#inklingschallenge2023

[teabooksandsweets]

Inklings Challenge 2023 // Team Tolkien

"The Wasteland" aka "September"

[smokeyloki]

Alas

My inklings challenge story will not be completed today. But! I have every intention of finishing it up within the week.

I hope everyone else is doing well with their stories! I'm going to wait until mine is done before I start reading all the other entries.

[lover-of-the-starkindler]

Look to the Birds of the Air

Inklings Challenge 2023 Team Chesterton: Intrusive Fantasy

A quiet day for mother and son may be more than it seems

Look to the Birds of the Air @inklings-challenge

by Meltintalle

It was a quiet day. A cloudy day, with the world muffled in a soft gray cloak, and tiny bits of moisture flecking the grass. Thousands of worlds were reflected in miniature, each alike and yet unique. Mary brushed a branch on her way back from the mailbox, scattering the droplets to reform anew elsewhere. Her son skipped at her side carrying the nature magazine he'd been watching for since the arrival of the previous one but his eye was caught by a wave of migratory birds shifting positions on a nearby maple tree. Their soft chatter was kin to waves in the shore, an everswelling roll of sound.

Mary lingered in the doorway a moment, caught by the mood of the slow fog, then closed the door and returned to her world of bills to pay and phone calls to make. She caught herself looking out the window and wondering if there was a world somewhere where she would be doing some heroic deed instead.

A clatter from the kitchen shattered her daydream.

"What are you doing?" she asked, finding her son chasing a spoon across the floor. His magazine was open on the table and surrounded by a motley selection of ingredients.

"I have to feed the troops," he explained, emerging triumphant from behind the table leg.

Peanut butter, crackers, and sunflower seeds would have to multiply in an unnatural fashion, and besides…

"What troops?"

He pointed out the kitchen window toward the maple tree where the birds were tucked together for warmth. "Don't you see them? They patrolled here all summer and now they're on to their next posting."

"An army, is it?" asked Mary.

"Oh, yes. We don't even know half their missions–they're top secret."

"I see." Mary looked down at the magazine with a bemused smile. She saw the connection between the project on the glossy spread and the peanut butter, but the army of birds was less easily explained.

"Did you know they migrated?" asked her son, round face serious and concentrated on his task.

"Every year."

"It's amazing. All those miles. I couldn't do it." 

True enough. Some days he could barely sit through the ride to his grandmother's house. "Maybe if you were part of a troop–like the birds?"

His eyes gleamed with the new idea as he dropped generous dollops of peanut butter to be mixed with the other ingredients. "Maybe."

Satisfied no further silverware would be dropped, Mary returned to her to-do list. In the other world perhaps feeding the birds was an important endeavor, but here it was a few seeds and a picture.

It was twilight when the bird food was ready, and Mary helped her son carry the tray outside. The cloud cover had torn, scattering glowing pewter across the horizon. Wet grass clung to her feet and Mary watched a wave of birds rise and spiral across the sunset.

Maybe it was more than a few seeds. Maybe it was a child, happily occupied for a few hours.

We don't even know half their missions–they're top secret.

Maybe, she told herself. Maybe it was true.

[teabooksandsweets]

Inklings Challenge 2023 // Team Tolkien

Moodboard for: the protagonist

[teabooksandsweets]

Inklings Challenge 2023 // Team Tolkien

"What Fallen Leaves Are"

[teabooksandsweets]

A short – but finished – entry for this year's Inklings Challenge. These are ten drabbles serving as glimpses into the story I have planned, and of which I have begun (and intend to finish, and post later on) two different versions. Everything went a little different from my original expectations and plans, but a challenge is a challenge and I decided to make the best of it. So I finished a "miniature" version of sorts, rather than nothing. Some elements are alluded to that will appear in the longer stories.

Team Tolkien // Secondary World Fantasy // Visit the Imprisoned – Shelter the Homeless – Clothe the Naked // Finished – 1000 Words @inklings-challenge

This is not the story as told by the girl who was said to be dark-leaved; that will be a longer story, penned by said girl in her study in the tower.

She has fire and shoes — she knows what these things are now. She is warm, she is at home.

She knows many other things and will tell her tale in time.

This is also not the shorter story, as told not from too far away, which will follow in due time.

This is a glimpse into a faraway world and two lands, both not too far away.

Come along into this world.

Oh, do not ask “What is it?” — let us go and make or visit.

Let us go now, you and I —

and the bird (large, dark, a friend) will show the way, to meet a boar (Great and brown), a doe, a hare, a (strong, brown) bear, the moon, lamp and woman, wolf and man, and another man, who has a beard, and a princess or a prisoner (from what I have heard).

Her first friend in October — the girl's friend, in that land — will show the way.

Let us go.

