One of the projects I worked on in France sprang from my desire to play with watercolors. (Did you know they com win TUBES?). I also wanted to create a backstory for the beast I got from Kathleen Jennings. (As an aside, did you see the gorgeous work she did on Holly Black’s Special Edition The Cruel Prince?)
Obviously, this beast is more cuddly than scary, though appearances may be deceiving.
I started a poem that I hated, so I walked away from it. A few days later, this came out in a rush.
Phylloxera
The beast in her hand was small, black, and covered with rough fur that stuck out in all directions, rather like a hedgehog, but softer. Come to think of it, about the size of one, too.
“How on earth did you get stuck in there?” If not for the creature’s scratching and whining, she’d never have known it was in the box in the very back of that ancient wardrobe. “You could have died in there.”
Her tender heart shuddered to think what might have happened had she not decided to explore the ruined Vignoblier’s house.
The creature blinked its chardonnay eyes slowly, as if stunned, seeing the light for the first time in centuries, or so she thought. Her father often chided her for her twisty imagination.
But she was right.
She raised her hand into the single sunbeam that fell through the shattered plaster ceiling to better examine it. Surprisingly, the creature did not flinch.
“Why, you’re not black at all. You’re purple.”
The color of Gamay grapes, to be exact, though she didn’t know it.
“May I pet you?” She reached out with free hand to stroke the fur, but the beast bared moss green teeth and gave a hiss like the gas in crémante.
With a small cry the girl dropped the animal—though part of her doubted it was one—and it scurried away, under the gap beneath the dilapidated door that hung like her loose tooth–and out of sight.
“Wait.” She rushed after the creature, clambering over the broken furniture and ruined couch. Not only did she not want to lose her new pet, some primordial, much wiser, part of her feared that the beast had been in the box on purpose. Maybe the strange carvings on the top of the ebony wood had meant Stay away or dangerous creature. She was close, but her youth and inexperience kept her from seeing the damage she had done.
She made it to the door in time to see the tip of its wine purple tail as it disappeared under a drooping wine, but by the time she lifted the leaf it was gone.
The actual Phylloxera decimated France’s vines late in the 1800s, and was yellow, not purple, but at the time I just let the words be the words. If I were to lengthen this into a fairy tale of sorts, I’d change those details.
After the words came the total image (I played with paint!).
D.S.Dehel 