Willaby, Tarquin and Tina

 Part one of a something that might become a proper something (and really it's about time I wrote a proper something).

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Tarquin was, quite possibly, the world's prettiest pig.

He was the colour of a rosebud, his ears were like satin petals, and his trotters were the daintiest anyone had ever seen. As an ornament on a shelf he would have been prized beyond compare, but as a pig, well, he was merely that, or so he had been led to believe.

It was a Monday, and as the little pink pig sat in his corner of the yard, the trough slouching in the earth behind him and the sky so high up and blue it seemed it were trying to grow taller still, he sighed. So deep a sigh that the day almost wished it wasn't a Monday as much as he wished it wasn't, for it was such a very sad sound for such a small thing to make.

“For you see-” He explained to the Monday, for want of anyone else to explain to, “you Mondays are almost always followed by Tuesdays, and Tuesdays are when the farmer goes to market, and when the farmer goes to the market...” The pig rested his chin on the lowest wooden bar of the fence.

“The farmer takes a pig.”

Who the farmer took to market had previously been dictated by who was the largest, but small and dainty as he was Tarquin had no need to look around the pen to see who would be accompanying the farmer to the market this Tuesday. There was no other pig to be taken.

Over a matter of weeks the group had dwindled, the pigs not knowing that the farmer had decided to take herself and her wife off to another place for another life, and that they had no need or means to keep their pigs, no matter how plump or how pretty they happened to be. As to what became of the pigs that went to the market- well, the little pigs had all been told their cautionary tales by their sows long ago. All the pigs knew was that, one by one, they were going to the place that no pig wanted to go to, and that the farmers had their reasons, they supposed. That was what humans were like.

There was a strangely warm wind in the air this Monday, but the little pig was far too disconsolate to pay it much attention, for what did it matter to him if the wind was from the South, and the air currents high up and strong. It seemed pointless to do anything save look appropriately wistful.

About to vent another very deep very sad sigh, Tarquin found himself interrupted by a shadow passing over him. Looking up he could just make out something flying high against the Sun, wheeling around in wide, lazy ellipses. His head tilted to the side as his doleful, long-lashed eyes followed it; he had seen buzzards and seagulls before, and thought them nothing remarkable, but there was something rather different about this one.

"What an odd looking bird." Thought Tarquin, and quite understandably too, for it was a very odd looking bird indeed. It was quite unlike anything the little pig had seen before, with sweet-wrapper wings all shaped like a boomerang, and a tail split into two long paddles.

It circled around the farmstead, banking as it began its descent, and as it lowered it only became more odd, for there was actually very little about it that was bird-like at all. It seemed to be a very ungainly shape, and yet, when it finally came in to land, it was not with a crash and a bump and a complicated tumble (as Tarquin had expected), but with a rather satisfying sort of ‘flump’.
"Hello." Said the odd looking bird.
"Hello." Replied the pig, watching the strange new creature folding up its wings with great interest. It appeared to be too absorbed in looking around to notice, so he continued to gaze as he pleased. "Are you lost?"
"Oh yes, yes…" The answer came in an absent, gentle voice. The sort of voice one could listen to for a very long time without getting tired of it at all. "-but I really don’t mind it, you know."
Tarquin faltered at something to say to this, but really, it was very difficult trying to think of anything to say to a creature you had never even imagined before, let alone seen. It wasn't quite a kangaroo, or a wallaby, or a hare, but something more or less in the middle of all three. Finishing its arrangements with the wings- which were attached to a pile of rucksack and assorted camping equipment strapped to the creature's back- the stranger gave the pig a kindly smile, before exchanging it for a slightly sad one.
“You don't look very happy.”
“I'm not.” Tarquin confirmed. It wasn't sulkily stated, merely matter of fact.

“Ah, I see- I thought it best to check, you know.” The pointed face presented a sympathetic expression after a succession of nods. A pair of thick, long ears waved to and fro in the aftermath, just visible past the wide rim of the tattered hat they crested. “Some people can look sad when they're happy, and more often there are people who look happy when they're actually very sad.”
“Is that so?” Tarquin looked mildly intrigued by this fact, being a very straight forward sort of pig himself, “well, that's interesting, but I'm afraid you're right with my case. I am very unhappy.” And just to cement the fact he completed the sigh he had been interrupted in before.
“Well?! Aint'cha gonna cheer him up, like?”
Said the rucksack.

