Word, words, words (Aislain Ducle Uziel)

[DoS Archive]

From: aisiainuz@aol.com (AisIain Uz)
Date: 03 Jan 1999 19:44:11 EST

The winter sun spilled in a white puddle on Aislain's desk, catching the glint of her pen and making the paper into a blur of white. A yellow flit, caught her eye and she crawled up onto her knees to peer through the window, hoping her friend Drak was about.

"Aislain!" Monsieur Connard thundered. Splat, Aislain's small bottom found the seat as she looked up to her tutor in feigned innocence. Monsieur tapped the end of his aquiline nose with the tip of his poker, "Pay attention. This is a test." Aislain nodded obediently, "Oui Monsieur."

He milked the resulting silence, enjoying his moment of mastery over his usually distracted student. Teaching Aislain to write was like trying to train a butterfly to swim. Sometimes he could think of nothing else, but giving back his paltry salary to Madame Dulce and Monsieur Uziel, and going back to his poetry. But even a dreamers belly growled. With a sigh he continued, dramatically pulling the cloth off a slate board filled with words.
Aislain's usually translucent skin went ashen. Over 75 words were carefully written out in her master's neat hand. "You shall write an essay Mademoiselle, and you shall use each of these words in a way that I know you understand their meaning. Neither of us shall leave this room until it rests in my hand."

"But Monsieur Connard, those are more words than any essay could use, "Aislain mounted a small protest. "Silence!" Monsieur Connard commanded. "We have been studying these words all year Mademoiselle. You know the definition of each and everyone one of them. Such as this!" He tapped a word in the middle. "What is the word and definition Aislain."

The child bit her lip, then recited, "Oubliette, a secret dungeon with an opening only in the ceiling, often in a castle; from French, oubliere, to forget, for one is left there to be forgotten."

"Bon." He responded with a satisfied smile. "Now get to work."

As the child bent her head and set about writing, the Master settled down for a long quiet afternoon.


He awoke with a start. A glance at the clock betrayed that the time had slipped to 4. As her reached to adjust his cravat, Monsieur Connard noticed a paper in his hand filled with Aislain's small neat hand writing. He smiled as he began to read. But the smile soon faded, as his face grew redder and redder.



The Arena


by Aislain Dulce Uziel

"You have one afternoon at the escritoire in which to finish your essay, my sweet, or it's off to the oubliette with you!" threatened Monsieur Connard, before sitting in the big over-stuffed chair by the winter fire for his after lunch nap. But Aislain was accustomed to this ersatz severity patiently waited for his comfortable snores. She then slipped out to fetch her sister Pru and go to the Arena.

The Arena was very full, with lots and lots of people milling about doing grown-up things. "Help yourselves to the panettone and frangipani on the credenza children," coaxed Madame Collie as they arrived. Madame Collie then winked to Hubie who was curled on the ottoman where once her Doberman had bared his draconian soul and dressed like a monk in pink ruffles named Elijah.

Pru and Ais feasted on the repast while watching Monsieur Gnort in the Postprandial Ring swooping in on Baron Var for the coup de grace. He shouted, "Et Tu, Brutus?" like an avenging angel who did a bit of Shakespearean acting and mercenary soul-snatching on the side, and sometimes muffed his lines. Baron Var spluttered back under the onslaught, "Hold there sirrah, I still have not recovered from Lord Dal's riposte about the cosmetic dentistry in
my mordant wit and my epistemological harlotry!" And with that, Baron Var administered a wicked slash into the bowels of the would be protector of Baroness Jaycy.

Ais and Pru grew thirsty and abandoned the credenza for the bar in hopes of securing a wee bit of cider to cool their throats. They stood silently besides a small group of grown-ups engaged in a heated debate on how many War Lords could fit on the head of a pin. In a flourish, Madame Jonalyn extracted a feather from her bodice and proceeded to titillate poor Monsieur Seamus' syllogisms through his ensuing polemic. Despite the discomfort, Monsieur
Seamus sputtered, "Madame, don't you tire of theses soi-distant exemplary arguments outré? I mean no one actually talks this way." Monsieur Seamus' repartee went straight to Madame's head before she could unlock her jaw and set it into furious motion.

With that, Monsieur Kalamere, who had been attempting to mediate the combatants, had a fit of mid-life crisis and snatched away the compromise he had been crafting. He effectively snagged the negotiations, preferring to skulk away and tickle Madame Kaprielle's enticing toes. Ais and Pru tired of waiting for the debaters to notice their dire need and skipped over to Monsieur Lupton, hoping the vestiges of feeling for their mother would nudge him
into providing succor to their now rampant thirst. Alas, Monsieur Lupton ignored them, as he was busy leading Madame Rowan off to a raddled couch behind the caller's foot bath to sit in her lap and tell her mendacious tales of homeopathic Over Lords and Balachine dwarfs.

Frustrated, Pru and Ais looked with big eyes toward Laird Tynsdale stalking around Madame and Monsieur Oakenshield as they treated Madame Stormi's Ring of Chtonic like a pied-à-terre; he pretending to have a gorgeous succubus and she a scrofulous incubus. Unfortunately, the Laird Tynsdale seemed suddenly seized by a desire to let down his hauteur and tear off his doublet and roll in a bed of buttercups and camisoles. Madame Ellisa, quaffing a
fine ale quietly at the end of the bar, away from the rancorous Madame Jona and Monsieur Seamus, sensed Laird Tynsdale's imminent demise and adjusted her ubiquitous leather corselet as if to declare, "The world is my bedroom." before strolling over to whisper secrets into his ear.

