Breaking the Block: Jade Star Snippet 1

I’m sitting here this morning contemplating what I want to write about. Really, I want to go write fiction. Yesterday in the early evening, while digging through old files looking for stories to include in the collection I’m compiling, I found a scrap I’d forgotten I’d written. Since I have in mind to create some sort of ‘old to new’  organization in what will be a very eclectic collection, I pulled it open after reformatting it to a file that could be opened (yes, this is old stuff. Not that old, though, and I’ve permanently lost the floppy disks that dated back to 20 years ago. So nyah…) and went ‘huh’ that isn’t bad.

The upshot is that I got about 1200 words written, the most I’ve done in over a month, but I still am not sure what the plot of this story is. Or even if it’s a short or a novel. I hope to find that out later today. In the interests of that pursuit, I leave you with a snippet – the portion I’d written and rediscvovered. I think I was channeling Hazel Stone when I wrote it…

Jade Star

There is no such thing as eternal youth. My body may look pretty damn good for pushing 200 old-Earth years, but I haven’t been a young woman in over a century and a half. And I didn’t ask for this. Had I been conscious, and aware of what they were doing, I’d have fought like a madwoman… but by the time I woke up, it was done. Somehow it seemed ungrateful, with them all happy they had rescued me and saved me, to end my life again.

I should explain, I expect. My name is Jade, and I was a rockhound. Left that profession behind after the incident I refer to, seems rude to rub it in my family’s face that after they pushed me off on the ice floe (had to look all that up, first time I heard the expression. I’d like to see an ice floe, some day. The thought of that much water, to float a chunk o’ ice big enough to hold a human…) I made it and am still going strong. Then again, they might not recognize me, was I to come back with this face and body. They likely don’t remember the good days, when I first held a little ‘un in swabbies and showed him the stars, his home.

Anyway, I was old. Real old, past being able to help, and my mind was slipping. Might still be slipping, dunno. Wasn’t their idea to space me, that was me. I didn’t want to drag out my dying, and I was a mite anxious to rejoin my man, it having been those many years of alone-but-not-alone. So I headed out in a little rock scooter, into the thick of the asteroids, so they couldn’t find me. We couldn’t afford me, the Family. Not with me doing nothing to help even with the babbies any longer. And I kept breaking bones. So going dirtside wasn’t an option. I wanted to have my end out there, in the black, with the stars like jewels all around. I saw the looks Ferric’s wife kept giving me, and I took a hint, right after my centennial birthday.

Problem was, the scooter I took had a malfunction, which I knew, the reason I picked that one. Figured it’d get me out far enough, then give out, and I’d have a little time to admire the sparklies of the lights so far away, before my time was up. But instead that lil motor kicked into high gear with an annoying whine, and punched me so far out – I don’t know where I wound up, rightly. I’d passed out by then, more gravity than my old heart could take.

I woke up on an alien ship, and nothing hurt. Thought I was dead, a minute. Then I swung my legs off that weird bed and stood up, and I knew it was real. An I could see myself, reflected in a blue chrome wall. I looked like a girl again. Probably a good thing I was alone, for that bit of time. I wasn’t real happy.

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Jade Star Snippet 5 Jade Star: Snippet 2 Jade Star: Snippet 3 Promoting and Reviewing