Alessaandra-the-Fair

You see that pile of dusty gray fuzz over there? What is that?  Is that an old dishtowel that blew off of someone's clothesline into your yard?  Hey!  It's moving! I know.  It's a raccoon. Raccoon?  Don't they only come out at night?  Is it sick or something? No.  Apparently some of them just prefer to live their lives in the daylight.  He's not sick.  He's just kind of unique.  His name is Rocky. He was named by Paul McCartney.  Not personally, but you know, in a song by the Beatles.  My family just decided we should call him that. We came back from a week long vacation to dis

Tim, a man I know from church kept asking me if I was going to be okay, if there was anything he could do, if there was anything else I needed, and I kept telling him we were fine, but he kept asking.  He was concerned because his daughter, Sherry, was going with us.  And there was a blizzard outside.  The sky was an icy white curtain that smote our cheeks with stinging bits and cut off our vision after mere yards. We crossed a parking lot and piled ourselves into a mini-van.  There were six of us.  Me and my father; one of my daughter's dance instructors; an ex-lover's little brother, John, except he was five years

The Spelling Dad was going over the rules with his daughter while we waited our turn before the judges for the preliminaries.  “I” before “E” and changing “Y” into an “I” when adding a suffix or “IE” before pluralizing.  He had more rules of thumb than Grandma's recipe book. My daughter seemed to be just barely awake.  Leaning back against a row of lockers with her eyelids drooping.  We had to get up earlier than normal in order to make it here on time: the high school that was hosting the North District Spelling Bee Championship. I asked her, “Do you know that stuff?&rdquo

I remember the way it ended between us.  It was right after one of the band's Saturday night concerts at The Hole and it was a sticky hot night and the air above the pavement was still shimmering in the aftermath of a day in the summer sun, and there were mosquitoes, thick like a buzzing veil, all around us.  We were sitting on the hood of my car eating something fried from a plastic-foam basket.  I don't remember what kind of food it was exactly, but I know it tasted like chicken because even the hamburgers at Fry's tasted like chicken.  And it was altogether miserable, but I was happy, because I thought we were happy, but then I found out w

Even Sebastian was not immune to her charms: her beauty and her strength and her spirit.  His heartbreak and defeat had left him completely broken, nothing more than pieces of a man.  But when his broken bones and fevers did not kill him, even though for days he had lain in a shadow of pity, thinking only of which method of self-disposal would best suit his needs when they returned to port, he could not long watch Alessaandra blossom into the  woman she was becoming without his heart starting to rebuild his shattered psyche.  And it occurred to him, The Oracle had never told him he would return from the faery kingdom with Shella.  The old hag

So they dragged themselves back through the Kobold caves, and back along the underwater guideline.  Climbed back on board their ship and lifted the anchor and hoisted the sails and set off for home. A month they persevered.  They sailed thirty days against the the cold gray waves and stinging wind and spraying salt, and only some unquenchable, indescribable defiance of death woke them in the mornings, and moved them to push the necessary food and water through their lips.  So very slow to heal, their wounds were bandaged still, their legs and arms in splints.  And now their skin and eyes were yellow, and their teeth were loose in their gums

The faery moved through their midst like a ghost; his wings flapped in graceful silence, his body surrounded by an aura.  His body was naked art, and perfect, every muscle and sinew a hard-chiseled line.  His skin shone white like moonlight and when his wings folded and opened, a glaze of gemstone red and blue colors fell on the gathered men and Alessaandra.  He radiated awe, and it forced the mortals apart like a wedge; made them step back to allow his passage. He floated to the dragon.  He laid his hand upon its sagging, broken head.  The faery's eyes sparked violet with a wrathful, vengeful sorrow. Minutes ticked by in silence, agog. An

Lucas and Thaddeus went to retrieve their torches from the larger chamber: the dragon's lair.  They came back, surveying the body of the great beast as they returned.  It was difficult to tell what color the dragon was, with only flames to see it by.  Perhaps it was white, perhaps a pale ocher, maybe yellow or gray.  And counting off the strides from its back feet to its snout, it was bigger than any of them would've guessed, even in fear: eighty-three paces. Lucas holding his torch over the creature's face, the four men stood together in silent awe of it, looking into its serving-platter sized eye and realizing how tiny and insignificant th