The Princess in the Tower has shoes and fire, is not warm, is not at home.

The Prisoner in the Tower has no comfort but her conscience. (A clean conscience is no comfort in this place. Contrition is.)

If imprisonment is not undeserved, can liberation be deserved?

Her greatest grief is loneliness. The doe (water-coloured) knows, the woman (by the lamp-post) knows.

The bird (large, dark, the girl's first friend in October) knows snd leads the way, to make a visit, if a visit is her need.

(The damsel in the tower doesn't know; the girl will soon find out.)

For a girl (dark-leaved, they say) who knows neither shoes nor fire, a cuppa is a strange thing, especially if there's tea in it (— especially if there's brandy in the tea).

Pickled walnuts are another surprise if you grew up in a warm, wet forest with only fresh fruit and ripe nuts to eat.

But the greatest surprise is how a fire's warmth feels on cold skin in October air, in a stable, in strange company. Company that looks neither up to you (though you come from the forest) nor down on you (for you are dark-leaved).

Strange comfort.

The Great boar makes no promises, but he speaks the truth. He said the girl would see her tree again.

(Not yet, not yet!)

Said the girl would meet her friends again (vixen, and robin and pale blue eggs).

Said the girl ought to follow him, out of the forest, into the land beyond.

(“The wasteland!” said the girl. The boar accepted this term as hers. The bird called this place “the middle of October.”)

But what was the girl to do?

What could a (dark-leaved) girl do?

Good deeds? Great deeds? (A “naked child” in the middle of October?)

Ground like water, only dry — cold ground, that's what shoes are for. (Are there shoes for breasts? For hands? Ears? the girl wonders. A cape, perhaps, as winter-women wear. No such things in a green-leaved forest.)

The Great boar had brought the fallen leaves — sunlit leaves, golden leaves. Change scares the people of the forest. The dark-leaved children scare them, too, for they are not scared of change.

Following a hot cuppa in the stable, the girl received a cape against the cold. Out of plain kindness — and of good use for a later kindness, also plain.

The doe is the colour of water, and the moon is the colour of milk. (The hare is of the moon, but the girl doesn't know.)

A friend of the bird (her friend!) is the doe. Never seen from the forest, is the moon.

To the tower they lead — to visit the Prisoner.

(“Is she dark-leaved, too?”

“Is that what you call those who have dine horrid things?”

“It's what my people call those who might yet do that.”

“Then we are all dark-leaved except for the Princess, for she already has.”)

But leaves turn dark before they fall.

Every spring come green leaves, unless it is always spring. (So if it is always spring, it can never be spring again.)

The girl wears a crown of dark leaves, but the Princess' head is bare.

The doe leads the way up the moonlit stairs, leads them to the Prisoner.

“Who's there?” a light voice asks (an aged voice of a young throat).

“A friend — and me.”

“Come what for?”

“To see a tree in winter.”

“Oh — is it winter again? No wonder I'm so cold!”

(It's the middle of October, but for the Princess comes another spring.)

In her forest she was dark-leaved.

“But really, it's the middle of October,” she says to her friends. “My spring will come again.”

“You will want to go home.”

“I wish I knew how!”

“What — how?”

“Where!”

“Oh.”

“The forest is not my home. I will go there again (for the Great boar always tells the truth) but it will not be my home, for spring will never come in a forest that is always green.”

Spring comes after winter, after fall.

And yet, one woman's prison is another woman's castle, and one woman's desolation is another woman's solitude.

“Take my cape, for it is cold outside.”

“It's cold in here and you wear but a few leaves around your hips.”

“The fire is warm, you are cold now from within. (I know someone who can warm you with a cuppa tea.) I your woollen dress you are more naked than I am in my leaves. Take the cape and bring it back to the man in the stable, and thank him from me.”

“And then?” asks the Princess.

“Go into the forest, and find out how to turn dark leaves green again.”

And so the women parted ways.

[teabooksandsweets]

Inklings Challenge 2023 // Team Tolkien

"The Forest"

[teabooksandsweets]

Cheerio. Looks like the way to go. 🖋

I am curious to see where my story'll go, because it appears to be going quite on its own. It's like reading, except I am writing it.

[teabooksandsweets]

Concerning the Inklings Challenge, I would like to say that these last few months (& more actually) have been highly unusual and unexpected in their ways, and for much of the time I was and still am with limited access to the internet & electricity.

I feared not being able to participate, then it seemed I would get unlimited access in time, and now it doesn't seem definite.

However, I WILL participate. I will write a lot by hand and type it up near the end of the Challenge and upload and post in time! But I might be less active in the time between than in past years, though there WILL be some posting from me anyhow! I just thought I ought to explain beforehand should I appear very quiet or inactive or some such.

Very excited for it all 💖