The Drabblecast

I  stand on gray museum marble, watching the pendulum’s parachronistic swing.

A strange desire fills me. I dismiss it as madness.

Sensing movement, I turn. A familiar gaze, like looking at an old mirror, cracked and gray, meets mine. "I’ll see you in twenty years," he says.

He jumps, gracefully arcing, mounting the oscillating arm like a fireman's pole. Our mental connection surprises me, then he winks and I understand.

My vardoger fades out of existence.

I replay the scene in my mind over and over, so that when the time comes, I’ll be able to execute it perfectly again.

Fascinating, m_a_.
You've taught me two new words.
It's a bit of Ground Hog's Day Drabble.

strawman wrote:Fascinating, m_a_.
You've taught me two new words.
It's a bit of Ground Hog's Day Drabble.

Thanks, stawman.

This one was fun for me. I got to combine two elements of sci-fi I love: time travel and mythology. I'm glad you caught the Groundhog Day parallel. Imagine having to do something over and over and not being able to understand why.

I have to ask...
What's the backstory in which someone from Largo knows what a vardoger is? Are you a Viking?

I like it

strawman wrote:I have to ask...
What's the backstory in which someone from Largo knows what a vardoger is? Are you a Viking?

No, I'm not a Viking in the flesh, perhaps in spirit. I do like "The Ride of the Valkyries", though. The Celtic/UK Mongrel is my breed.

The backstory is that I became fascinated with doppelgangers while doing research for a short story. I found out that vardogers are sort of the helpful doppelganger that goes before a person and does something they are going to do later on and is witnessed doing it (though never by the double, as far as I know. Not until this little drabble, anyway).

For some reason I thought: "Now, how did the ancient Norse people know about time travel?" I knew I had to do something with that thought. I'm still working taking it to another level.

I'm glad you like the drabble.

Phenopath wrote:I like it

Thanks, Phenopath.

Wow, shiny new words. I have to out myself as a Harry Potter fan by saying how much this reminds me of a certain scene in The Prisoner of Azkaban ... and slightly of a scene in The Philosopher's Stone.

I can't really think of anything else in modern fiction I'm aware of that connects with this concept. That's probably a good thing since that means it hasn't become the newest Twilight, but I could stand to see more of it. Quite cool.

dreamrock wrote:Wow, shiny new words. I have to out myself as a Harry Potter fan by saying how much this reminds me of a certain scene in The Prisoner of Azkaban ... and slightly of a scene in The Philosopher's Stone.

I can't really think of anything else in modern fiction I'm aware of that connects with this concept. That's probably a good thing since that means it hasn't become the newest Twilight, but I could stand to see more of it. Quite cool.

Go ahead and come out of the closet. It gets too stuffy in there. Maybe we can start a support group for closet HP fans. Anyway, I wasn't thinking of PoA when I wrote this, but the pendulum in this drabble is a time machine, just like the time turner (the image of which was an hourglass, if memory serves me right). I don't recall the similar imagery in the Philosopher's Stone.

I'm glad you liked the drabble and I thank God it's not a Twilight thing. If my friends ask me to read those books one more time, I am going to go ballistic on the lot of them. I've promised to read "The Host" (only to compare it to Heinlein's "The Puppet Masters") but I am biased already, so I don't know that Meyers will have a chance. Thanks for the feedback.