Narrative Assignment 1

So solid as to be almost an extension of the ground itself, a towering, perfectly proportioned block juts toward the sky, presiding over its surroundings in imposing majesty. Taller than it is wide, it would not be too outlandish to believe it to be an ancient standing stone, gifted murky translucence through some form of sorcery. Only a half-seen sheen of moisture gives the lie to that fancy. It is not stone, but ice that has dominion. It sits ensconced in a needle-lined cloak of cold that bites with a freshness both sharp and clean.

For all that it seems like a bank of easily dispersed fog, the block stubbornly refuses to reveal its heart, guarding its depths with jealous vigilance. Its faces are murky mirrors and just as smooth, showing turbid white-blue clouds within. The sheer walls provide no purchase by which they can be surmounted. However, a flawed section on one face shows that it is not for lack of trying. Shallow scratches form an irregular wound that overlays the already-occluded interior.

All out of keeping with the austerity of the brooding ruler is an indistinct smear that emerges in part from beneath its thumb, centered below the flaw in the ice. The soaked and filthy wool, now almost fused with the leather and the resilient rubber of the sole, reveals its identity as a single boot. Through some improbable circumstance, it has found itself subjected to the ice’s ire. However it came to be entrapped, little remains of its former shape. An amorphous blob is all that can be distinguished through the frozen glass and what was missed is not much better.

The harsh tang of metal hangs in the air, emanating from the congealing puddle of blackened red that it sits soaking in. The puddle spreads along the entire length of the ice block, seeping out from the source caught underneath it. Whether heel, sole, or the ice itself, there is no part that has not been invaded by that terrible stain. The bottom edge is ragged and pink, melted and refrozen by the warmth robbed from the blood. The leather of the boot is ruptured and deformed where it is not crumpled into a new composite solid.
The boot’s rubber sole is almost entirely sheared away at the face of the block. For all that the blow came more from a hammer than a knife, the result is the same. The surviving sheet is fissured and feathered throughout, trapped in the moment that the mortal wound was dealt. The full extent of the carnage is obscured, but the damage is still both visible and unmistakable beneath the ice. Instead of being permitted to fall apart, it is preserved in a gruesome display of taxidermy, a trophy and warding talisman both.

A layer of cotton, just barely distinct from the wool of the boot’s insulation, can be discerned at the heart of the composite. It alone seems to have escaped destruction, emerging from the boot to rest parallel to the ground. While something of its former appearance remains, it is not unscathed. It is roughly pushed toward the ice as if in a bid to reclaim it for the fate that it fled, distorting its now-rusty argyle pattern of tan and cornflower. The cloth is as stiff and unyielding as the leather that surrounds it; its thick and sturdy weave alone cannot account for it. The ice closes it about in ruthless crimson jaws, making full use of the purchase the blood provides to infuse itself into its prey and subsume it into itself.

Though the ice holds its shape from without, the sock is still supported from within by a grisly medley of flesh. Far from cleanly broken, jagged spears of bone thrust outward among muscle that is cut cleanly, if unevenly, and the marbling of fat. They shine an incongruous white against the backdrop of gore, surrounded by ragged streamers of tendon, nerve, and blood vessel. Cracks spider their shafts, wide enough in places that the pulp and marrow have spilled out, further spreading the riven surface.

The blood extends in a mottled trail to a rough cotton rag on the ground nearby. A half-foot long, sinuous wave of gem and steel rests bare upon the cloth, nestled into its haphazardly crumpled folds but not confined to them. It gathers the light and casts it back in the same murky halo of a sun-touched stormcloud. Like the cloud it so resembles, the flat of the lovingly polished surface roils with bands and whorls of gray and silver. It curves and recurves, with the tempest hedged in from above and below by a blunt spine and a keen edge. Both find union as a slender triangular needle that whispers of belligerent strength cloaked in deadly grace.

A slender rope of solid gold encircles the base of the serpentine needle, leashing the turbid steel upon a gentle hook of deepest crimson that grades into a shade scarcely brighter at its center. Its depths are as inscrutable as the steel’s are blustery, and the polish it shares serves to highlight the incongruity. Even so, there is no break in the curving line between them. They are two of a kind, and more than the sum of their parts.

The beauty of the knife finds disturbing complement in the blood that is a match for the cabochon-mounted hilt. Flecks and spatters star the length of the blade, and larger drops form an ominous patina here and there that mutes the soft luster of the steel still further. The excess is mostly soaked up in a clotted pool that leaves no evidence of the rag’s original color. It fuses the fabric to itself and, more tenuously, to both the blade and the hilt. Bits of flesh further the spectacle, clinging hideously to steel and fabric both.

The knife has a distant companion in a timepiece that joins it upon the ground several yards away. Battered as it is, the case no longer much resembles the ergonomic efficiency of its original design. Instead, this masterwork of engineering is marred by a number of dents and countless scratches, smoothed with the burnish of long handling. The warm glow of the gold is muted, its original polish destroyed. The knotwork engraving around the cover is severed and frayed. Its onion crown remains intact, but the ring by which it can be strung with a fob is crumpled and broken. With the latch missing and the hinge crushed, the cover is frozen in an acute angle, neither closed nor really open but forbidden to settle on either.

The watch still ticks, but the hands do not advance. Instead, they twitch and convulse in agony from their contorted forms. The face on which they rest is caved in, catching on the clockwork heart revealed beneath its misshapen edge. The glass window that served as its protection is nowhere to be found, either whole or in bits. The painted numbers remain legible, but the brushstrokes are scored in such a way that they appear to be spattered rather than smoothly applied.