The feet of a different kind

There once was a bird, and a grand bird was he
all covered with plumes of pink,
and all round the town his footsteps were found
some in lead and some of them ink.
For this grand little bird, oh this fine young chap
had feet of a different kind;
for one was a pencil, which never would snap
and the other a pen most refined.
Through the day and the night he would write and would write
all manner of things where he strode:
sometimes long, sometimes short, or excessively trite
on pavements and walls and on roads.
The people cried out ‘what a terrible lout!
to scrawl on our chimneys and buildings!’
But for all that those people did holler and shout
and threw at him shoes and chased him about
only more and more words from the pen did spill out
and the pencil and plumes, for all they were stout
said and did more and held so much more clout
than the people around who were always without

the feet of a different kind.

Ethel: Chapter 2. An omission.

“There's no sherry in this trifle!” The first voice complained.

“Well that's no fault of mine,” its companion replied, “you used the last of it to polish your boots.”

“How was I to know that was the last bottle? You should have bought more when you were in January.”

“Oh yes, and have to carry it all the way through March? I don't think.” The second voice concluded his argument with a sound that might have been meant as contemptuous, but sounded more like a hiccough.

It struck Ethel, as she listened, that she hadn't ever heard voices like these before- they were more like a collection of scratches and gurgles than words. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more it occurred to her that it didn't sound like English at all. They must be speaking in another language, she thought.

Of course, most sensible people would follow this thought up with; 'how, then, can I understand them?' Ethel was she wasn't greatly inclined to think about such things, however. When she had known her way to the postoffice on their holiday in Corfe, even though she had never been there before, or looked at a map of it, she had thought nothing of it. It wasn't an inconvenience, so, why bother troubling it? These sorts of things were quite helpful without her interference- it would surely seem rude if she started voicing complaints about it now.

What did occur to her, however, was that she was no longer cold. Opening her eyes (which took a surprising amount of effort), Ethel blinked the sparks and green out of her retinas to see a churning amber glow lying a few feet away from her. It was a fire. Not one of those rickety white plastic things with the set of glowing wires, which you mustn't touch even if the shade of red they turn is ever so appealing: but a real, smokey, spitting embers and ash fire. It was laid on something that looked like a piece of slate, except that it was green, and moved occasionally. The three of them- she, and her two voices- were arranged around the fire on a fine grey sand. At least, it appeared grey in the firelight; the pervading darkness around them declaring it to be nighttime in this wherever it was.

“Ah, so you're with us then.” Said the first voice.

She sat up.

“I think so... thank you.”

“You're very welcome, though I'm sure I don't know what for.”

The first voice, the one which consisted primarily of gurgling, sank back into the undulating folds of the speaker's neck, his bulbous eyes dipping down into his soft skinned head as he blinked. Ethel tried to find some polite way to explain she was thankful for no longer being in a cold and very wet river, but it was difficult to think. Perhaps that was the effect of holding a conversation with a bullfrog and a gryphon.

“So,” said the scratch-toned gryphon, who had been accused of not buying enough sherry in January; “what happened to you?”

“Happened?” Ethel frowned and pushed her lips forwards, trying to remember. She often did this when remembering the last thing she did- which was what she was always told to do when having to explain, later, why she was in such a peculiar place, or hadn't finished her homework, or had been found writing poetry on the side of a train in pastel chalk.

“Well... the last thing I remember was falling off my dent and into the ugly river.”

“Oh,” the gryphon scratched in a vaguely disinterested fashion. “Do you make a habit of doing things like that?”

“No, I've never done it before.”

“Ah.” The two fireside dwellers chorused in a sombre tone, as if this explained the whole business.

“And after that?” The gryphon persisted; he had a way of looking at Ethel that gave her the impression that he couldn't quite see her. Not that she supposed he had bad eyesight- it was hard to imagine an eagle with bad eyesight, less still one which was the front end of a mythological creature.

“I'm... I'm not sure. I was certainly in the river, I remember that quite clearly, but then I was listening to you two.”

