#finn & reinaldo

[ephcmcral]

finn could have sworn... but living in thistleberry all his life had made it second nature to drop things he couldn't easily find an explanation to. it could have been anything. perhaps a field mouse that had come to join the festivities.

the florist reaches into his pockets to fish out his wallet to pay. "for sure," he agreed, the weather was lovely indeed. business was booming. he had no reasons to complain. well, not many, at least. "it's been good! it's nice to see everybody out and about."

"Hm? Hear what? Sorry, hearin's not what it used to be." Easy breezy comes the white lie. While Reinaldo had been the reason for the noise, he, himself, hadn't exactly heard it squeak over all the talking. That's what he convinced himself of, anyways.

"One mote con huesillo comin' right up!" All it takes is a few scoops to even out the peaches to mote and the drink's served with a colorful straw. "How's the dance been for you? Perfect day for it too, huh?"

[letterful]

friends, do consider this delightfully eccentric syllabus that i’ve stumbled upon in Steven Moore’s The Novel: An Alternative History (& that was built around the unorthodox masterpiece that is Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel):

“With the motto "Do What You Will," Rabelais gave himself permission to do anything he damn well pleased with the language and the form of the novel; as a result, every author of an innovative novel mixing literary forms and genres in an extravagant style is indebted to Rabelais, directly or indirectly. Out of his codpiece came Aneau's Alector, Nashe's Unfortunate Traveller, Lopez de Ubeda's Justina, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Beroalde de Verville's Fantastic Tales, Sorel's Francion, Burton's Anatomy, Swift's Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels, Fielding's Tom Jones, Amory's John Buncle, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, the novels of Diderot and maybe Voltaire (a late convert), Smollet's Adventures of an Atom, Hoffmann's Tomcat Murr, Hugo's Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Southey's Doctor, Melville's Moby-Dick, Flaubert's Temptation of Saint Anthony and Bouvard and Pecuchet, Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Frederick Rolfe's ornate novels, Bely's Petersburg, Joyce's Ulysses, Witkiewicz's Insatiability, Barnes's Ryder and Ladies Almanack, Gombrowicz's Polish jokes, Flann O'Brien's Irish farces, Philip Wylie's Finnley Wren, Patchen's tender novels, Burroughs's and Kerouac's mad ones, Nabokov's later works, Schmidt's fiction, the novels of Durrell, Burgess (especially A Clockwork Orange and Earthly Powers), Gaddis and Pynchon, Barth, Coover, Sorrentino, Reed's Mumbo Jumbo, Brossard's later works, the masterpieces of Latin American magic realism (Paradiso, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Three Trapped Tigers, I the Supreme, Avalovara, Terra Nostra, Palinuro of Mexico), the fabulous creations of Severo Sarduy and Reinaldo Arenas, Markson's Springer's Progress, Mano's Take Five, Rios's Larva and otros libros, the novels of Patil West, Tom Robbins, Stanley Elkin, Alexander Theroux, W. M. Spackman, Alasdair Gray, Gaetan Soucy, and Rikki Ducornet ("Lady Rabelais," as one critic called her), Mark Leyner's hyperbolic novels, the writings of Magister Gass, Greer Gilman's folkloric fictions and Roger Boylan's Celtic comedies, Vollmann's voluminous volumes, Wallace's brainy fictions, Siegel's Love in a Dead Language, Danielewski's novels, Jackson's Half Life, Field's Ululu, De La Pava's Naked Singularity, and James McCourt's ongoing Mawrdew Czgowchwz saga.”

(+ it seems that someone has even gone out of their way to combine all of these into a goodreads list, if that’s your cup of tea!)

[ephcmcral]

finn was certain he'd heard something, but as he looked around there was no source for the sound to be seen. odd, definitely, but having lived here for his entire life, he knew that the explanation for such a thing to be something he probably couldn't come up with on his own no matter how creative he considered himself to be.

"did you hear that?" he asked, smiling confusedly and at first completely disregarding the question he'd been asked. it sunk in after a few seconds, though, and his face lit up. "mote con huesillo, yes, absolutely. please."

status: open | location: one of the vendor tents

Although Reinaldo stays tucked away beneath a deep green tent, he sees it. Well, them, really. The flitting shapes that dart and duck between the unaware. Personally, Reinaldo has no qualms with the little things. So long as no one gets hurt, everything’s fine. But then one person goes careening down and gets into a particularly bad scuff — almost takes down their friend out of instinct to stay upright. Naturally, there’s some commotion that flocks around, and he would’ve been one of them if there hadn’t been movement at his ten. 

There, just at the dancefloor border, flutters another mischievous pixie ready to send someone else tumbling. This time he doesn’t idle, though. One hushed, arcanic word and the creature’s suddenly yanked away at the speed of light. All that’s left is a squeak with no source, and Reinaldo acts none the wiser as someone approaches. 

“Hey, welcome! Want some mote con huesillo or paleta? Got mango and pineapple with some toppings you can dip in.”