Twig

“Twii-iig!”

That was Delilah. She did not always speak in a lilting tone. It only happened when she was either particularly annoyed, or uncommonly sad. Today, on this fine bright sunny May’s day, she was particularly annoyed. The object of her annoyance? Hmm, let us observe him.

He is walking along with quite a swagger, his hands stuffed deep into the blue pockets of his very baggy blue jeans. His white T-shirt hangs loosely over his skinny frame, and a shock of what looks to be very white hair obscures half his face and all of his neck. He is walking along the pavement, away from Delilah.

“TWWII-III-GG!” her shout has broken new grounds. It has yet to exceed the sound barrier, however.

Let us now describe Delilah. She is slight of build. Her hair is very dark, and falls over her face in softly curling waves. The large, baggy hoody she wears hangs over the black jeans beneath. On her feet she has placed a pair of scuffed black trainers. Her face is sharp and clearly defined; her features small and pretty. Her dark eyes are fringed with thick, long lashes. Her translucent skin reveals, beneath those strange, glittery eyes, a network of pale blue veins. The unusual emphasis of these blue veins gives her a slightly unearthly look.

Twig does not turn at the call of Delilah. He ambles along, smiling at the sky and to his front, but he never looks back. You can see that Delilah is now frowning deeply, seeming quite annoyed.  She stares after Twig, her frown deepening somewhat menacingly. She is not holding her breath, but in her mind is planning all the atrocities she will commit against such rudery. Oh, wait! It seems like she has NOT been thinking of atrocities, but was instead debating whether or not to call Twig again! Ah, she has reached her decision. Here we go…

“Twii-ii-IIII-IIIII-GGG!”

Holy mackerel! It has gone and exceeded the sound limit! Delilah Woods is indeed a talented girl.

Twig can be seen to jump in fright, clutch his arms to his chest and whip round. We can now see his face. It is as sharp featured as Delilah’s. But where Delilah was dark, Twig is not. He has a pair of striking eyes, the colour of cornflowers. His eyebrows and eyelashes are as white as his hair. He, in short, looks the very picture of total and complete terror. His eyes alight on Delilah pretty quickly, and his shoulders sag in relief.

“Oh”, he says, scratching his head, his other hand reaching for the safe haven of his pocket, “S’you”

“Yeah,” Delilah marches over to where he is standing, “after I’ve called you like twenty times!”

“Come now, Delilah…”

“No! Shush, Twig, you need to keep your ears pricked a bit more, you know?”

Twig can be seen to roll his eyes. Delilah, if you must know, is a bit of a drama queen. I think it has become quite apparent to you already, actually.

“Alright” Twig says, meekly. He gives a little smile to indicate that all is well back at the ranch.

“What was it you wanted, ay?”

Delilah hands him an envelope that she had pulled out of her brown satchel over the course of her short admonishment. Eyebrows raised, Twig takes it.

“Goodbye now, Twig” says Delilah, and she turns to make her way home.

Twig looks surprised, “Where are you going?” he asks, curious.

“Home” Delilah sings, her satchel swinging by her side.

“Can I walk with you, then?” it is Twig’s turn to call out. Delilah glances back, eyebrows raised.

“I hate to break it to you, Twig, but you live on the opposite side of town”

Twig nods, “Just checking” he says, simply.

“Fair enough” Delilah replies. Twig heaves a sigh of relief, stuffs the envelope into his pocket where it miraculously fits, and turns and carries on. He can feel his mind sink back into the dreamy state it had been in before Delilah had rudely interrupted him. A haze of blue obscures his vision, and a thin yellow path reveals itself to him as the direction he should be walking in, so that he avoids any obstacles. To you, as a mere outsider, his face looks blank. His eyes dart from here to there, unseeing and glassy. Twig, as it were, is walking in a bubble that is his own, sweet, serene world.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly how he likes it.

Image Credit

Where I Introduce Twig Blackadder

Twig Blackadder is not your average Joe. He is quite tall, quite pale. Almost yellow, in fact. He has a shock of white hair, thick white eyebrows, despite being young and fresh. He managed, one day when he was quite small and still new to his enchanted abilities, to turn himself into a stick figure. To this day neither he, nor anybody else for that matter, has been able to restore him to his original self. He became a worldwide phenomenon a few years ago, but interest in the anomaly that is Twig Blackadder had long since waned and he carried on living and breathing and being human, just like you and I (At least, I imagine you might be a usual human and if you are not then I apologise profusely). And yes, I dreamed him up. It was a summery, sunny day in April, much like this one. The year was 2011. I was walking into college (that’s 6th form when it’s at home) and Twig started to talk.

Oh he could talk the hind leg off a donkey, that one. It was this, that and the other. I watched the ground as I walked, intent on what he was saying.

