vignettes

[marycatelli]

This week's prompt is:
letter

Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term.

Comments

[marycatelli]

A tedious account of how they had found more ways to move things on the railroads. If it had started with sturdy ponies pulling loads so heavy that railroads were needed to spread the weight, it went on with magic, and reducing that to no more than a coldstone that distilled water from air, and a firestone that turned water to steam.
And a truly tedious account of how important sending the Royal Mail was, and the effects of needing all the clocks in the railway to agree on the time, regardless of what the sun said, to avoid confusion.

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

If Elaine had finished high school back in Iowa, she would've had a ton of graduation presents from her various relatives. Of course they'd be practical ones: clothes and supplies for college, improving literature and the like. But she'd still be sitting at the kitchen table grinding out her thank-you notes, longhand, in ink, letter-perfect or you do it again until it is.

After having been rescued from the terrorist attack on the school bus and then whisked across the country for telepath training with the Sharp Resistance, she'd figured she'd be lucky to get any at all. Small things from the Alandales and the Blakes, and Aiden would give her something, but a verbal expression of gratitude would suffice for those. Some of her teachers might give her little surprises, but in the laid-back culture of California, an e-mail or text message was more than adequate.

Instead, here she was at the Alandales' kitchen table, writing her thank-you's for some surprising gifts that really required a formal letter of gratitude, stamped and posted via US mail. She'd knocked out all of them except Spartan's: a beautifully illustrated copy of Pushkin's poetry. The fact that it was in Russian, and had been published back in Soviet days, strongly suggested that yes, Spartan was indeed Leonid Gruzinsky.

Which made writing his thank-you note all the more difficult. Should she write it in English, or in Russian? And how should she address him in the salutation? Just by his call sign, given that was how he'd signed his inscription to her? Or as "Leonid Alekseevich," which she'd heard several of his team call him during the trip to Silicon Valley?

Given that he'd inscribed the book in Russian, she'd really like to impress him with her skill in his native tongue. On the other hand, the last time she'd used Russian regularly, she'd been eleven, an age when infelicities in language were still considered errors rather than affronts. Now she was an adult, and would be expected to show adult mastery of formal diction and register control.

Better to play it safe. English was a more relaxed and casual language, especially here in California. Much less likely that a seemingly innocuous turn of phrase would prove a land mine of unexpected offense.

[marycatelli]

Ah, the twists and turns of life -- and courtesy.

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

After three days at the Soviet moonbase, Lucius was finding it more difficult than the time he'd spent in Japan helping JAXA get their version of the Gemini spacecraft up and running. Everywhere he looked, he'd see signs he could almost read. While the kanji and kana of written Japanese were visibly foreign, the Russian alphabet was just similar enough to English to drive him nuts. What looked like a P was actually an r, while an apparent H was an n, leading to several misreadings the cosmonauts found hilarious, which only made him feel more humiliated.

[marycatelli]

Always complications.

[marycatelli]

Renyardette's eyes narrowed. "So I'm not going to get some letters of recommendation out of this? YOU insisted I couldn't get it with my own hands, that I had to get some fool to steal it. Were you expecting me to find a wise fool and a thief in one?"

[marycatelli]

Liam walked down the street. The widest in the city, but at the moment, the most full. Chickens clucking, the sweet song of vendors for their pies or starch or stockings, housewives quarreling, a messenger in livery, his letter bag over his shoulder, scowling at how hard his passage was.

[marycatelli]

Trilling laughter reached them, as maidens spoke of a letter, sent to one of them. Anonymously, of course. A father who heard of their receiving a letter would have the young man driven out as a would-be seducer. Or, if he were high rank, the daughter immured as a nun.

[marycatelli]

"There is nothing for it," said the king. "You can not continue as you are."
Marcus's heart started to hammer. He heard the children, and the others, shifting behind him. They could not fight their way free.
"Therefore," said the king grandly, "I shall issue a letter patent for your school."