Exclusive story: The Greatest Moment Of My Strife; Forgotten Suns art; Poem - Scribing Poesy; House/Disco Mix: Delphie L; Don DeLillo; Tales From The UniversE 45 - newsletter from Early Jan 2024
An arcadia of imagination
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1. Short Story
The Greatest Moment Of My Strife
Lucinda plucked 3 red apples for this moment of the gold-coloured dappled horse padding up through the meadlowland toward the front of the farmhouse in Higher Poynton in winter sunlight that made her feel as if a thousand chandeliers twirled down on her and the horse into the frost-laced scene from the January sky.
She called the horse Silver Thunder and was very proud of the name because none of her classmates - her apparent peers - would and could think of such a thing and when Silver Thunder arrived at the kitchen window she opened both sides which threw wide the vista of the surrounding country which on a fair-wind day would carry the sounds of the nearby Adlington Spur racetrack where punters would live and die and live and die many times in their own versions of immortality depending on the fortunes of the wagers placed on their favoured nags and this too Lucinda was proud of.
Name another 9 year girl - or boy - in these parts who could use language as she could and did to depict the scene unfolding before her in real time like this.
Silver Thunder poked his head through the kitchen window and nuzzled Lucinda’s hand where she held one of the red apples. After he chomped it down he repeated this twice with the two other apples before Lucinda went to the door that opened off the kitchen onto the wooden porch and Silver Thunder trotted the grass and lay down 10 yards out on the meadowland.
The porch ran one side of the farmhouse and had at the foot of its three steps a barbecue grill placed squareways on a half a-metal globe of wide circumference that in its base showed scrunched up newspaper and wood packed there by Lucinda earlier this morning for the time now when her folks had left for the day and she should light it.
She took a match from the bowl on the side and struck this and lit the barbecue.
Smoke spirals wafted in the cold air and Silver Thunder lifted his nose and dropped it again and Lucinda took the copper skillet from the row of hooks hung on the shelf built on the sidewall and and jugged a glug of olive oil into this and placed it on the grill and went inside to the fridge and brought out a carton of eggs and the butter dish and walked back out to the skillet.
She took a knife and speared a knob of butter and dropped this in the near-sizzling skillet of oil and opened the carton of eggs and broke one on the side of the skillet and dropped this in to fry.
The yolk was a burst of a vivid amarillo sun in miniature across the snow-white egg white.
She took a second egg and did the same and there were twin amarillo orbs in the skillet and she went and filled the kettle and put this onto boil and placed a tea-bag in a mug.
When Lucinda’s breakfast was close to ready she got the granary loaf and board and bread knife from the kitchen and sat on the first step of the porch feeling the warmth of the fired grill and chopped a thick slice and placed this in the skillet next to the eggs to fry it too.
She breakfasted like this - in the 9am morning winter sun, kept toasty by the heat from fire in the the half-globe she made hotter by adding more of the ash logs her father had cut and been seasoning in the lee of the farmhouse since the last 10 or 11 months.
She ate quick, mopping up the last of the amarillo yolk with the last of the fried granary bread and as she chased this with tea that steamed from the mug she heard a voice.
‘Delivery.’
Coming round the house was a youngish lad in DHL dress carrying a parcel.
He said it again. ‘Delivery.’ And looked at her and this time said, ‘Is this Butterfly Farm.’ He squinted at the parcel as if to check this was the address it showed.
Lucinda nodded and conscious she played a role sipped more tea and as the aroma of breakfast began to clear she caught a different waft, as if the winter air was actually filled with the fresh perfumes of the first days of spring.
The delivery lad handed her the parcel. ‘Can I take a photo please?’
She nodded, she spoke a first word. ‘Sure.’
The lad did and with his phone, too, scanned the parcel and Lucinda said, ‘You want a cup of tea?’
She pointed to the pot where she stood it on the edge of the grill to keep warm.
The lad did not hesitate. ‘Why not?’
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