Lift the veil of your blackness

in the spirituality of deep night.

greet the rosy red hue of sunrise

kissing your skin with passion.

See with your heart the purple

softness and love mingling with red.

Thumb the rough bark of brown tree,

warmth of dead plants, decaying,

earth opening up to burgeoning life.

Stroke green to absorb virgin growth,

imbibing freshness of clean health,

like a minty taste on your tongue.

Brush the blue of cold water, gurgling,

smell its salty brine wafting around you.

Caress blush on your cheeks in red dashes,

heat emanating in color of spicy passion,

flashes of anger and intensity, overwhelming.

Whiff wind-whipped stormy colors of grey

breathing sweet ozone and new breezy air.

Peel the pebbled skin of an orange, taste

sweetness like the tropics, round like

the orange globe of the sunset in sky.

Savor yellow, like a ripened banana

nourishing and sweet, drawn into soul.

Wrap white of purity and cleanliness,

cocooning your body in soft simplicity.

Expand all your senses to see the beauty

light touches of color grazing your skin.

[This is a shorr story set in the world of my novel, Roco, which is about a squirrel who turns into a human. I wrote this piece solely for this challenge—it's not an excerpt, although it features characters, themes, etc., from the novel. More technical details after the sample.]

The squirrel paused on the treeroad—really, a few branches in the proximity of each other—and surveyed the forest floor. To us, the squirrel would have looked like any other Western Gray with his silver fur coat and creamy white belly all shadowed by a tail-banner.

But to other rodents, this squirrel was instantly recognizable from tiny unique features on his face, ears, and fur, and by his smell—a mixture of oak tree, sugar breath (his family had a secret patch of berries), vinegar, and rectum. His name was Oakbear.

“Roco!” shouted Oakbear at the still woods. "You've gone too far!"

Oakbear had come to a perimeter in the trees invisible to us but easily detected by the sensitive nose of a squirrel. Here was a disturbing lack of familiar smells, specifically the fur trace and rectum oils of the Village. Oakbear didn't know this forest except in the abstract. These trees hadn't been frequented by squirrels for a few summers because the dreys had become nesting sites for owls. In chasing season, those damned birds hunted tirelessly, mostly for mice but sometimes four-legged meat as big as a Western Gray. While the Village hadn't heard hoots this year, it didn't mean there wasn't a nest being developed somewhere. In the heat of the chase, if a squirrel wasn't careful, he might find himself embraced by claws sharper than a broken beer bottle.

Vibrations on the treeroad told Oakbear someone was coming. He looked back, his head motion almost mechanical, and peered into the leaf-cover with a discerning black eye. But it was only Sudry, a pup about the same age, who still lived in a drey with his parents.

It was apparent Sudry's parents had just birthed a new litter, because the squirrel's fur had the sour scent of nursing whelps. To give you a complete account, Sudry smelled like sour hair, wet leaves, botfly, cinnamon, and rectum. He had a few things to work on before he’d be a suitable mate. The Western Gray's scientific name is Sciurus Griseus, phonetically 'greasy scurrier,' an apt description here.

"Where is she?" asked Sudry, panting.

"Somewhere around here," grumbled Oakbear. "You know, every other female lets her mate catch her after awhile. Somehow I ended up chasing the one squirrel who doesn't want to be caught."

"Maybe she's not ready to settle down."

"But I have the drey in Meadowbrook. The one with the view of the valley. And I have access to a bear's horde of berries. And—" Oakbear struggled to think of more reasons why he was such a desirable squirrel. "And I'm strong!" To prove his might, Oakbear picked up a bark beetle and broke it in half. Sudry tried to look impressed, but he'd seen all of this before. "And—"

"And your cheeks," said Sudry.

"Right! I could fit a hawk between these chompers."

"Mind, too."

"Thank you! Almost forgot—I have the memory of a bluejay. Never misplaced a cone." 

As Oakbear reviewed how fast he could scamper, how many worms he could dig up, how warmly he could cuddle, Sudry watched a squirrel wriggle onto a branch overhead. Then a cone plonked on Oakbear's back.

