busaikko: Something Wicked This Way Comes (Default)
busaikko ([personal profile] busaikko) wrote in [community profile] snupin1002005-09-30 10:08 am

Jobberknoll

title: Jobberknoll
Words: 100
Author: [livejournal.com profile] busaikko
Rating: G (SS/RL angst; what else do I write but angst?)
Spoilers: Nah. If you've read HBP it works; if you've not, it also works.
Note: For Challenge 21, “Feathers.” (If you don't own a copy of Fantastic Beasts, you can find out more about the Jobberknoll at The HP Lexicon.)


Hands move independent of the soul; cutting, shredding, grinding, mixing, and he but an observer, remote.

It is only when he takes up a handful of blue feathers that something cracks. He rips the barbs from the shaft, and the barbules catch in the rough whorls of his fingerprints like silk, like fine brown hair, and he bows his head.

He wonders when he dies will every secret of his blackest heart come tearing from his throat, every dream he's never dared. His fingers clench, just the once, and then he sifts the blue into the cauldron, where memory melts.

[identity profile] schemingreader.livejournal.com 2005-09-30 03:39 am (UTC)(link)
Barbules! I am having a fantastic memory of the time I read a lesser-known Nabokov novel and learned the word "achenes" (the seed-bumps on a strawberry.) What a great image, also.

[identity profile] schemingreader.livejournal.com 2005-09-30 04:00 am (UTC)(link)
I did that, with feathers. That's something I bet every Hogwarts student does constantly, right?

I was right that it's "a-keens." It's mainly used about sunflower seeds, But Nabokov used it to refer to strawberries! Is that even fair? It's certainly not fair to inflict the word on your students. though they might say, "Oh yes, of course, I use the word [short eloquent Japanese word meaning strawberry seeds] all the time." You never know.


(Oh, this website (http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/~kenr/grocery/achenes.html) thinks achenes is legit for the strawberry bumps. Whew! It's a long time since that epiphanous moment, I would be bummed if I had been using such an obscure word wrong for that long.)
ext_2023: (bookxme OTP)

[identity profile] etrangere.livejournal.com 2005-09-30 06:55 am (UTC)(link)
yet again it strikes. Very moving. (dude, i saw don't know how to review drabbles)
ext_2023: (Default)

[identity profile] etrangere.livejournal.com 2005-09-30 07:35 am (UTC)(link)
something like that *giggles*
I was thinking that no matter what you wrote it hit home and I always liked it.

Angst good !
aunty_marion: There's no need to call me Sir, Professor (Call me Sir)

Japanese translations...

[personal profile] aunty_marion 2005-10-04 07:52 pm (UTC)(link)
The only Japanese pun/joke I remember learning when I was studing Japanese (30 years ago...) was something to do with hashi (chopsticks) and hashi (bridge). Or was it the poetic one with hana (nose) and hana (flower)? Or tyoo-tyoo (chō-chō) (town mayor) and tyoo-tyoo (butterfly)....

Of course it's nothing like so funny when you see the kanji, because they're different....

[identity profile] stoicstella.livejournal.com 2005-10-09 05:43 am (UTC)(link)
That last line kills me. The whole drabble is brilliant, but a strong last line just decides the entire feeling of a drabble and yours is marvelous. fantastic work all around.