Pale green things.

There was really no use in talking him down--a bullfrog has his pride. And there was no one willing to do it if he would--amphibians are notorious gamblers. Once the notion of a bet is lodged in the clay deposits of their brains, they are intransigent. So between the stubborness of a bullfrog with something to prove and a mass of singleminded high rollers, things were not going to budge. They don't call it a bog for nothing.

And so the bets were placed, and slick fingers passed every type of swampland currency: marshpearls and methane baubles, tiny beetles trapped in amber, and lilypads stamped with the image of All-Father Heron. While a thousand wet voices warbled together, and a thousand webbed feet slapped the stone, and each nicitating eyelid fluttered in an ecstasy of trade, while the bullfrog creaked more with every lungful. Until the whole swamp was...fit...to...burst.

Shaking two trees.

Turning your milk to curd and switching your babies out for birchbark. Making your purses lighter and your eyelids leaden. Twisting your evening curls into bramble. The Bad Boys of Unseelie.

Shades of mediocrity.

Knees have turned uniformly black after last week's tumble.
Adding brocoli to the lunchly mac n cheese for a pep turns my pasta greeeen. With envy.
Seeing red on the couches--spilled red wine and bulldog ooze-face. The wine comes off, the ooze does not.
Sworn off the Raw Sienna 552 that's commandeered every brush I own.

Living in just one mind.

Trying my luck, my hand at Peter S. Beagle's "Two Hearts". If you haven't read it, good christ, already. Gorgeous, as ever.

Hard to pluck the Grifiin out from the shadow of the Harpy--she's so dominant a feature in the lunar landscape of the first book. Furthermore, it was difficult to approve the fevered second monster held next to the Harpy's chillier aspects. The Griffin is all heart(s) and stomach, blood and guts, to her cool. Jaws for the flocks, blood for the fields, and a singleminded focus on rapine without romance. No regard for the myth properties that even the Harpy had sense to acknowledge. Denied even a gendered pronoun, it is simply reduced to a weapon.

So I nocked the thing onto a tightly strung moon and used it according to purpose.

What's your poison?

For every princess that needs a good humbling, there are three kings disguised as beggars and twelve castle kitchens full of ready tasks. It's simply a matter of cultural palate. Do your countrymen prefer mintrels to potmakers, or dishes to drapes*? The author is usually obliging enough to salt to taste.

*The English take to hearthtending, the Germans to food preparation, the French--livestock

In memoriam.

Paul Norris (1914-2007).

A gentle mind, a gentle line.

Then again, maybe not.

A cool option.

For those without the wherewithal for NaNo.