"Owl!" shouted Oakbear, jumping away, his hair jutting out like a porcupine. He would have fallen right there if his leap hadn't luckily taken him to another branch—a branch which he clung to tightly, upside down.

Above, a high-pitched: "Rocococo!"

Roco also looked like every other Western Gray Squirrel, although she was a little slimmer, having been something of a runt. Although Sudry couldn't smell her from his branch, he knew she was an odd concoction of familiar and exotic scents. Even if she smelled of the usual fungus, nuts, moss, the sides of trees, carcasses, bugs, and mud—they were not the fungus, nuts, etc., of the Village.

But Roco was not named for her smells. Instead, she was named after her ululating laugh, which sounded something like“rocococo.” It was an odd thing for a squirrel to do. Although squirrels often lived carefree and simple lives, they were more prone to scold than scoff. But Roco was always laughing, and at events nobody else found funny. She chuckled when Hepper’s mate discovered her husband had eaten all the foodstores for winter—she rococo’d when Mottle mistook a pebble for an acorn—and she collapsed when Elder Smells-Like-Bark-Beetle accidentally fell on a beaver. Now, her prank was creating all sorts of undignified chatter.

"Roco, you could have killed me!" shouted Oakbear. Roco downclimbed (for treetrunks are highways to squirrels) and stood on Oakbear's branch.

"Still chasing me, Bearbutt?"

"Yes," said Owlbear, looking nervously at the forest floor. Squirrels were immune to the fear of heights, but Owlbear was unaccustomed to being vulnerable.

"Why don't you go find some pretty pup in the Village and leave me alone?"

"But—my berries," reminded Oakbear.

Roco made a choking noise, and for a moment they thought she was sick. Then she coughed up a slimy blue pebble.

"Already found your patch. Thought your family could squirrel that away forever?" Roco looked to Sudry, who was watching her shyly. "Hello, friend." 

"Hello."

"Race you to the lake."

With that, Roco leaped away, taking the treeroad deeper into the wood. Her two suitors, however, didn't need any more prompting to head back. 

* * *

Regarding the Novel

Title: "Roco"

Genre: Modern Fantasy (Native American & Norse Mythology)

Target Audience: Teenagers and above.

Age Range: 12+, although it's YAF, I think twentysomethings would enjoy this, too.

Word Count: 50,000+

Author: Desmond White

Project: Modern fantasy is a popular genre right now, and my book comes at it from an interesting angle: a squirrel turned into a human! Plus, I'm going to catch those nostalgic Animorph fans.

Hook: A squirrel who's been turned into a human must rescue her friend from an ancient order of snakes who inhabit (and control) people's bodies.

Synopsis: Roco's mother, Nutsour, filled their warm, comfortable nights in their drey with stories about ancient squirrel heroes outwitting all sorts of nasties—from hawks to foxes to eagles to bears. One day, the opportunity for adventure presents itself when a human girl on the run (and slowly recovering from a poisonous bite) hides in the Crown, the squirrel's hill-village. The girl, who can use spellrunes to perform feats of magic, is able to communicate with the squirrels, and soon contracts Roco to be her sentry in exchange for bits of a granola bar. The girl saves Roco's life when the squirrel is attacked by an owl—an act that reveals the girl's position to her pursuers. Now, Roco must rescue the human girl from these mysterious enemies (which look like human beings but smell like slithering things) on an adventure that will pit her wits, and her mother's stories, against ancient monsters and mages. Roco's story becomes even stranger when a "helpful" ancient spirit, in ironic jest, turns her into the most powerful creature on the planet—a human being. A human girl, in fact.

Regarding the Author

Bio: A high school teacher who writes when his students aren't looking.

Platform: Prose, Personal Blog

Education: UCSB College of Creative Studies (B.A. in Literature); HBU (Master of Liberal Arts)

Writing Style: Poetic, Concise, with a snap of Snark

Hobbies: Playing & Designing Board/CardGames; Reading & Discussing Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Old Books; Doting on my Wife and her two Evil Cats

Hometown: Sugar Land, Texas

Age: 27, going on 28 in August

Website: www.desmondwrite.com

Twitter: @desmondwrite

Do you believe in Prose

in a writer’s beating heart?

