A bit of sharing, maybe it will help coax them out of hiding:

This is so rough and tumble, so unedited, and very much a snippet of a narrative that jumped in my head about a month ago. I haven't written down narrative in close to a decade, and this one screams young adult...but it is what it is.

On about the third day, Svana spots Geir sitting on the little bluff towards the back of the school yard. There’s the stone fence surrounding, and he’s close to that. He’s looking at the other students, all outside, he’s sitting and kind of hugging his knees to his chest. He doesn’t care that most boys wouldn’t be caught dead sitting alone. They’d rather be up, rough housing, or sneaking cigarettes along the part of the back wall where the teachers can’t see. His pants are grey. His sweater is ivory. His boots still rubber. His pants are a little short. He must have had a growth spurt, maybe the last one he’ll have. He is after all seventeen, practically an adult.
Svana sees Geir alone and decides to go talk to him. Such things are not really taboo in Iceland. She turns to Pala, frozen in the doorway to the hall. Svana says, “Pala, no one has barely spoken to him since he started, let’s go be friendly.” She is an open book. She is friendly. She has no reservations. Well, just one. She wants Pala to be happy. It makes her sad, but she wants her to be happy. Geir is so luminous, he could make her happy.

Pala can’t put her feet in front of one another. She’s frozen.

Geir keeps looking at the other students, looking but not really looking. The sky is deep blue, lots of grey, though. Winds will pick up again soon. That’s what Geir is thinking about. Right now the wind is light. He doesn’t like the wind.

Svana walks in her black boots and long, light, cloudless sky blue skirt that she made herself over to the little bluff where Geir is, “You can follow me or not. I know he’d like to talk to you (with a little twinkle in her eye)… I want him to know we’re nice here in Reykjavik. We don’t want him thinking city girls are nasty.”



She walks over. Pala slowly follows, hair in her face, looking at her new black skirt, which swishes like Svana’s but isn’t blue. It’s new but it isn’t blue. Pala gets brand new things, but has no choice in the colors or fashion. Svana just makes things herself with spare fabric and consigned fabric she buys with money she earns running errands for her family. She just sews what she likes. Pala admires Svana’s flappy eared-sheep wool hat that she also knit herself. It’s cream with sky blue as well. Svana loves cream and sky blue. She does wear the regular white shirt and black lace up vest. Most girls do. Pala thinks she’ll ask Pala to make her a hat, or a flowing scarf. Can she get some red or purple dye for the wool?

She follows Svana’s happy steps, slowly, slowly. Geir gets closer. The details in his face are more easily made out. Pala can’t look. It hurts to look at him…she’s very dramatic. She thinks he might be descendant from elfs, his face is that perfect. She follows Svana.



Geir becomes aware that the two girls that held his interest these past three days are walking over. The friendly one and the magnificent one. The friendly one is first in the little row.

Just a description, in my head. The skeletons of a story. The hints. For a while they came every day and told me things about themselves. They haven't come out in two weeks. :(