There is something marvellous in the way Twig manages to skirt around all the topics known to man or beast before alighting on the point he intended to make in the first place. He reads the thesaurus before he goes to bed, and sometimes joins it with the encyclopaedia.

“There is no point,” he emphasises to me on a regular basis, “in speech if it is meaningless.”

Which is ironic, I suppose, given that all Twig likes to do is talk. His speech, however, is peppered with facts. He will be telling me about the importance of having a goal in one’s life, and it will take him a good few hours to make this point because he will go off on the most extraordinary tangents, taking me along with him on little worldly and wordy adventures. At the end of the conversation, or rather, monologue, I will have learnt several fascinating facts about worms, and all the synonyms of the word “shun”.

Twig prides himself on never saying anything meaningless. Unnecessary, perhaps, in the context of the conversation, but never meaningless. Or absurd, or empty, or useless, insubstantial, inconsequential, trivial, nugatory, vapid, vacant, futile and hollow.

Well. I mentioned you might be meeting Twig someday. Today he decided to make an appearance, and I thought since you might be wondering who that odd looking fellow, grinning impishly at you might be, I would give him a little introduction on my page.

He says hallo, and it’s good to meet you.

The Summer of the Rooks

Can you ever tell when the Rooks come into town?

They swarm in on the sunrise, that’s what. From far away they look like any old birds. A flock of geese, perhaps, flying home after a long winter away.

But rooks are more sinister than that. They squawk and caw along with the crows, in graveyards.

I heard they were carnivorous birds too. Which is especially morbid, when you think about it. What are these awful carnivorous birds doing loitering about graveyards? Lots of meat in graveyards, if you ask me.

The summer of the Rooks is different, though. Every four years there is a Summer of the Rooks. It occurs when all the Rooks from all over Urigal fly to the capital city of that land, and there is much merrymaking as the days grow longer, and the minstrels walk about in long beautiful gowns, their long tresses bleached golden by the sun, their voices trilling in sad beauty; the markets are groaning with produce, the people were at peace and rest. All is right with the world. Once every four years.

This year, of course, was no different. Twig was alive, as Twiggy as ever. His shock of white blond hair was positively silver that summer, the sun had been out so much. His cousin Delilah was as delightfully moody as ever, and as protective of her cousin Twig as she always was. His best friend George, the Pie-Boy, as the Phenomenal Girl liked to call him, was ever present. And yet there was a look in his eye which suggested that he possibly had a past which was finally catching up to him. His violet eyes no longer twinkled with merriment. He had started to talk about an Alex, a Lem, and a Tristan. He had started the twitchings one always knew were Home-sick Twitchings, and yet nobody acknowledged them because it was a Summer of the Rooks, and everybody was meant to be content.

Rooks by day, folks. Rooks by night. Why was the Summer of the Rooks always so splendid, when rooks themselves were such morbid birds?

Well, quite simply, the people of those lands believed them to be good omens. Omens of happy tidings, of lush fields and great yield, of fat cows that gave full, rich, creamy milk, of hens that laid half a dozen eggs a day; each, of snails that ignored lettuces, of worms that happily wriggled through soils, of fish that flashed silver in a river that was a sea of bounty, of days filled with warmth and laughter and food, of people who did not know hunger or sadness or irritability because they had all they could ever want in one season.

I wore a woolly hat, that summer.

Twig commented on it. He said, “Cor, Pegs, that’s a beautiful hat you have on”

George told me his sister Lem had the exact same hat. It was just a normal hat. Blue, with zig zag stripes, and patterns in white wool. It had a little pom bobble on top, and two strings hanging by my ears. I wore it everywhere. I wore it in the forest when I went looking for blackberries. I wore it in the strawberry fields, I wore it everywhere, I tell you, everywhere.

It was never cold on the Summer of the Rooks, so I really cannot say I had a solid reason for wearing my hat. Nobody asked me, however, so I didn’t say anything. Nobody stared at me, or told me I was a tad odd. They didn’t even think it, I don’t think. I don’t know why nobody questioned it. Not even Rob. I don’t know why Rob didn’t question it.

We were walking over the bridge, me and Rob. When this huge cloud rolled up, cracking like some huge angry beast had slammed a stone fist into it. Lightning tore a great rift in this black cloud, and Rob and I shrank back from the monstrous beauty of it all, as the thunder clapped around us, a deafening sound, reverberating around our skulls.

Then the rain began. Soft at first, then huge, like ten penny pieces, slamming on our heads and shoulders.

I looked at Rob, and he was smiling at me through the rain, his eyes were golden because he was Rob and he had golden eyes, and his eyelashes, which I have always admired because of their supreme length, had beads of water dangling on their pretty tips, and his hair hung over his face as rivulets slid down it, and he was smiling through the deluge, down at me, and he said,

“Your woolly hat is all wet”

And beyond him, I saw the rooks, crowing through the rain in mockery, not seeming in the least ruffled by the downpour.