vignettes

[marycatelli]

This week's prompt is:
off-beat 🥁

Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term. Any (G or PG) definition of the word can be used.

Comments

[marycatelli]

"Keep your wits about you," said Rae. "Watch for anything odd. It would not be so dangerous inside the hedge."
Cora gave her a sidelong glance. "It's not so dangerous. We would have heard gossip about bandits."
"It only takes one for trouble," said Rae.

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

Today it seems almost laughable to read about how people at the turn of the last century were so worried about syncopated rhythms, to the point the Moral Guardians were trying to ban ragtime and jazz as immoral. But people back then really did believe that such irregular rhythms excited the animal passions, and that listening to such music would degrade the moral character of the audience.

And it's doubly ironic that the same people who rebelliously listened to ragtime and jazz would grow up to throw hissy fits over Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones, using many of the same arguments that had been used to condemn their generation's music to argue for the banning of the new generation's.

So is it any wonder that the current generation of parents is trying to condemn the music our generation loves, just because it's artificially generated for the VR games we love?

[marycatelli]

How true.

[marycatelli]

"That does it," said Randall. "You can see that the path goes down, loops around, and comes back. We will not loop about foolishly." He strode off over the dead leaves onto the path going to the other way. Oswald followed him.
Aidan did not.
"Come at once, you fool."

[marycatelli]

Once she had, the thought would not leave her. She had been warned, even by the thanes who had come to treat with her father, that Lord Osgar was an uncommon man with uncommon studies, who oftentimes took himself at odd hours. Her father had only cared that it was for studies indeed, that since they were masters of light work, he studied beyond the ordinary, and not for strange women so her children were in danger of losing their inheritance, and she had not cared herself.
She had seen Torrin slumbering in his cradle. She did not look again.