The Key to Puck's Heart (chapter 3.1 * 01/12)
psionexile:
Good pictures are beyond my talent, but I think I'm pretty good at writing--can't make pictures talk but can make words walk, as it were. I considered illustrating my story, but in the end I know that I'd never be satisfied with any picture I made, compared to the "pictures" I can make with words.
An idea: there are lots of good picture makers here in the forum. Perhaps one of them (or more than one) would be willing to collaborate with me to add some awesome illustrations. A potentially cool possibility.
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** Present day **
Puck stepped out of the shower and rubbed away the steam from the bathroom mirror. The sixteen-year-old stared at his reflection; he stared within his reflection, inside himself.
He had a round, oval face framed by longish rust-red hair with a natural inclination to fashionable entanglement; he tried and failed to tame it, pushing strands behind his graceful pointed ears. Pale purple and white ink designs encircled his face, over slender sloping eyebrows, around robust cheekbones and meeting under his chin. The ink highlighted a tenderly faint femininity to the cast of his face that, rather than paint him effeminate, soothed his otherwise alpha-masculine countenance into the beauty that photographers capture in precisely shadowed black-and-white photgraphs. He had blue eyes, wide and slim and swallowing, and long eyelashes. A scattered constellation of freckles dotted his pecs and down the creases of his torso, his wide shoulders tapering down to his slim waist like the head of a screwdriver.
Puck took a deep breath to compose himself--compose being a very apt choice of words. He drew together the threads of himself, or rather his public self, his "outside-me" as he liked to secretly think of it: the popular, charismatic and all-around everybody else's Puck. Puck the quarterback and the soccer striker; the salutorian, the student council VP (he diplomatically ceded the top positions to the harsh ambitions of his girlfriend Hermia); he played last season the role of the Arghist soldier in the drama club's production of The Kozy Kisch Gnome. It seemed to him that everyone owned a little shard of him, everybody except he himself.
It was true that Puck didn't entirely disappear in the face of his life. He was a natural athlete and loved adrenaline, he savored intellectual triumph, his pliable personality made wearing diplomatic or theatrical roles as easy as pulling on a tee shirt. The real Puck was the crafted Puck's noontime shadow.
So he sighed, and stretched. He thought about the long ride to Pleasantview, and how he'd have his best friend Mercutio all to himself; he buried the thought in his self-hatred. He wrapped a towel around his waist and went to his bedroom.
"What the hell are you doing in here?" he groaned. His little sister Bottom was jumping on his bed, creaking the springs loudly. She laughed, and her tightly curled hair flopped up and down. She was already wearing her party dress, and it opened like a bell as she jumped. She took one high flying leap, landed on her butt on the edge of Puck's bed and bounced off with the studied grace of a bed-jumper with some serious practice under her belt.
Puck cinched the towel tighter. He looked at the open door and saw a bent fork impaled in the lock. "This is my room, Bottom! Whether it's locked or not you have no right to be in here. Go jump on your own bed."
Bottom chewed her lower lip. "I've worn out my bed. Besides, I want to ask you...."
"No, you can't come with me and Mercutio to the wedding. Mercutio's new car has only two seats."
"Why not? That's not fair. Maybe I...." Puck cut her off so quickly she forgot to close her widely open mouth.
"I'm not letting you sit on my lap."
Bottom tried to set a forlorn moue on her lips. "You never liked me!"
"I'm also not going to fall for that routine, not today. C'mon, get out of here so I can get dressed. Please.
Bottom shrugged and smiled again; it was against her nature to grimace very long. She left Puck's bedroom, prying the fork out and closing the door behind her.
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Puck's formal attire was a white suit, form-fitting and rather old-fashioned; a long, open coat, ivory in color, over a high collared shirt and many-buttoned vest, knee-length pants and silk hose crayon-white, and white shoes with silvery buckles. It was tighter than Puck cared for and felt very comfortable in, though he admitted the coat flattered his hard earned torso, and the hose clung attractively to his calves.
He knocked on his mother's bedroom door. It had never seemed out of place to him that his parents had separate bedrooms. Some appropriate unspoken knack that satisfied everyone in the household. "It's open, Puck."
Titania sat in front of her vanity in a throne-like high back chair. The myriad jars, glass bottles of disparate colors, a variety of tools laid out with the precision of a surgeon's assistant all gave the vanity the atmosphere of an alchemist's workbench. Titania was brushing her flowing orange-red hair and counting the strokes.
"Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred." She put the brush away and turned to face her adopted son with a smile; her thin lips made a crescent moon. She had a long and thin nose sliding out of her face under emerald eyes. Like Puck an ink design wrapped around her face, though more subtle and a shade of coral pink that sometimes faded when she blushed.
"Here, help me clasp this necklace." Puck tweaked the delicate clasp; Titania watched them both in her vanity's mirror. "You look so beautiful, Puck...so handsome, I mean." Puck finished clasping the necklace in place.
"Mom, she picked the lock and was in my room again."
"Darling, this is when you're supposed to say that I look beautiful too."
"You look sublime, Mother. This time she used a fork. The last time it was her library card. When the contractors come next week to build a front door to the house, maybe I'll get them to put in a deadbolt on my bedroom door."
"She's only seven, Puck. Girls that age are usually rather precocious."
"'Precocious' is what people say when what they really mean is...."
"Okay, I get it. I'll get your father to talk to her." She turned in her chair to look at Puck directly. "When is Mercutio going to pick you up?"
"Soon."
"He's a nice young man. I wonder where he gets it from; the Montys aren't exactly the most gentile of the Veronaville gentry."
"They're pretty precocious, you mean."
She laughed. "I guess I do. A very nice young man. Very handsome."
"I suppose so."
Titania briefly slid the back of her fingers along Puck's cheek. "I know you didn't want to go to these nuptial festivities. Please try and have a good time."
Puck started to reply, when loud metal music started blaring outside the house. They heard three quick blasts from a car horn.
"That's Mercutio. I gotta go." Puck kissed his mother on the cheek and left the room.
Titania watched him go, dropping her smile. She sighed quietly, and turned back to the vanity to attend to the details of her loveliness.
babyblueheart:
Wow, nice. You sure have a knack for writing stories! The detail is incredible!:)
starlucid:
This is very good love it so far.
oddball011:
This is good I
Elven_Song:
Very good story! A lot of people have complimented me on my picture taking skills (unfortunately I lack in the story-telling department >
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