flax-golden

alternate paths

It’s all about choices, I figured that out pretty early on while a lot of other people just stood there, overwhelmed by the first set of options.

Better to keep moving, making any choice is more productive than standing still.

I just hit another door-or-stairs point. The stairs look difficult, but the door is locked and while I have a number of keys, it would take time to try them all and I might not have acquired the right one yet, though I usually have the right key already if it is, in fact, the right door to take.

I think I’ll go with the stairs this time, since they’re more daunting and less stable, that’s usually a sign of something more rewarding to come.

There are always choices, straight ahead or up or down or sideways or under or over, locks and keys and windows and doors, even if they’re hard to see.

No dead ends, and never any going back.

Not that you can’t. Door or stairs not taken are usually still there, and sometimes different paths lead to second chance choices to be made over again.

But they won’t be the same.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

crucial communication

It is so much easier for me to express myself in writing. Spoken words always fail to make it past my tongue properly, wandering astray over my lips to the point where what I say is very rarely what I mean.

I mean what I write.

I think I write what I mean, most of the time.

Perhaps I should give up speaking.

Reserve the use of lips and tongue for tasting and other pursuits.

Carry around a pen to translate my heart and my mind instead.

I worry there would not be enough paper, and I would have to resort to inscribing my thoughts and feelings on other surfaces instead.

I might not be able to control myself when there comes a sentiment I simply must express, words howling over walls or doors, desperately needing to be read.

And I would live in constant fear of running out of ink.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

sweet temptations

It used to require much more coercion. Whispered hints and slow seductions. Long, drawn-out bewitchments carefully escalated until the meeting of lips and flesh became an inevitability.

Times change, I suppose, and one must always be willing to adapt.

They beg for them now, lining up to eagerly seal their fates and paying for them, though the prices are quite reasonable.

All it takes is caramel and chocolate, I wish I’d realized that years ago. They never even taste the poison, succumbing to it as though it were simply another nuance of the sugar high. Delirious already from the sweetness.

It’s so easy. It almost takes the fun out of it, really.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

guard pig

Every house on the street requires a protector, a fact that is bolded and italicized in all of the paperwork. Though if the reason is specified in there it’s been buried in small-font, legal-speak sentences and footnotes.

Each protector is different, I don’t think that’s a bolded rule, but I’m not certain and none of them are the same, standing or sitting or draped over front doors in their own particular fashion.

We moved in most recently, but our house is the oldest and it shows, the steps are worn and the brick has seen better days. The list of things to fix once there’s enough time and money just keeps getting longer.

Our protector came with the house. He’s seen better days, too, and for a while after we moved in I was kind of ashamed, since other houses have regal-looking lions or glimmering dragons curled around their entryways.

Until one of the neighbors (the lady with the golden-eyed owl perched by her own door) came over, bearing a welcoming platter of fruit tartlets individually wrapped in wax paper.

“You’re so lucky to have the pig,” she said as I let her in, and she looked so scared I didn’t dare ask why.

But after she left, I gave the pig a tartlet.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

last words

It’s a simple game, really. Once you understand the rules, that is, but the rules cannot be told to the player beforehand, they can only be learned through playing.

It is remarkable how many choose to play despite that fact, and despite the fact that a game must be completed—won or lost—once begun.

The game keeps records, imprints of movements made and choices taken by previous players, engraved into the gamespace itself, though much of it is recorded in an almost-indecipherable system of the game’s own devising.

It is particularly fond of marking down last words.

Though all of the last words are similar. Echoed cries repeated over and over again, before being etched in text for posterity.

So perhaps the next player who reaches this particular spot in the game will have a bit of warning.

If they take the time to look down.

But hardly anyone ever thinks to look down.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

pushy ponies

It’s not the worst house-sitting job I’ve ever had, but it’s certainly not in my top five or anything, either.

This lady didn’t even have time to meet me, I just got the keys from the agency, but she left long, detailed, color-coded lists stuck to the refrigerator with instructions about Proper Care and Management of the Estate, which is really more of a cottage but if she wants to call it an Estate that’s fine with me, she’s paying me twice what I normally get.

The plants that have two pages of instructions all to themselves are cactuses, or is it cacti? They don’t need watering but it says to turn their pots thirty degrees counter-clockwise three times a day and to leave an orange for each one at night, and the oranges are always nothing but curling peels on the floor the next morning.

The ponies are the worst, though. This flock of miniature ponies done up like carousel-less carousel horses the way other people put little sweaters on small dogs. They refuse to stay in their corral and they can undo the latches anyway. They’re constantly begging for treats and they try to steal the oranges from the cacti-cactuses and I have to shoo them away.

I try to ignore them, but they kick me in the shins with their hooves when they don’t get what they want. And they bite.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.