NaNoWriMo has started with a bang! I've just gotten home from the Kick-off party for Canberra. It was followed by a write-in and I've managed to set the first 500 words or so to paper (or digital memory, anyway). The NaNo site is struggling under the load right now, but I'll be updating my word count as soon as I can persuade it to play nice. Hopefully my widget over on the left will play nice too. Here 'tis ... enjoy!
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Preface
People say, "Oh how sad, to live in a world of darkness" but my world is full of colour. Red is smooth, cold, and hard. Blue is rough, warm and solid. These are the colours as I see them.
People say, "Oh how sad, to live in a world without beauty" but my world is full of beauty. The touch of a friend, the kiss of a lover, a breath of wind across my face. All these things have beauty. I get as much enjoyment out of a day at the beach, out of a picnic by the lake, out of laughing with friends as anyone else does.
Why must my life be thought incomplete, simply because I am without sight? My life is rich, perhaps richer, because I am blind. Not despite it.
--
Mandy
The day had begun. What a cruel world - it seems that it is ony when one is at their lowest that the day dawns with sunshine. A cloud free sky could be glimpsed in the chink between the drawn curtains. Birds could be heard twittering as they came into the yard to gather seed from the feeder hanging from the tree. This morning, Mandy hated those birds. She detested the sunshine. She rolled over, burying her head in the pillow, and cursed the fluffy white clouds hanging in the sky. They, even more than the sunshine, represented how low her life had ebbed. If the weather was to represent her mood accurately, a storm would be threatening. The clouds would be hanging low in the sky, dark and heavy with unspent rain and there would be lightning strikes around the horizon, making the air crack and sizzle with electricity. The sunshine was just further proof of the world being a cruel taskmaster. Offering everything, and delivering nought.
The sound of morning television from the loungeroom eventually persuaded Mandy to get out of bed. She crawled out into her sister's spare room, looking around at the mostly unfamiliar surroundings. The bookshelf was full of worn and tired paperbacks. Some children's stuffed toys that Mandy remembered from her own childhood sat in a haphazard pile in the corner. The chest of drawers was topped with clutter of dust-catchers, trinkets and curios that her sister had collected or been given over the years.
Mandy's mouth was dry, and she stepped into the ensuite for a drink. Her eyes fell on the guest towels on the rack, the novelty soap in the dish. She knew that the mirror would show only the reminders of the evening before, but still she had to look. The left side of her face was swollen, her eye a mere slit looking through the yellow bruise rising under the skin. Her lip was split, the cut ragged and bloody still. She felt hot tears rise in her throat but swallowed them down defiantly. She would not let herself fall apart. The time for falling apart was last night, and god knew she had done it well and truly. But not today. Today, she had to pick up the children, and tell them that their father was the evil person they had all refused to believe he was. Today, she had to start putting her life back together again.
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