Lord Dal, who had been reposing with his wife and watching his subjects with abject disinterest, felt interest quicken as he watched Madame Ellisa unbosom herself to the Laird Tynsdale. He cleared the phlegm in his nose, and Madame Sid - harkening to the vortex of snot swirling in her lord's throat administered a wifely admonition by a buckle of her lips. Monsieur Jake, who was sitting with them, leaned forward and whispered to Monsieur Dal, "I
come to you with beribboned smooches, dire predicaments, and imploring hands." Monsieur Huma, at the back of the Arena overheard Monsieur Jake and poured himself meretriciously into a tragic laugh of silver teeth.

Suddenly Monsieur Barackk fell over the back of the callers couch, the antics of the patrons having left him flailing and cachinnating helplessly. As he lumbered to his feet and squeezed the ale from his beard he boomed through his laughter, "Everyone, knock off the flummery and get on with the ax grindery!"

Baron Sartan and Monsieur Lucien glanced to the pontificating Monsieur Barackk from over their game of dice. "I've had enough of your euphonious expressions and prolix paragraphs on the stance for a stop hit. You are haranguing me into catalepsy. I am almost a senseless heap! Let's take this to the ring where I will proceed to castigate you sanctimoniously and soft-soap you purple-prosaically!" Announced Monsieur Lucian to the obstinate Baron
Sartan . Madame Drake pointed to an obliging ring, "Messures?" Attempting to sugar Madame Drake, Baron Sartan offered as he took to the ring, "Is your avoirdupois diminishing beneath that yurt you wear of sand washed silk?" Madame Drake sniffed back, "No, I have not lost weight; I've just consolidated my resources by having a baby."

Rolling their eyes, Pru and Ais looked at each other. Off to the side Madam Jenni was lecturing a quiet Monsieur Ba'annar, "We are allowed three peccadilloes each throughout the duel - but who is to say what constitutes an acceptable indiscretion, and what an egregious offense?" As Pru and Ais scurried away, lest Marme wash out their ears with soap, the caught a snatch of conversation between Monsieur Roland and Madam Luth. "Those chintz curtains
look like a nightmare my great-aunt might have had when her sloe gin ran out," the Monsieur complained to his wife about the bed and breakfast they had just vacated, "And the threadbare carpet, a nice Spartan touch, hardly makes up for the knee-deep froufrou in the bathroom, which must have been dragged in from a brothel during the Prussian siege of Paris when Victor Hugo was eating rats."

"I was as notorious for my bedroom eyes and bedtime bravura as I was celebrated from my coloratura, " Madame Elle said from behind Pru and Ais. The children turned, hoping someone had noticed them, but were forlorn to see that the Madame was engaged in conversation with Monsieur Gimmzak. The Monsieur lifted his glass, "Madame, I have heard," he said, "If I could I would toast your cockles, and turn you over to the rosy hands of dawn. I would
festoon you with pork butts and sackbutts, and round off the evening and our profiles with sacher torte, and keep the jeroboms foaming at our mouths as we opened them when they were not plastered to your kissers." The Madame blushed and murmured. "But Monsieur, that was long ago."

The dark shadow of Monsieur Nova blackened the table where Madame Elle and Monsieur Gimmzak were toasting. "The temperature is capricious here," the wraith moaned and summed up the dramatic progression of the small tete-a-tete. More then a little frightened of the sudden appearance of the unhappy ghost, Ais and Pru fled to the table where Madam Helix and Monsieur Brian, having taken leave of their antediluvian roustabouting, had given themselves
over to the dolce far niente of a faunal afternoon. "Merci Madam," Ais begged, "May we have some cider?" Madam Helix with a wafture, responded "If you wish to maraud the bar, I think you must take your maudlin request to Monsieur Golden. As for Monsieur Brian and I, we have no wish to slough off our current reveries upon Weltanschauung, only to extirpate ourselves back into this Commedia dell'Arte Scenario."

Ais and Pru were over come with a feeling of abject hopelessness. Nudged by the burning in their throats they slipped back behind the bar and began tugging the tops off of bottles. As the searched, the voice of their tutor Monsieur Connard trickled from the other side of the bar as he complained to Marme and Papa. "Mademoiselle Aislain feigns rapt attention, but just when I think she's following my every word and cartographic elucidation, she
poses a series of impertinently imponderable questions, tosses Pru a sardonic grin, snaps her gum and traces maps of magical hinterlands on of her so called Wohnenskirts, with arrows pointing to a sylvan glade here, a caravansary there, a fountain, a meadow, an abyss, a toll road closed for repairs..."

Ais and Pru heard no more for they wambled out with a jug of cider, like the Pirates they are, to play in the tree house.


The End



Monsieur Connard rose in a fury, noting that Aislain had managed to access his private report to Madame Dulce and Monsieur Uziel. Sputtering he made for the window, just in time to see he pupil's small hood disappear behind a tree. He tore open the sash and screamed after her, "AISLAIN!"