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Word for Word: Sword
I’m in a writers’ group that meets on Zoom, though before the pandemic we met in person. Every week, we do a writing prompt: someone gives a page number, and our organizer picks a word from a huge dictionary. We write for five minutes. In this example, the word is: Sword.
The sun began setting in the forest, casting the sky in a purplish light and transforming the trees into tall, menacing sentinels amid eerily moving shadows. I finally heard the snuffling and growling emanating from the legendary Jabberwocky. I grabbed the hilt of my sword and more quietly stepped around the ferns and leaves of the forest floor.
I found the Jabberwocky… grazing. I frowned, not expecting such ordinary animal behavior from a notorious monster. Slipping my sword from its scabbard, I took one step forward — and a dried leaf crinkled under my foot.
The Jabberwocky raised its head. Its glowing red eyes focused on me. My heart hammered.
The Jabberwocky snorted. “Why can’t you violent people leave me alone?”
The Jabberwocky is a dragon-like creature created by Lewis Carroll for a nonsense poem written in… imitation Anglo-Saxon. It’s featured in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.
For the original poem and its illustrations: