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Jess Mahler
@JessMahler@indiepocalypse.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@ljwrites @writingbooks

Since you ask, here's a passage from Planting Life in a Dying City that tends to draw tears:

Caution forgotten, Lefeng pelted down the trail, skidding and sliding in damp leaves and muddy loam. A short time later, ey burst from the trees at the village edge and stumbled to a halt.

Everything was mud. Mud and dead fish and ragged stumps of wood where walls and homes had been that morning. Here and there, a lump sprawled in the mud – lumps covered with fabric and often trailing banners of waterlogged hair. Lefeng stared, trying to take in what ey was seeing. It was like the entire village had been washed away. Step by step, ey crept out into the mud. It sucked at eir boots and clung to eir legs.

The first body ey came to was the elder, Chainchyu. Eir face was unrecognizable, but somehow ey was still wearing the silly bracelet of nuts and dried berries ey had worn for nearly twenty years. Lefeng sank into the mud next to em and gently touched the bracelet. Lefeng had given it to em, a childish gift from a youngling to eir favorite grandparent. Chainchyu had promised never to take it off.

Now, Lefeng removed it for em. “Journey long, Baba. Until I join you at the meeting-fire.”

Tears pouring down eir face, Lefeng forced emself to stand. Somewhere, there had to be someone still alive. There had to.

#PlantingLife

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Author-ized L.J.
@ljwrites@writeout.ink replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@JessMahler @writingbooks Omg I teared up again at reading that 😢 the whole post-disaster sequence was emotional & tragic, and the passage about a victim's hair hanging like seaweed particularly stands out in memory.

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Jess Mahler
@JessMahler@indiepocalypse.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@ljwrites @writingbooks
I always feel like I'm 'bad' at description because so much of my writing is the equivalent of a black box theater. But then I come up with a passage like this, and it's just... yeah, okay, I actually got this.

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