Word: fiducial

fiducial

\ fi-DOO-shuhl \  , noun;

1. Based on or having trust: fiducial dependence upon God.

2. Accepted as a fixed basis of reference or comparison: a fiducial point; a fiducial temperature.

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                The young woman was beautiful.  Her long black hair fell from her head like a curtain of ebony silk, perfectly framing her delicate face.  Her black eyes shown like mirrors, as if they could reflect the very soul of whoever gazed upon them.  Her pale skin stood in stark contrast to her ebony mane and eye, as well as her ruby colored lips, which held in a delicate smile could melt the heart of even the most cold blooded of men.  Her clothes clung to her voluptuous figure, modest enough to meet the standards of society, but daring enough to instantly catch the eye of any—man or woman—who saw her.  It was as if the gods themselves had lovingly crafted her every flawless feature.  And she was currently possessed by a particularly unpleasant demon.

                “Little help here!”  Caruss shouted to his companions.  Currently, her delicate looking hands were wrapped around the shaft of the large man’s war hammer, locking him into a contest of strength.  Caruss was resisting her push with all the considerable strength of his entire body, every muscle straining to the maximum.  And he was still losing.  The demon inside her gave her power that no human could ever hope to match, and it was bringing it down squarely on him.  The wide, wicked grin on her face even told him that the demon was toying with him, using just enough power to let the big man resist while still forcing him back.  Had the circumstances been different, Caruss would be red with embarrassment at losing to such a slender woman.  As it was now, his face was still red, but with exertion instead of shame.

                Before his powerful arms finally did cave in though, Lars managed to come up behind the demon possessed maiden, lashing out with both his blades at once.  And he hit nothing.  It wasn’t that he missed his target, had it been an ordinary foe, her entrails would currently be lying on the ground.  However, this one was quite a bit different.

                When they heard about the possessed girl, the trio had taken preparations.  Lars and Caruss had gotten their weapons enchanted to be very effective against demons.  However, this had a bit of a side effect in that until the enchantment was removed, the weapons would pass through anything without an infernal nature.  And it just so happened, that this demon knew how to shift its essence around inside its host.  This meant that at the moment of impact, all the weapon hit was the flesh of the girl, lacking any possession.  Caruss’ hammer may have worked, as the greater surface area would make it much harder for the demon to escape, which is probably why it was currently keeping the big man from doing much of anything. 

                “Gods damn it!”  Lars shouted as his swords passed harmlessly through the girl’s skin.  The irony of his words was lost in the heat of the moment.  “Hey, we could use some magic over here!”  He called out.

                “I’m working on it.” Grena said through clenched teeth.  Her preparations had been much different from her male traveling companions.  As a spellslinger, she had no real weapon to enchant, and her normal magic would probably not amount to much against a demon, even one who was residing in a human body.  As such, she was currently attempting to do something she was not trained to: channel divine energies.  Her preparations for the battle had been to research how to do this.  She understood the basics, but those didn’t really amount to all that much, since they said little more than to put absolute trust into the deity in question, and pray for some divine intervention.  While this sounded easy, getting a god to actually listen to those prayers was somewhat different, and the books she had read were more than a little vague on the subject.  This all meant to her not being able to do much of anything in the fight until she had managed to scrape together enough energy to matter.  As it was now, she would consider herself lucky if the demon even flinched at the amount of power she had gathered.

                “Well, work faster damn it!”  Lars shouted, again attempting to land a solid blow on the demon instead of the host. 

                “If you think this is so easy, why don’t you try it!”  Grena shouted.  She was not happy.  Grena specialized in combat magic, and hated being relegated to a support role as she was now. 

                “I knew we should’ve brought a priest along.”  Lars mumbled.  The only thing he hated more than situations like their current one was being right about something and not able to rub it into other people’s faces.  He had in fact, suggested enlisting the aid of a priest almost as soon as they had heard about the girl’s situation.  The others had dismissed the idea, as Grena felt very confident that she could get some power from the god she chose to believe in even without actually being a priestess. 

                “Oh just shut up and cut something!”  Grena shouted, clearly hearing her loud companion.  He never did a good job of talking under his breath, somehow managing to make himself heard no matter how softly he spoke.

                “Just remember Grena,”  Lars said mockingly while attempting to skewer the demon’s heart, “it’s all about trust.”

                “Yes, trust.  Like I trust you to shut up and fight, or else force me to put a bolt of arcane lightning up your rear end!” 

                Lars got the hint immediately, opting not to call her bluff, on the off chance it wasn’t. 

                “Why don’t both of you shut up and help!”  Caruss said.  His arms were clearly giving out, and he didn’t want to know what the demon would do to him when they did.  Lars came in with a different approach this time.  He inverted one of his swords, aiming to give a stunning pommel strike, hoping the demon would ignore it, allowing it to land and giving Caruss enough time to break free.  Fortunately, the demon did allow the non lethal blow to get through.  Unfortunately, this only served to get its attention.  The demon turned the girls head, looking right at Lars with its pitch black eyes.  It opened its mouth and began gathering infernal energy.  Lars’ swords may have been enchanted to work against such things, but he didn’t favor his chances of using them to guard against a point blank shot, so he pulled away quickly, narrowly avoiding the beam.

