One Christmas vacation when I was 15 I visited my great granduncle Johannson's place, up in western Norway. I was a bookish lad, but my cousins were country folk. The sun would roll along the horizon for a few hours each day near noon, leaving it in twilight and dark through the long winter nights.
One morning before light my cousin Emma was gathering things and packing up food. "Come, Christopher," she said. "We're rebuilding a cabin out on the water. I'll show it to you."
She loaded my bicycle with a picnic basket, and hers with boards and a big painting wrapped in a tarp. It was twilight and frozen when we started off. We rode into town wrapped in coats and scarves and mittens. Granduncle's house is up a wide valley, with wooded mountains rising up on either side. Ahead were some lowlands dotted with cows, and further ahead were the town and the harbor. Patches of snow were scattered in the frost-encrusted grasses along the road. I talked of Ivanhoe, and the English society of Pride and Prejudice. Emma laughed at their funny customs. By the time we reached the docks the sun was breaking above the horizon.
We tied up our bicycles and carried Emma's supplies to her little boat.
"Ach, that's Karl, a fisherman, ignore him," she hissed.
"HELLO PRETTY LADY!" he yelled. "YOU SHOULD COME SEE A REAL BOAT SOMETIME!"
"Sounds like he's fishing for YOU," I said.
"Ugh I'd rather die," said Emma.
"THAT YOUR BOYFRIEND, EMMA?" he yelled.
"Ignore him!" whispered Emma.
I kept my eyes on the ground until we were well past. "Accismus," I muttered. "He could use accismus."
"Pbbbfth," said Emma, "he's no getting a kiss from THIS miss."
"... huh?"
"I'd rather kiss a frog."
"No no no — not 'a kiss miss' — 'accismus' is pretending not to want what you really want. It's pronounced 'AK sis mus', not 'a KISS miss'. I'm saying, if he wasn't so direct he might get more girls."
"Ah, is THAT what you're doing?" she asked. "with being shy and polite all the time?"
I flustered. "N- No! No I'm just always this way."
Her boat was just rowboat, with an outboard motor. I stayed quiet as she loaded our gear into her boat. She held the boat steady while I got in and told me how to sit, then easily got in herself. She untied it, started up the motor, and we puttered off down the fjord.
The water was smooth. "My family owns land on a rocky island near the ocean," she said as we glided along. "There's a little cabin on it that my brother and I are fixing up."
"Ah, that's what the boards are for?"
"You'll see."
The scenery was spectacular. At the mouth of the fjord it opened up from a mountain valley into a broad expanse of water dotted with islands. The nearer islands were mostly craggy outcroppings of rocks. Most of the distant ones were flat, stretching out into the north sea. Emma steered up towards one of the rocky islands looming out of the water. She piloted the rowboat into a tiny shallow pool and tied it up. I looked at the knot she used, but didn't recognize it.
We carried her supplies up a narrow dirt path to a little dark shack perched on the rocks. It looked like it has been built by teenagers. "My brothers and I built most of this ourselves!" said Emma. So I had guessed right.
"Isn't this thing going to be washed away by the next storm?" I asked.
"Oh no. You can see the treeline? That marks how high the waves get. It's built well above that. There's been a cabin here forever, but it was in bad shape before we started rebuilding it."
Inside, it was bigger and sturdier than I expected. Emma unwrapped the painting and hung it on the wall. She admired it. "Gives the cabin a classy feel, don't you think?" she said. She took the tarp and some boards out the window and up onto the roof. She started pounding nails.
The painting was of a man with ruffled black hair, facing left. He had a big sharp nose and a monstrous mustache below his little beady eyes that stared out accusingly.
"Who's this a painting of?" I asked.
"Mother's portrait of our greatuncle Bernard Olsson, barrister. He declared the moon illegal."
"Crazy, was he?"
"Mother says no. Strong willed. Strong of faith. But not strong enough to persuade the moon not to rise. He would go out at night and swear at it whenever he saw it. The moon paid him no mind."
After a little more pounding she came back in. Outside, the sun was rolling below the horizon again to the southwest. Ocean and islands were spread out below a flaming red sky.
"How do you like our cabin?" asked Emma.
"Wow."
"Here we are, all alone, miles from anywhere, with this sunset all to ourselves. Do you know what this calls for?"
"... uhhhhh ..."
"Lunch!" Emma brought out the picnic basket and handed me bread and cheese and a sausage and a thermos of hot tea. We ate as the sun slowly set. "You are right," said Emma as she stuffed her mouth. "The weather is hard on this little cabin. The most important thing is to build more. Build more than the weather takes away."
Back to the boat, Emma piloted us out of her little harbor and into the fjord.
About halfway back the motor stopped. Emma started swearing. "Out of gas! How could I ... ach!!!" She fumed at herself. We were miles from harbor, the swells were bigger now, and it was starting to get cold because night was falling.
"... nnnnnow what?" I asked.
"Now, we row," said Emma, handing me an oar. She had me sit next to her and coached me on how to row. After several attempts we managed to pull in sync at her command.
We rowed. The swells were reaching four feet high and the wind was picking up. The boat rocked crazily, and most of the time you couldn't see the horizon. We were facing out to the ocean anyways. It got darker and colder. I just concentrated on the oar: pull, lift, feather, dip, pull. Such a contrast from the morning's easy ride out on a smooth sunlit mirror. "You're doing fine," said Emma. It began to rain.
