fannishliss

I was too late to actually enter my entry, but it's okay this week.  Here  is my Introduction!

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You’re invited to the annual solstice fondue.  “Alcohol, Fire, Bread and Cheese!” the announcement proclaims.

You don’t recognize anyone, but the hostess introduces herself.  “Hi, I’m Liss!  So glad you could make it!  Grab a drink — there’s mulled cider on the stove, wine on the hoosier, and beer in the cooler on the screen porch!”

You accept a mug of hot mulled cider.  The mug shows a picture of Shakespeare wearing sunglasses and is labelled “BARD TO THE BONE.”

The tiny home is crowded with friends.  Every wall is packed floor to ceiling with with art and tchotchkes and bookshelves.   All kinds of musical instruments in and out of cases cling to every surface.  Just from where you are sitting you can see an upright piano, two toy pianos, a lap dulcimer, four guitars, two ukuleles, a dumbek, two native american flutes, several hand drums and two mbiras.  You figure that giant pink conch shell would make a reverberating honk if you lifted it to your lips and knew what you were doing.

It’s hard to classify the books on the shelves — too many, too various! Graphic novels, Hebrew textbooks, Tarot user guides, field guides to birds, books about angels and gerbils and fairy tales and music and invertebrates and Chinese brush painting.

“Eat more cheese,” the hostess laughs.  Her moth mask is pushed back on her head.  Across the room, her pretty husband is enchanting the crowd through a matching mask.  That’s his stage foil on the wall under the deer skull.

Your head spins a little.  So many details. Is it clutter or does it paint a picture?

Over time, chaos sorts itself into bodies, held together by the laws of matter in motion.  Three hundred starlings fly up from one oak, soar into a cloud whose black shadows flit across the blue November day, and scatter to reform in some other, choicer oak.

The stories are waiting.  You’ve tasted the apple and cloves, the wine and the bread.  You reach for a long fork, ready for more!