“You're missing your inbetween.” The bullfrog summarized, easing himself off the sand with no small amount of difficulty- his bones, beneath their slathering of fat and ligament, seemed to bend too easily, and his gait was a severely unpractised one. Then again, Ethel reminded herself, he was a frog; even if he was dressed in that old fashioned, button-ed up way, he was surely more suited for water than for walking. His companion the gryphon remained lounging on the corner of a dog-eared suitcase, occasionally deigning to dip an amber spoon into what looked to be the debated trifle. He gave Ethel a sympathetic, apologetic sort of smile as his web-shod partner investigated her. Gurgle (for that was what Ethel had, in wont of a name, decided to label him as), roamed a finger around her general direction as he scrutinised her. He made no move to touch her; it were more as if he were looking to find an excerpt in an unfamiliar book with too many paragraphs. 

“Mm... nnm...” He chuntered, viscerally. He didn't appear to have any teeth. “Not made here, I'd warrant... I suppose you'll be wanting to go back?”

“I will?”

At this the gryphon, otherwise labelled Scratch, seemed quite amused. “I should imagine that's up to you.”

“Ah, but she is missing her inbetween, you know.” Gurgle wagged a finger remindingly, completing his investigatory circuit around Ethel. “She may not be allowed back without it.”

“I wouldn't be allowed-?” Ethel began, who was for the first time feeling a little worried about the circumstances.

“Well, people will ask you for it, even if you don't much care about it.” Scratch elaborated, setting the bowl down whilst swapping which way his tail was twisted. “I don't imagine you've considered that aspect- you don't look like the type to.” He tilted his head backwards for a moment, then back to where it had been. “Can you really not remember any of the middle?”

Ethel thought very hard about the part that she couldn't remember, but it did very little. She shook her head.

“Hmm...” Gurgle put a hand to the top of his head, one eye sinking down into the morasses of his scalp. “Have you tried thinking about what might have happened? It isn't what did, but it's closer than where we are now.”

This seemed a decent proposal, so Ethel thought about it.

“Well... I suppose I might have died.”

“That would account for it.” Scratch nodded, acceptingly. Gurgle too appeared to find the notion quite plausible.

“If that is the case, there really isn't anything else to think about- you shall have to go there.”

“Where?” Blinked Ethel. The firelight was strong, but small, and had begun to draw patterns on the back of her eyes which were quite distracting. At the expression she found herself returning to look at, Gurgle appeared to find this question indescribably stupid. Scratch had begun making a series of odd disjointed sounds which Ethel supposed was laughter.

“Why, there, of course!”

“That says maybe, but she'll never be allowed in; not looking like that she won't!”

Ethel looked down at her clothes. She had been wearing her dull navy ensemble of school uniform- a generic collection of scratchy acrylic, white nylon and starchy pleats- but to look at it now was to see a tonal exercise in sepia. Her formerly clean white shirt was now an unbecoming shade of beige, her tights were freckled with a chalky brown residue, and her skirt was so stiffened out by mud that it appeared to be little more than a scab.

“It'll shatter,” said the gryphon with a smug superiority. “You mark my words; it'll shatter.”

“It will not!” Ethel furrowed her brow adamantly at the golden feathered face, which raised its long ears in surprise at her outburst.

“Well, you'll have to find something else to wear, whatever the case.”

Neither of them appeared inclined to help her in this pursuit.

“But how am I to get there?” Ethel pressed- she didn't much fancy asking where 'there' was again. It seemed as if the pair of them knew much more than she did about everything in this place, but she wasn't about to verify it for them. At least, not any more than she had already. The bullfrog shook his translucent hand at the horizon in the direction of her shadow, but didn't take his eyes off her face.

“Half the way that way and then back again twice.”

The gryphon took up his spoon and trifle again; “-but don't think about how. It'll take three times as long, and you need all the length you can spare in a place like this.”

Looking from one to the other it appeared that this was her cue to leave, and being so very used to taking silent hints to vacate the vicinity of others, all that remained of the conversation was a politely nodded thank you, and a small wave once she had taken six steps.

As she walked feeling the colourless sands beneath her stocking-bound toes, Ethel became aware of the absence of her shoes for the first time, but looking over her shoulder at the diminished pool of firelight she could see no sign of the guttural amphibian or his glittering friend; only the suitcase, sagging and creased at the corner he had been leaning on.

Five seconds were spent with her head tilted to the side, then she turned around, gave the direction of her shadow a studious glance, and continued on her way.

