Warnings for Wordless and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday and Sandee at Comedy Plus.     

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Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and has become a moveable feast of word or picture or music prompts to encourage us to write stories, poems, or whatever strikes our fancy.    

This month, the prompts are being provided by Lee at Kitchen Connection.   

The words for the week are:

mythology

contemporary

instinct

overture

banter

groundbreaking

barrier

captivate

companion

unique

affair

interior

"Yipes!" she cried out, startled and  jumping back.  Then her eyes got wide.

"I thought you were MYTHOLOGY," she said in a whisper, looking at what appeared to be a real, actual, live gnome in her garden.  Every INSTINCT said run, but she was rooted to the ground, frozen with a combination of fear and curiosity.  For the moment, at least, curiosity was winning.

"That's what we want most of the CONTEMPORARY populace to believe," it growled, looking decidedly grumpy, but not at all threatening.

Still unable to believe this was real, that she was engaged in BANTER with a gnome, she took a deep, calming breath.  "So why did you let me know you are real?"

"Someone had to make an OVERTURE to you, and I was chosen."  He did not look  happy about being chosen.

"The lady from whom you inherited this property knew about us..."

"Wait," she said.  "First of all, that was my great aunt, a very, very dear person to me, and second, I thought you said you didn't want modern people to know about you."

"Quote me correctly, missy, I said we don't want most of you to know," he said, with a great emphasis on the word "most."  "Sometimes it can't be helped, and your great aunt was one of those times, and now, so are you, and I would like to get through this quickly, if you don't mind, I haven't the time to try to CAPTIVATE you with my charms, I just need to be direct and to the point."

The last part of the statement dripped with heavy sarcasm, and for some reason that set her at ease.  Under it all, he had a sense of humor, and knew how to use it.  He couldn't be all bad.

"You are doing some GROUNDBREAKING in the part of the garden right next to the house that is going to breech a BARRIER and cause some adverse effects, if you don't take care, and you need to be warned."

He stopped at that moment, moved his hat back so she could really see his eyes, and looked at her with a piercing gaze.  She was startled by the UNIQUE look of his eyes, once he'd moved enough of his hair and the hat out of the way so she could get a good look at them.  

Her great aunt had once told her, "In any AFFAIR of great importance, look at the eyes.  You have a gift, you will know whom to trust."  She was only a small child at the time, and had no idea then what it meant.  It came back to her now, as if she were reliving the moment, and his eyes told her he was speaking the truth.

"The area here is UNIQUE, and we fairy folk use it for some special purposes.  The ground you are considering moving hides the way to the INTERIOR, and more than that I am not allowed to tell you.  You don't want to change that garden bed, now or ever.  It's yours to protect."

"Am I protecting you from humankind, or humankind from the fairy folk?" she asked, with just a hint of mischief glinting from her own eyes.

"Both."

Again, from his eyes, she knew it was true.

"Thank you for warning me," she said.  "I will take it as a great responsibility to protect this land."

"Your great aunt was right about you," he said, then turned and stomped off.  His errand done, he wasted no time in disappearing into the plants that grew thickly in the very bed about which they'd been speaking.

She turned and called out to one of the landscapers from the crew she had hired to make the changes she thought she had wanted.

"Wait.  That one bed, over there, right up against the house.  I've changed my mind, I really don't want it touched.  Please go ahead and clear and clean the others, and do the new plantings we talked about, but leave that one alone."

The workman turned to his COMPANION, shrugged with a smirk as if to say, "What do you expect, it's like a woman to change her mind," and they both headed for a different part of the yard.

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Today is:

Abolition Day -- Guadeloupe; Saint Martin

Buttercup Day -- an internet holiday that just sounds fun

Cellophane Tape Day -- patented this date in 1930

Children's Day -- Nigeria (a school holiday)

FindleFritter's Stoat-Wheedling Event -- Fairy Calendar

Mother's Day -- Bolivia

National Grape Popsicle Day

National Senior Health and Fitness Day -- US (don't let age get in the way of staying healthy! this year the theme is "Life is Better in Motion")    

Pop-up Toaster Day -- Charles Strite applied for his patent on the first pop-up toaster on this day in 1919

St. Augustine of Canterbury's Day (Roman Catholic Church observance; Patron of England)

St. Melangell's Day (Patron of hares)

Sun Screen Protection Day -- an annual, and unsponsored, reminder to use that SPF protection, every day!

Throw the B*st@rds Out Day -- originally directed at politicians, (and if you want to do that, too, great!), and celebrated on various days on various sites, but whomever is making your life miserable, toss them out!  or at least, toss them out of your thoughts for today.

Birthdays Today:

Chris Colfer, 1990

André Benjamin, 1975

Jamie Oliver, 1975

Jack McBrayer, 1973

Joseph Fiennes, 1970

Jeremy Mayfield, 1969

Todd Bridges, 1965

Pat Cash, 1965

Adam Carolla, 1964

Peri Gilpin, 1961

Richard Schiff, 1955

Bruce Weitz, 1943

Louis Gossett, Jr., 1936

Ramsey Lewis, 1935

Lee Meriwether, 1935

John Barth, 1930

Henry Kissinger, 1923

Christopher Lee, 1922

Herman Wouk, 1915

Sam Snead, 1912

Hubert H. Humphrey, 1911

Vincent Price, 1911

Dolores Hope, 1909

Rachel Louise Carson, 1907

Dashiell Hammett, 1894

Isadora Duncan, 1878

Arnold Bennett, 1867

Wild Bill Hickock, 1837

Julia Ward Howe, 1819

Amelia Bloomer, 1818

Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1794

Debuting/Premiering Today

From Russia With Love(Film). 1964

The Three Little Pigs(Disney animated short), 1933

Today in History:

Habeaus Corpus Act, codifying how the writ of habeaus corpus is to be used, passes in UK, 1679

Peter the Great founds St. Petersburg, 1703

In Bolivia, the Battle of La Coronilla, in which the women from Cochabamba  fight against the Spanish army, 1812

In Canada, American forces capture Fort George, 1813

Bubonic plague breaks out in San Francisco, California, 1907

The NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight, 1919

The 1,046 feet (319 m) Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public, 1930

Richard Gurley Drew receives a patent for his adhesive tape, later manufactured by 3M as Scotch tape, 1930

The Walt Disney Company releases the cartoon  The Three Little Pigs, with its hit song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", 1933

In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, , 1937

Toronto's CHUM-AM, (1050 kHz) becomes Canada's first radio station to broadcast only top 40 Rock n' Roll music format, 1957

Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census, 1967

In Culpeper, Virginia, actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition, 1995

Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechnyan rebels for the first time and negotiates a cease-fire, 1996

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands indicts Slobodan Milosevic and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity, 1999

The May 2006 Java earthquake strikes at 5:53:58 AM local time (22:53:58 UTC May 26) devastating Bantul and the city of Yogyakarta killing over 6,600, 2006

Scientists in Canada bring 4000 year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers during the Ice Age back to life, 2013

The director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde calls for "tougher regulation and tighter supervision" of the banking sector, 2014

Commercial space company SpaceX is approved as a contractor to the U.S. military for satellite launches, 2015

A research team from University of York publish a study based on 711 samples from 72 countries that shows the world's rivers are widely contaminated with antibiotics, especially in Africa and Asia, 2019