The phrases can free author

whenever glad tidings start.

And it’s magic, when the words

capture the stars in your sky.

Bliss flows in with tales of yore

dancing pages of bewitchment

free your soul and let you fly.

If you believe in magic

tattoo your feelings with Prose

and just maybe, if ambiance is right

you’ll tap, tap, tap all night long

doing the salsa with other Prosers

meeting tomorrow, late at night

and we’ll conjure some magic words

because the wizardry is in you and me

and Prose gives us the platform

to create visions of all we can be.

Do you believe, like I believe

that the magnetism of Prose

will set us free to see

how much we owe

to Prose who allows

creativity to flow free?

I’ve drowned many times before

     hints of twilight overcome

     where dark shadows loom

     jars of salty tears

     inside brittle ocean walls

I’ve drowned many times before

     weeping white crests of time

     carrying anguish in my seaweed

     opening undertows of dread

     swept out to sea of no return

I’ve drowned many times before

     clouds of my breath

     sorrowfully head home

     as I swim long strokes

     of a cerulean beginning

I’ve drowned many times before

     caught in the shallows

     I plan my break

     in dawning of red globe

     of enveloping sunshine

I’ve drowned many times before

     slow rhythm of the wind

     whispers on my skin

     morning tide tiptoes

     cleansing my soul.

Water-borne daughter

Born in a storm

Besides the banks of the Thames

Grand-daughter of the sea

Sailor's blood waves in me

Cruel fate raised me in a desert

cracked skin,

parched soul,

I ran to the sea,

San Diego 'n' me

Wet footprints in the sand

Sharp, salty tang in my nose

The water laps, laps at my skin

I drink you in.

But fate and jobs

led me back to the desert

where I wither, a sour grape

a hard raisin, unchewable

I just need water

for a sea-borne daughter

whose cells dry up

and flake away in the heat

of a desert day.

in the wake of our discussion,

we hurl insults like grenades,

like bomb vessels bursting, a

face-off at opposite corners

of the room, and rage rends

the air, lends the atmosphere

a note of storms clawing at

our beached bodies, a volley

of venomous spray, when you

tell me that everything i do is

mediocre and i retaliate with

the observation that nobody

likes you, you are friendless

and alone, always, then you

scream, you stupid cunt! and

the windows shudder with the

volume of our passing—please,

love, don't remember this, i

walk

towards you now,

closer and closer

with my mouth hanging open,

my mouth is a black hole

growing,

a maelstrom that

shatters my face apart, 

a hole from

which

my howl

emerges

coming up to

find you,

grind you, it rises

from the crouched ladder of

my skeleton,

a furious noise

obliterating everything,

it swallows up

     your voice

                     and erases

                                     your words 

Lulling you to slumber

a repetitive rhythm

cooling your toes

in sunset tinges.

Hold your breath

to explore my depth.

When I lose my temper

walk away from me

until I wrap you

in harmony.

I’ll burnish your skin

and raise your heat,

leave your soul refreshed

without missing a beat.

Embracing you at dawn,

I’ll show you passion

again and again.

I’ll shift your emotions

and stir you in squalls,

I’ll toss you about

but you’ll rise

to the surface.

I’ll be there for you

I’m not going anywhere,

your’re deep within

my loving womb

as I give birth

to ebbing peace.

Will I lose it all

These moments of clarity

When my demons come?

Sea nymphs serenade

scant seconds of passing sun

ocean waves crashing

ripe skins lose waning luster

fleeting memory fragrance.

*I am reposting this because some people told me they cannot see it.

I weep for wind

and flight,

swooping on wings.

I lift my soul

circling the sun

in blink of an eye,

wrapping my feet in

hollow feathers.

Let me float over stars

and under the moon,

a fantasy of spinning,

hovering above

filmy clouds of light,

dancing in tangos

of silky breezes.

All life can be seen

when looking behind,

born to fly high

above tomorrow.