See here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4skIeaShLZkcERlTXQ3SnJhZjA
Soaking a book underwater! After leaving it in there a day or two we'll update you with further results. :)
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Little Mermaid inspired scene
Sooooooooooooooooooooooo this just came into my brain last night and I had to write it up! Unlike the Disney version I imagine it’d take place around Jamaica-ish (or a fantasy equivalent). I’d definitely have to do WAY more research about the area and culture and imagine how I’d think that would influence the underwater culture, but hey! It’s a thought!
This is just a scene without a whole story to accompany it, but if you know the little mermaid it's implied! The Andersen version is about her wanting BOTH to marry the prince AND to have an immortal soul; the Disney version is JUST about wanting to marry the prince, so this one will be JUST about wanting an immortal soul. I’ll see if a romance crops up in my brain or not, but for now this is it as far as writing goes cause it’s definitely not on my list of writing priorities.
True story: my sister and I literally took a book I disliked and put it underwater so I could see how it would behave. I’ll link the video as soon as I put it up!
*
“Do you even know what ‘witch’ means?” the sea witch asked me. She traced a shell-like fingernail across the spine of one of her bound collections, mouthing the foreign title’s pronunciation.
A tremor wriggled its way through my body, making the webbing between my fingers flutter in the current. “It means…a woman who does magic,” I said, my gills contracting unevenly. I folded my arms tightly around my dark brown, scaled torso and flushed my fins forward so I could back away – subtly, or so I thought. “Evil magic,” I added in a mutter, avoiding her eyes.
The sea witch turned away from her shelves of accumulated records and gave me a long, unimpressed stare. Then she turned back to her books. “No.”
I waited silently, aware that I was very vulnerable, alone in her territory, asking for her help. I shook my head quickly making my clouds of floating, tightly curled, seaweed-textured hair billow around me. “What does it mean?”
“Well, scholars can never agree. People don’t keep track of their words, you see.” She pulled out several of those bound collections I recognized to be human books, handling them with a delicate touch. “A human once theorized it came from the Old English word wita, ” she explained, pointing to a certain page and then reading from it. “Which means… ‘to know.’ I personally liked that, but…”
The sea witch lifted another book, letting it drift in front of her. The shifting patterns of light drifting through from the surface played across the swishing page ends. “More likely, according to another humanic record, Deutsches Wörterbuch, it’s derived from the Proto-Indo-European root ‘weik-,’ meaning ‘to separate,’ or perhaps, as they say here – ” She delicately thumbed through another book, careful not to further rip its fragile pages. “ – ‘weg-,’ which means ‘to rouse’ or ‘wake.’ Or in other words,” she finished, squeezing the pages slowly closed and back into their unnaturally flat, compressed shapes, “everything we do, everything we are, is about knowledge.”
“Knowledge,” I repeated blankly, my gills pulling oxygen from the water flow around me more consistently now that my heart beat had slowed.
“Yes,” the witch answered firmly. She spun slowly through the water toward me, keeping her eyes locked on mine even while she turned. “Simply put, we teach. You think you came to me because you want magic. But really, you want to be awakened. You want me to separate the truth from lies. You know that I have studied humans in the past, and have heard of these ‘immortal souls’ your grandmother spoke of.”
My throat felt oddly full. Grandmer had told me how humans cried, but we could not, and so we suffered more. I had been confused, but I wondered if this feeling was that…the desire to cry.
I pursed my lips. “Yes.”
Her eyes scanned me up and down, evaluating, searching for I don’ know what.
“Come,” she said finally. Her fins powered her upward. “I will teach you.”
This is just a scene without a whole story to accompany it, but if you know the little mermaid it's implied! The Andersen version is about her wanting BOTH to marry the prince AND to have an immortal soul; the Disney version is JUST about wanting to marry the prince, so this one will be JUST about wanting an immortal soul. I’ll see if a romance crops up in my brain or not, but for now this is it as far as writing goes cause it’s definitely not on my list of writing priorities.
True story: my sister and I literally took a book I disliked and put it underwater so I could see how it would behave. I’ll link the video as soon as I put it up!
*
“Do you even know what ‘witch’ means?” the sea witch asked me. She traced a shell-like fingernail across the spine of one of her bound collections, mouthing the foreign title’s pronunciation.
A tremor wriggled its way through my body, making the webbing between my fingers flutter in the current. “It means…a woman who does magic,” I said, my gills contracting unevenly. I folded my arms tightly around my dark brown, scaled torso and flushed my fins forward so I could back away – subtly, or so I thought. “Evil magic,” I added in a mutter, avoiding her eyes.
The sea witch turned away from her shelves of accumulated records and gave me a long, unimpressed stare. Then she turned back to her books. “No.”
I waited silently, aware that I was very vulnerable, alone in her territory, asking for her help. I shook my head quickly making my clouds of floating, tightly curled, seaweed-textured hair billow around me. “What does it mean?”
“Well, scholars can never agree. People don’t keep track of their words, you see.” She pulled out several of those bound collections I recognized to be human books, handling them with a delicate touch. “A human once theorized it came from the Old English word wita, ” she explained, pointing to a certain page and then reading from it. “Which means… ‘to know.’ I personally liked that, but…”
The sea witch lifted another book, letting it drift in front of her. The shifting patterns of light drifting through from the surface played across the swishing page ends. “More likely, according to another humanic record, Deutsches Wörterbuch, it’s derived from the Proto-Indo-European root ‘weik-,’ meaning ‘to separate,’ or perhaps, as they say here – ” She delicately thumbed through another book, careful not to further rip its fragile pages. “ – ‘weg-,’ which means ‘to rouse’ or ‘wake.’ Or in other words,” she finished, squeezing the pages slowly closed and back into their unnaturally flat, compressed shapes, “everything we do, everything we are, is about knowledge.”
“Knowledge,” I repeated blankly, my gills pulling oxygen from the water flow around me more consistently now that my heart beat had slowed.
“Yes,” the witch answered firmly. She spun slowly through the water toward me, keeping her eyes locked on mine even while she turned. “Simply put, we teach. You think you came to me because you want magic. But really, you want to be awakened. You want me to separate the truth from lies. You know that I have studied humans in the past, and have heard of these ‘immortal souls’ your grandmother spoke of.”
My throat felt oddly full. Grandmer had told me how humans cried, but we could not, and so we suffered more. I had been confused, but I wondered if this feeling was that…the desire to cry.
I pursed my lips. “Yes.”
Her eyes scanned me up and down, evaluating, searching for I don’ know what.
“Come,” she said finally. Her fins powered her upward. “I will teach you.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)