Virtual inspiration

My imagination thrives on reading blogs.

As I travel around the world at the speed of light, flipping through journal pages that are not mine, I feel both elation and a sense of loss. Comment boxes seem to have become smaller and smaller; they close in on me, and at times I am unable to write anything at all.

So then my imagination kicks in.

That is how I started seeing peacock feathers. It didn't make any sense, really. Oh, and I saw a masked ball with dancing figures and the colour black.

So here is my really long comment, which would not fit into any box, no matter how much I tried to squash it in. Well...I did try to fit it into a hat box (as you will see later on, probably) but even that was quite unsuccessful...those feathers are so very long and delicate.

The story is not really mine at all. It belongs to several different bloggers whose words and images sparked my imagination and gave me much pleasure.

THE LADY OF THE RING

It was not for lack of trying that she felt such an emptiness in her heart, and it certainly was not for lack of men, for there they were, everywhere she looked. A glance to the left, a blink of the eye, a glint of the candlelight, and there they were before her, so many, all ready for her at a moment’s notice. “Come dance sweet darling, come take my hand,” she heard them whisper in her little shell of an ear. But all is never what it seems at a masked ball, and those men would have done better had they recognised the lacklustre turn of her phrase, and the soft white hand laying limp and lifeless in theirs.

Dance after dance she found herself swept away in the arms of yet another masked man. Dance after dance she bit her bottom lip and held her dress as she swirled round and round and round. Feeling dizzy and slightly sick, she begged off the last dance and steadied herself on the wall, which soon became the platform of a whirling carousel, pushing her on and on until, suddenly, it stopped, and she was enveloped in a tight blackness which squeezed her chest and then opened her eyes, with a pop.

Directly above her, almost too close to see, were two round eyes, staring down at her curiously, and then, oh my, one of them winked. She propped herself up on her elbows, stretching her neck up to see the strange animal properly. What was it? A bird of some sort, perhaps, or a beast. Peacock feathers, she thought to herself, lovely multicoloured peacock feathers gathered around a deep purple velvet covered in tiny jewels, and a glistening black beak, curved and sharp. Then blackness again.