Brought to you the letter Wham!
And I guess also the colour, um …blue? …purple?
Copyright
J.B. Norman
All her life, Indigo has lived on the grounds of the Magological Academy of Realmgard.
Taken in as a foundling by the Academy’s Dean of Herbology & Pharmacology, Dean Florinda Grimsby, Indigo has grown up surrounded by most of the brightest magical minds in Realmgard — minds that do not seem to count her mother as one of their own.
Indigo has noticed that her mother is popular with her students, but seems to be viewed as a constant source of vexation and much clucking of tongues among most of the Academy’s other faculties members — with her unorthodox teaching methods, multi-volume treatises on the recreational applications of certain plants, yet other multi-volume treatises speculating on the thoughts and feelings of those same plants, the large earrings, beaded necklaces, bangles on her wrists, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of paisley headscarves.
Although Indigo loves her mother, she suspects there are several compelling reasons for her appraisal by the other faculty members.
After a long day of lectures, Florinda takes her daughter out to the hill just beyond the Academy’s campus. It is a clear night, with the moon full and the stars bright overhead.
Florinda falls back onto the grass, happily spreading herself out on the ground. She reaches up to the sky, as if trying to catch the moon in her hands.
“Listen closely, Indigo,” she urges. “Can you hear it? The harmony of all that is? The melody of the cosmos?”
Indigo stares blankly at her mother.
“Just be, darling,” Florinda says.
“Like this?” Indigo asks.
“Let yourself go,” Florinda urges. “Feel the Music of the Spheres, darling. Let it move you to your very soul.”
“Like this?” Indigo asks, shifting onto one foot and holding her arms out.
“Don’t think. Just do,” Florinda explains, ultimately actually explaining nothing. “You’re a human be-ing. Not a human think-ing.”
“Like this?” Indigo asks, patting her head while simultaneously rubbing her stomach.
Florinda sighs and rises from the grass. She pulls her daughter into a loving embrace. “Oh, Indigo Lunar Eclipse Grimsby. What am I going to do with you?”
Indigo has asked herself that very question many, many times. Well, not you much what her mother will do, so much as what she’s doing at any given moment, and why.
Suddenly, Indigo gasps happily. “Mom! I feel it! The, uh, cosmos stuff.”
She feels an odd, though not unpleasant tingling going across her ears.
“No, darling,” Florinda says. “That’s just an inchworm crawling across you.”
“Eww!” Indigo cries. “Mom! Get it! Get it! Smoosh it!”
“How many times do I have to tell you, darling,” Florinda says, letting the inchworm crawl onto her hands, “bugs aren’t for smooshing. They’re living things and everything that lives — whether it has two legs, or four legs, or a thousand legs, or no legs at all — is entitled to our out compassion and respect.”
“But it’s gross!” Indigo protests.
“Well, darling, maybe it thinks you’re gross,” Florinda notes. “Everything can be anything, from a certain point of view.”
She safely deposits the inchworm on a nearby tree branch.
“Godspeed, my little friend,” she says gently. “Stay being.”
Basically the only thing I had to work with for this scene was the name “Indigo Grimsby.” I’m still not entirely sure how she ended up with a Hippie Professor for a mom…
Also, I’d forgotten I’d made her middle name “Lunar Eclipse”. That got a good chuckle out of me.
The rest of my writing exercises are here. This scene is from August 2022.
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