Meredith Harmon
Bio
Mix equal parts anthropologist, biologist, geologist, and artisan, stir and heat in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, sprinkle with a heaping pile of odd life experiences. Half-baked.
Stories (201/0)
At Least It's Not a Gazebo
The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. I wasn't surprised, really, not at first. It's not that far a walk from here to the spine of the Appalachian Trail, so there's many a hiker passing through stop here instead of at the campsites. Most of us are on this trail to get away from humans, so why would we want to cluster together every night? And sometimes those way stations get too close for comfort, and someone's gonna snore too loud, and the floor's hard, and someone's elbow is gonna dig you in the ribs. Yeah, I speak from experience.
By Meredith Harmon2 years ago in Fiction
The Other Genetic Heritage
Some genetic traits are easy. Eye color? Check - both parents have lovely blue eyes, and I got the hazel variety. Hair color? Check - Mom's side of the family has the color-changing blond / brunette / blond / brunette / red / dyspeptic skunk thing going for at least four generations that I know of. (That last color shift is when the white streak starts laterally, crosswise, and spreads forwards and backwards. because my family can never do anything the normal way.) Heart disease? Check, everyone on Dad's side of the family. You-know-what eating grin? Like someone did a cut-and-paste of Dad's smile, and gave it to me as well. No denying that I was his kid, that's for sure!
By Meredith Harmon2 years ago in Families
Censored Fireworks
Ahh, Censored Fireworks......name of my new band. Come with me, through the tunnels of my strange memory, at least two decades ago. I belong to a middle ages re-enactment group, and we love any excuse for a party (gather) to, well, party! We'd do funky crafts, and eat and drink an unusual potluck of food and beverage - half of them modern foods, half of them period dishes we'd reconstruct from a few surviving cookbooks.
By Meredith Harmon2 years ago in Feast
The Map is Wrong
There weren't always dragons in the Valley. They have to be invited in, you see. And who in their right mind would ever want to invite Dragonkind into a prosperous, Human-Populated Land Since Time Immemorial? At least that's how Da always put it, I don't use words that big. But Da always talked about this being a human place, with human-sized stuff, and now we have to build all these things like twice as big for dragon size. Unless we like standing outside in the rain, and then what's the point?
By Meredith Harmon2 years ago in Fiction
Camp Granada
Dear Mom: Day 1 - I'm not sure this is the best place for me to "toughen up," as Dear Old Dad says. So what if I am a bit plump? I'm also short, are you going to put me on a rack to "straighten out" quite literally? So what if I prefer reading to playing sports? I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Speaking of trees, these are pretty creepy around here. Half are dead, and the other half have all kinds of vines hanging from them, like they're snakes or something waiting for you to look away before they strike. The first day of summer camp isn't the best time to pull out the word "ominous." I'm going to tell my camp mates stories tonight to keep them awake listening for those vines to slither down and strangle them. At least then their snoring won't keep me awake!
By Meredith Harmon2 years ago in Fiction
- Runner-Up in Ship of Dreams Challenge
The Box of the Captain's TableRunner-Up in Ship of Dreams Challenge
Madelaine was rummaging in the archives of the lower basement, like usual. Why sweat and work yourself to a lather in the field, when you can work in the sub-basement on the hottest day and still be cool? And she still got to unearth treasures. Sure, someone else had found them first, but then they were stored and forgotten after being itemized - if they'd ever been properly itemized at all. Forget being filed; things were just dumped hodgepodge in boxes and crates as they were donated. She'd gotten a small wall's worth of proper filing totes and a handful of markers, and would only re-emerge blinking into the sunlight at meals or quitting time. But things were finally sorted in a way to be useful to future researchers... especially if you liked ledgers. Chock full of ledgers, they were. The local small town banks had donated them all when the big city takeover was complete, with contents and assorted ephemera that they'd gathered from the corners and storage rooms. No complete inventory had been successful, but Madelaine was more determined than usual. Being the re-discoverer, as it were - and displaying or storing things properly - was so much more fun than arguing with arrogant know-it-all entities about just how significant the placement of the jar on the left or right side of the burial meant if it was male or female.
By Meredith Harmon2 years ago in Fiction
The Witch's Bottle
Is magic real? Every person has a different answer to that - sometimes many answers, or a stack of answers layered up like pancakes. I'll bet just reading that question has gotten the hackles up on many a reader, and I haven't even gotten to describing my project yet.
By Meredith Harmon2 years ago in Motivation
Metamorphosis
I just started packing for next week's trip. This one's a hard trip to prepare for - not just because there's a pandemic going on and I'm in the extreme high-risk category, but because I'm worried about what I've packed. Did I get everything I need? What did I forget? Did I buy too much? What if I got the sizes wrong, the colors wrong, the styles all wrong? What if I didn't get the right food in the right flavors?
By Meredith Harmon2 years ago in Pride