. Blood is thicker …

This is so much fun! Thanks, Loren ...

Loren Eaton said...

Glad you liked it, Jackie!

Chestertonian Rambler said...

Love this! I actually wrote another piece of flash-fic a week or so ago. I may whittle it down and post it soon.

Chestertonian Rambler said...

You may appreciate this amusing shirt, speaking of vampires:

http://shirt.woot.com/shirts/vampires?utm_source=Daily+Digest&utm_campaign=31899dd0f5-Daily+Digest+-+20120110+-+Shirt.Woot&utm_medium=email#tracked

Appropriately for all the genre fiction community except you, it also despises Edward Cullen.

Loren Eaton said...

As you can probably tell from the rejiggering of the sidebar that I'm trying to do more of these little shorts. They're a fun exercise.

Awesome shirt, by the way. True, I don't exactly despise Edward Cullen, but I do think sparkling was a stupendously stupid idea.

Also, this.

Chestertonian Rambler said...

There's also an excellent Buffy-Edward mashup, in which Edward does his normal Edward Cullen thing (creepy, self-centered, &c.) and Buffy reacts the way Buffy would react (you're obsessed, you're kinda scaring me, oh you're a vampire, I'll stake you now.) Nicely edited--they really pull it off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwM3GvaTRM

Loren Eaton said...

Nicely done, especially with the scenes from Harry Potter snuck in at the end there.