Amal and I are working on a project inspired by telephone pictionary. I created a glass bead; she wrote the beginning snippet of a story based on my bead. I created a second bead inspired by her story snippet; next, she’ll write the next story snippet with inspiration from my second bead. Back and forth we’ll go, until in the end we have both a necklace and a story.

My first bead:

Amal’s first story snippet:

Through a dirty window of thick glass, Sil watched the snow drift and settle in the storm.

Winter was a whisper in the mouths of the field labourers, a choke in the throat, a dry grey ash. They couldn’t bear the sight of it, the wicked whiteness that knifed at their eyes wherever they looked; stories were told of men who stumbled out of their homes at dawn, drawn to the numbing quiet and the bitter wind, sobbing as they gnawed their wrists to drip colour into the cold canvas, stain the cruel pure of it.

At least, so said Ney, Root-Witch and Scar-scraper, in the rare moments when she wasn’t chewing. Sil didn’t know what she preferred: the slow hours of gums grinding against gums, lips smacking loudly while she wiped at the bloody saliva dribbling from Ney’s open mouth, or the ghastly stories she grinned at her between meals.

“I’m hungry,” grunted Ney, rubbing her hands together in front of the fire on the hearth. “Fetch me something to eat.”

Sil sighed, turning from the window, hugging her thin arms around herself. “You’re always hungry.”

My second bead:

[to be continued]