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I wanted to post this, but I thought I'd practice my lj cut tags at the same time. I think it worked. My next question is, how do I format word documents so I can put them up online without having to retype my quotation marks and apostrophes.
It was the bees that woke him.
He had dreamt himself in a room filled with people, hazy shapes that moved and spoke just beyond what his eyes could reach. There was food on the table, but nobody ate, and although he was hungry, he waited, because he knew his parents would expect politeness. Time passed, and still they spoke, and he was really very hungry now, and surely no one would mind if he just took a piece of bread . . .
He reached out a hand, and gradually conversation stopped. He could feel them watching him, waiting, but not as he had waited; there was a tension in the air, in him, and it confused him with its familiarity. He froze, one hand holding the long, flat bread in front of him, raised almost like a shield.
He opened his mouth, perhaps to say 'I'm sorry', perhaps to explain his hunger, but all that came out was "This is--" and he couldn't speak any more. The words would not come, and he tried again to force them out "This is my--" A whispered thought 'not the time', passed through him, he stopped trying to speak. Eventually attention turned from him, the tension faded, and conversation began again.
He still sat there, one hand holding the bread, and tried, tentatively, to ask when they could eat. Voices rose and fell all around him, but his own remained stubbornly silent. He felt himself begin to panic, trying harder and harder to force his voice from his throat. As his breath grew shallow and his eyes clouded, the panic taking over, he heard the voices increase in volume and intensity. Words began to overlap, new voices rose in something like exhortation, and the soft conversation grew to a hum, then to a buzz, then to a rumbling, and as it swelled to cacophony--
He opened his eyes to a swirling mass of yellow and black.
It was the bees that woke him.
He had dreamt himself in a room filled with people, hazy shapes that moved and spoke just beyond what his eyes could reach. There was food on the table, but nobody ate, and although he was hungry, he waited, because he knew his parents would expect politeness. Time passed, and still they spoke, and he was really very hungry now, and surely no one would mind if he just took a piece of bread . . .
He reached out a hand, and gradually conversation stopped. He could feel them watching him, waiting, but not as he had waited; there was a tension in the air, in him, and it confused him with its familiarity. He froze, one hand holding the long, flat bread in front of him, raised almost like a shield.
He opened his mouth, perhaps to say 'I'm sorry', perhaps to explain his hunger, but all that came out was "This is--" and he couldn't speak any more. The words would not come, and he tried again to force them out "This is my--" A whispered thought 'not the time', passed through him, he stopped trying to speak. Eventually attention turned from him, the tension faded, and conversation began again.
He still sat there, one hand holding the bread, and tried, tentatively, to ask when they could eat. Voices rose and fell all around him, but his own remained stubbornly silent. He felt himself begin to panic, trying harder and harder to force his voice from his throat. As his breath grew shallow and his eyes clouded, the panic taking over, he heard the voices increase in volume and intensity. Words began to overlap, new voices rose in something like exhortation, and the soft conversation grew to a hum, then to a buzz, then to a rumbling, and as it swelled to cacophony--
He opened his eyes to a swirling mass of yellow and black.