Mishalak

Yesterday we had one of those perfect Colorado days. I went outside just after noon and found the sky to be perfectly blue without a cloud in it. The temperature was quite good for winter at about 14°C (57°F), I could just barely see my breath at times. There was a smell in the air like winter; distant hillsides covered in snow melting just a bit, a slow gentle wind over cold ground. It made breathing feel like when I would put an icicle in my mouth when I was a youth. Cold, but pleasant.

     It was the same sort of day south and west of Pskov when Raina came to her great-uncle's estate. He had died, against many people's expectations, peacefully in his sleep two days earlier. Many relatives that had been excluded from his house for years would gather and tell polite lies about how sad they were that he was gone. Probably the saddest person at his wake was Raina, though many relatives muttered about her having come out of this very well indeed, since she would inherit the estate of Ivan Radoslav Obeczan.
     She stood much of the day a solid bulwark covered in black velvet against the hoards of relatives both close and distant. She quietly fended off veiled appeals for money from the less sensitive and gracefully absorbed the kind platitudes of sympathy from the more considerate. He had been an unconventional sort, the black sheep of her paternal grandfather's generation. She thought about this as the endless stream of cousins, nephews, nieces, and the assorted hangers on filed past her after having made sure the old goat was really dead in the front parlor.
     "Conformists. Dutiful servants of the temples, good workers with comfortable to good jobs, and a careful number of children as proscribed. We are a well off family, though aside from Ivan we would never be mistaken for a leading one. They saw his wealth and clucked their tongues that so much should come to someone who would do so many unacceptable things like slumming with the Otrok class. Do any of them ever think that maybe it was because he was unafraid to do almost anything that he became wealthy? Probably not."

Jonah looked at the selections in the autocase without much interest. The brightly colored packages each trying to out do the others with enticing pictures and colors. But the soldierly rows of food in the convenience market were not terribly interesting. He would much rather have brought something from his own kitchen, but he had not felt like cooking last night and now he would pay the price.

What to choose? Another gaily wrapped packaged of southwest style spring rolls, ready to be thawed and cooked in the microwaves at work? Work. That was the reason he wasn't terribly interested in the food offered by the deserted store's automated shelves this early in the morning. Work where the great machines clanked roared and shuddered as they turned out mile after mile of plastic pipe. Where he would move about his solitary rounds checking the machinery and doing maintenance. Maybe today he might glimpse one of his four co-workers. Though probably not.

He sighed and leaned his head against the cool coated plastic. He ought to be grateful to have a job that paid a bit more than usual pittance. But he was lonely each day at work, walking the buildings devoid of people. Spring rolls. Choose to keep working, because the alternative is worse, and who knows, perhaps there would be something interesting on offer from the cable tonight. A brightly packed bit of entertainment that might make him forget that tomorrow would be another day of work.

Lars waits by the front door finishing his toast like a tall bony thing. A black clad flamingo or something. You know a what's it, a metaphor sort of thing. He's just licking his fingers as Dave comes down the stairs in a black turtleneck and jeans.

"All set?" he asks his glowering companion with a grin.

"No, I'm just ready to get this over."

"Right, follow me then. And don't worry nothing really bad will happen."

As they go out the front door Dave says to himself, "Why do I not believe you?"

Ten minutes later Lars is pushing the squeaky wheeled garden cart over partially frozen ruts with Dave's help. His crow seems not to mind to rough ride too much, he's still determinedly perched on his friend's shoulder. Dave is huffing and puffing out little clouds. The morning sun is just starting to remove the frost edging from the spruce trees.

Dave asks, "So Huff Where... Wheeze.. Are we.. going?"

"To Neversummer," he replies rolling the word around like he's tasting something golden.

"What? The national park is miles away!"

"No, no. Neversummer Distillery, that's it right up ahead."

The cart comes to a stop in front of a weather dulled chain link fence and gate. Dave catches his breath and then looks up as Lars fiddles with the padlock and his big ring of keys. There are various signs on the gate. "Neversummer Distillery, Home of the finest Colorado Whisky" "No Trespassers" "Keep Out" "Intruders Will Be Shot" "This means you Lars Redgrave!"

"For some reason I’m getting a bad feeling about this."

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The day is barely dawning, the first light setting a brilliant glow on the high mountain snowfields. Down below a small town sits tightly squeezed between a narrow lake and the steep hills of the valley. A early morning fog is rising off the still waters of the lake drifting past a slightly battered standard green highway sign stating this to be, "Ithill, Elevation 9,154 feet". All is quiet in the idyllic scene of the few dozen aging houses and storefronts.

Except for a squeaking coming from one wheel of a garden cart. It is being pushed by a reedy young man wearing a long black duster. He apparently uses the same hairstyling techniques as Einstein as his mass of sandy hair sticks up every which way. On one of his shoulders a crow sits rather calmly watching the scenery go by with apparent interest.

He turns his head towards you and says as he continues to push the cart, "I find that the best time of day for impractical schemes is first thing in the morning. That is if you actually want some chance of success." He leaves the cart laden with kegs, rope, wire, a bolt cutter, and various other implements to walk up to the back door of one of the better kept houses. He takes out a large ring of keys and lets himself in the back door before continuing in a quieter voice. "Which of course assumes you want to succeed. Most of why it works better in the morning is sobriety and surprise. Speaking of which..." He lets himself into the bedroom on the second floor and holds pulls out an old fashion horn with a squeeze bulb on the end and holds it near the visible ear of someone buried in blankets on the bed.

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I have an idea. My idea is that I could post a vignette a day to my journal to improve my fiction writing and writing in general. Plus keep everyone here entertained. So hopefully this will be the first of many.

The soil moved for the first time in tens of dozens of years. The rich, but pebbly loam being dug by a garden spade. The bottle waited with its charge of mystery. It once had been marked with a white paint symbol that would have reminded the enchanter what he had filled it with. Now two centuries of slow aging had slowly reduced the paint to flakes held to the surface of the bottle by the dirt alone. Would it be at last found? The square glass pulled from the ground so long after it was buried to save it from fire and the prying inquires of the Bóginki. If it were found might someone at last drink the fine liquor stored within it and unknowingly gain the spirit that lay dormant in it? The next few minutes would tell as the gardener continued to dig in the warming vegetable patch.