[ bre-vil-uh-kwuhnt ]
Adjective
- Speaking or expressed in a concise or terse style.
- Using brevity of speech.
Let’s Write…
** Either a story beginning, a story ending, a piece of flash fiction, a poem–inspired by the word, breviloquent, where does it take me? Where does it take you?
Georgia sat at her desk, straight like a board, with her gloved hands resting delicately on the table before her. Madam Tess stalked slowly up and down the rows of girls holding her thin, bamboo rod reciting the day’s lesson.
“Speak wisely, or not at all,” said Madam Tess.
A new girl, sitting just in front of Georgia, gazed out the window. Suddenly, yet not unexpected, a loud “crack!” filled the room as the bamboo rod came down upon the girl’s gloved hands. She screamed in pain, and Madam Tess said nothing, but just stared at the girl. The new girl put her hands back on the desk slowly, eyes fixed ahead, and Madam Tess continued.
“A woman is only ever a voice of reason.”
Georgia’s mind went to the new girl, but she didn’t glance over in case Madam Tess turned around. She remembered her own first days at the school and her naivety.
The leather gloves that all the girls wore was a well-known mark of someone who attended St. Margaret’s Academy. Rumor had it, they never took them off. Once a girl entered the school, she’d wear her gloves for the rest of her life.
That’s precisely why Georgia’s family sent her there. She could go to school, have friends, live her life, and no one would ever see her hands.
After her first day at the Academy, it became clear that the gloves were there to soften the blows of the rod, and to hide marks of broken fingers. Everyone held secrets apparently. It wasn’t just her.
Notes/Thoughts/Ideas
The idea here, I think, has awesome potential. A rough school where all the girls and future women wear gloves always. A perfect chance to instill a little mystery as to what Georgia is hiding.
She’s able to hide in plain sight, no one would question her for wearing gloves. But, of course, the gloves will have to come off at some point. When she embraces her identity as not a girl of this Academy, but something else entirely.
I imagine her hands hold some visible magical signs. Tattoos she was born with that move around. Or, maybe they glow. They’re green. It could be anything!
So, the mystery is first just what is she hiding under the gloves? There’s tension in the story as we know, at some point, the gloves will come off. What will that mean for Georgia? Then, there’s the mystery of what those glowing green hands mean? Is she a witch? A demon?
Easy to make a conflicted romance as a result too. Lots of cool places this can go, and when I started, I really didn’t love the idea. Now, I’m really into it!
What do you think of Breviloquent?
Does Georgia have a story to tell? Where would you take it?
Leave your thoughts, your own story beginning/ending, flash-fiction, or whatever in the comments! Where did breviloquent or my story take you?
If you want to read something with a little magic, check out my short story The Three-Legged Knight.
Today’s word is from Dictionary.com.
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