After forever we reached the harbor. Emma got out, helped me out, and tied up the boat. I got on the bicycle, but her house was miles uphill and I was beat, so I was dreading the ride.
"I'll go ahead and have mother come with the car," said Emma. "There's just one road so you can't get lost. You go at your own pace. But you DO have to keep moving or you're going to freeze to death, you hear me?"
Emma shot off up the hill, leaving me on my own. I tried pedaling, but it was too much. My muscles weren't up to any more hard work. So, I got off and walked the bicycle up the hill. Sometimes I couldn't see the mountains through the rain. Sometimes the moon peeked through, glistening off the snow on the peaks. The moon was very pretty.
Headlights appeared ahead. Emma and her brother Erik and her mother got out and tied my bike to the roof of their car, and hustled me into the back seat.
"The weather turned awful," I said.
"There is no bad weather," laughed Emma's mother, "only bad clothing! We'll get you right home and all wrapped up."
Back at great granduncle's, they wrapped me in a blanket in front of a fire and gave me Kvaefjordkake, with slivered almonds, and hot cocoa with a dollop of whipped cream. I watched the flames. Uncle was asleep in his chair. I fell asleep listening to Emma and Erik debating what additions they should make to the cabin next.
This was for rWritingPrompts, requiring the words almond contrast dollop and accismus, the sentences "The most important thing is to build more" and "There's no bad weather, only bad clothing", and involving a fisherman and a portrait.
The hardest bit of this story was using "accismus" in conversation. Accismus is a noun actually pronounced "AK sis mus", but if it were learned from reading it would likely be mispronounced by the normal English rules as "a KISS miss". I went with this pun, which fixed the plot to contain a bookish lad who would say such a word and a kissable miss.
I recognized the required phrase "there is no bad weather, only bad clothing" as a common Swedish saying. One I agree with: I go walking frequently in all weather. It also required a fisherman. At this point I was channeling Moominmama. I wanted a rowboat on waves while she looked in a mirror at her makeup, and other eccentric relatives. "The most important thing is building more" isn't common and was harder to fit in. It prompted the shack being constructed on the sea as a destination for the rowboat. I don't know if the final Emma would check her makeup if Christopher had a turn rowing. She's more modeled after a few other teenager girls I've known.
I picked December 28 in Molde Norway as my reference time and place. The sun is up from 10am-3pm, and twilight is from 8am-5pm. The story starts about 7am and ends about 8pm. English isn't the normal language for Norway, but I had to have them say "accismus", so I ignored that.
The correct rowing terms are "drive, finish, recovery, catch", not "pull, lift, feather, dip". Christopher is an ignoramus here and Emma is not a professional rower. She's just been rowing as long as she's been walking. So Emma wouldn't care about the right terms, but she would teach Christopher about feathering because catching the water during the recovery is a mistake Christopher would make that she'd have to correct right away.
The rowboat, of course, can be rowed by one person. Christopher's a wimp. How come Emma doesn't row it herself, or at least alternate with Christopher, instead of having them work the paddles together? Emma knows night is falling and it's important to get back quickly. Emma has to carefully hold back on her rowing to keep even with Christopher so the boat goes the right direction. Holding back will slow them down. Forcing Christopher to be a participant not just an observer is good for Christopher, but is it realistic? I decided Emma is mothering Christopher here. If he does nothing he's likely to freeze to death, so she chooses a set of actions that forces him to keep moving. Much like how she later races ahead on her bicycle while telling him to continue at his own pace or he'll freeze.
This story felt it could use more exposition than I usually do. But the rWritingPrompts rules called for under 800 words. Terse I can do. So this version is 1300 words and I still don't think it has enough exposition, while the rWritingPrompts version was under 800 words with just the plot ma'am.
Crazy uncle Bernard declaring the moon illegal seemed fun, and very Moomin, so I made the portrait a picture of him. I kept his full story in the rWritingPrompts version even though it was an easy self-contained target for cutting. It also made the moon itself a character, so the moon peeks through near the end to assert that it is still there. There is some risk the narrator will freeze to death, and contemplating the moon while he ought to keep moving hints that he might. Up to that point, who knows? Maybe I would end this story with him being a ghost explaining why he haunts this little cabin on the sea.
This was part of a semi-contest, and I woke up at 6:30am on a Sunday to take part in it. The most interesting criticism is that it was in a sing-song voice, with a pattern of long sentence, then a short sentence at the end. The short sentence has punch when used sparingly, but not when used usually. I mostly modified that in this one, sometimes by combining sentences and sometimes by moving the finalizer to the start of the next paragraph and sometimes by just not trimming so aggressively. But the sing-song is deeper: it's the voice used in the story. As you see, it's not the voice used in these notes. I'm not sure where the story voice comes from. I don't think it's Christopher's voice. (In fact, even Christopher's dialogue isn't a very good Christopher voice, he should be using more rare words.) I've used the sing-song voice elsewhere. It's sort of the voice of reading a book out loud. I don't particularly enjoy listening to that voice. Here's another attempt in my note-taking voice (1800 words).