Ethel: Chapter 1. A beginning.

The problem with Ethel was that she didn’t really fit.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t nice, oh no, most everyone had to agree; Ethel was about the nicest creature that anyone could encounter without bumping into a unicorn on the way to work. Provided that the unicorn didn’t gore you on sight. You see, some of them do have the tendency of doing that, not that anyone would have brought that up in conversation.

No, Ethel did not suffer from a lack of niceness, prettiness, ability to smile-ness, or any of the other so called ‘ailments’ that some other non-fitting people suffered from. She was bubbly in every possible way, was fronted by a fountain of pale canvased freckles, topped by a champagne coloured explosion of hair with a smile the breadth of a pigeon’s wingspan beneath. Her voice was more of a chirruping sound than a string of sentences, and she had a habit of bouncing on the toes of her feet when not enough was happening.

Precisely why Ethel didn’t really fit was quite a mystery, and yet… she just didn’t. Like a grain of salt in a sugar bowl- she was ever so close to being exactly the same, but nobody wanted her to be in their cup of tea, or five-a-side football team, or reading club. It wasn’t that she was particularly dim or overly smart or terribly clumsy at sport; certainly no more than any other fourteen year old child, it was just that she was… not quite right.

Ethel had known for some time that she was not quite right. Of course, one got the impression rather quickly when everybody kept repeating it. Oh, it wasn’t that they said it, not in words. You see, Ethel had become very good at listening to people’s faces. Teachers would pull the ‘understanding’ face, the one which was two creases away from disgust; classmates would pull the ‘sorry’ face, which was one twist away from embarrassed and three from sneering; and then there was her parents’ favourite, the one she had decided to call the ‘Ethel’ face. It was such a specific, nameless expression that they had created to use in regards to her un-fitting that she had been left without any other word to call it by. It wasn’t quite disappointment, but if she had thought hard enough about it she might have said that was probably the closest to it. Ethel didn’t like to think about it very hard though.

So it was, one uninspiring Tuesday afternoon, that Ethel decided that she should find somewhere that she did fit.

She was perched on her bridge at the moment of this revelation; a small, shambolic looking thing that had born the weight of too many freight lorries following their sat-nav directions instead of their eyes. It had become a regular pit stop for her on the way back home; a place to while away the extra fifteen minutes that she wouldn’t be missed for. There was a convenient notch on the western-most wall where one of the more careless lorry drivers had taken a good three inches with him on his way to the M5. Many a day had seen the girl who didn’t fit, sat in her dent on her bridge, kicking the rubber heels of her shoes off the remaining brickwork above the slow moving river. Thud. Ka-thud. Thud-ka-thud. Thud.

Absently rotating this thought of finding somewhere to fit inside her mind, Ethel contemplated the river. It was an ugly looking thing. Brown; the sort of brown chocolate milkshakes came in- the ones that tasted of powder and not chocolate. She couldn’t remember what it was called. She had asked someone once, but it had been a short, boring, ugly sounding name, so she had forgotten it almost immediately. Perhaps that was why people had trouble remembering her name, she thought.

She leaned a little forward. If she concentrated very hard, she could just make out her murky sister, swinging her springy heels against the muddy bridge made of ripples and whorls. It wasn’t at all like the rivers in the movies- sparkling, silver things, or black; with great strings of lights peering out of them. This one was trimmed with a lace of foamy scum, broken with occasional gashes of darkness- a bigger absence of brown in the face of a passing cloud, or an extra tug of the current from beneath.

Focusing as she was on a particularly dark laceration of water that had formed to her right, presumably due to the intervention of a plastic bag caught in the reeds ahead, Ethel couldn’t have told you precisely why she fell in. Part of her was quite sure that she must have been pushed, having never fallen in before during all her months of sitting in quite the same fashion, but at the time of her descent she was rather too occupied with the fact that she was falling, and falling very fast. A damp rustling announced that the plastic bag had been liberated from the reeds.

The air was smote from her ear drums, the water closed over her head, and she was cold.

What this is.

This is a blog for writing.

Not very specific sorts of writing. Probably stories, maybe stories with pictures in, or poems in, or even words in. Whatever they are, they are by me, and are for you, so I suppose that must mean that you're very welcome to be here.

Regards,
Sarah Jolley