                This did manage to distract the demon for a brief moment though.  Just long enough for Caruss to gain the leverage needed to pull his hammer free.  It wouldn’t be long before the demon took hold of it again, and he made use of the chance to do something.  He poured all his remaining strength into his arms, delivering a powerful blow to the demon’s head.  It landed with a resounding thud, a white spark flashing at the moment of impact, a reminder of the enchantment doing its job.

                With the demon stunned, however briefly, Lars took the chance to attack as well.  This time his swords found their mark in the demon instead of the girl. The two of them continued their attacks, staggering them in such a way that one landed the moment the other pulled away, keeping the demon off balance and unable to attack.

                Meanwhile Grena had managed to gather up fair amount of energy.  Seeing her companions hitting the demon, she hoped it would be weakened enough for what she had to work, since she didn’t feel like she could hold onto any more of the divine energies.  She had certainly found a new appreciation for the clergy, but such thoughts could come later.  She used her string of beads to focus the energies into a large blade, firing it at what she hoped was the center of the demon’s body.  With the infernal being off balance as it was, the brilliant white blade struck home. 

                The girl let out a piercing scream, her own melodious voice a stark contrast to the rough, heavy demon’s voice.  Her entire body began to convulse and thrash around violently, the demon clearly trying to counter the divine power that had just been introduced.  But it had been weakened, and was not able to expel the energy.  It had no choice but to leave its host and return to the infernal plains from which it came.  Now free of the demon, the girl collapsed, unconscious.  The trio gathered around the fallen girl, each gasping for breath.

                “So, just how grateful do you think she’ll be when she wakes up?”  Lars said, looking over her prone form appreciatively.  The other two just rolled their eyes at him and walked away, not wanting to look at the girl ever again.  

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Ok, so this was not my original plan for this word.  I had originally intended this to be about a couple on some kind of trust building exercise.  But I came up with this because I think this was more entertaining.  The only problem with using these three is it reminds me just how restrictive 1,500 words is.  There is so much more I wanted to do involving a bit about the pantheon this world has and the like.  Oh well, maybe next time I use these guys I'll be able to do something like that.    

Word: bollix

bollix

\ BOL-iks \  , verb;

1. To do (something) badly; bungle (often followed by up): His interference bollixed up the whole deal.

noun:

1. A confused bungle.

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               “That god damned idiot!”  Larry shouted as he looked over the print out in front of him.  Everyone else in the office groaned.  None of them needed to know who he was talking about.

                “What did he do this time?  And how badly did he screw us over?”  Kelly asked, holding her head in her hand.

                “He got the numbers wrong.  Well, not wrong exactly.  He used the correct figures; he just added them up wrong.”  Larry said, taking a close look at the list of numbers

                “My god, has that man never heard of a calculator?  I mean really, how does he screw up basic addition?”  Mike said, maybe a bit too loudly for the small space.

                “I still say he does it on purpose.  I mean really.  Nobody can be that stupid, right?” Asked Sheila.

                “You’d be real surprised what kind of idiots are out there.”  Mike commented.

                “Well, on the upside, at least it’s a simple fix this time.”  Kelly said.  She was right.  All they had to do was find the error and fix it before their boss found out. 

                “Want to bet?  He’s probably already submitted this to the higher ups, just to spite us.”  Larry said, crumpling the paper and slumping down in the large office chair.  Recently their little office pod had gotten a new member.  While this should have been a good thing, as it aimed to spread the work out further between five people instead of four.  Unfortunately for the rest of them, he had exactly two real skills: pushing his mistakes onto others, and sucking up to the boss. 

                This meant that his being there had actually increased the workload of the others, since they not only had their own things to do, but they also had to correct his numerous mistakes.  Not only this, but he always managed to make these errors look like they belonged to others, either by good timing, taking on just the right tasks, or some other machination.  And since he was on such good terms with the boss, no matter how much the others explained what was going on, they were the ones who always bore the brunt of the errors.  It did not make for an ideal working environment. 

                “You know,” said Sheila, “I say we just let this one go.  Seriously, this was his project.  If we don’t bother correcting it, then he has to take the blame.  We never touched this one, so we’re not accountable for his inability to do basic math.” 

                “That’s true.”  Larry said, “We have nothing to fear this time.”  He unfurled the offending paper, and placed it squarely on the new guy’s desk, and returned to his own.  As each of them returned to their work, they couldn’t help smirking and snickering to themselves.  This was it.  It was time to finally put him in his place.  He had no way out now.

                Just then, their boss, Mr. Dreaks, barged in on them, obviously angry and waving around a copy of the list of numbers.  Every single one of them looked at each other, very glad that they wouldn’t be the cause of his rage this time.

                “You idiots want to tell me what this is about?”  He shouted at them.  Not quite the response they had been expecting, but not unheard of for him.

                “I think that’s the report Tony was working on.  What’s wrong, did he make a mistake?”  Kelly asked

                “Oh, there’s a mistake alright.”

                “Is there a problem boss?”  It was the new guy, Tony, speaking.  He had just come out from around the corner, a smug grin on his face.

                “There sure is. These morons want to pass their mistakes off on you again.”  Each of them looked at each other, suddenly very afraid.

                “Wait, we didn’t have anything to do with that.”  Mike said, “It was Tony’s job to count everything up.”

                “Yes, it was.  But, he already told me how you four told him not to worry about it, and that you would do it for him.”

                “But, we never did that.”  Sheila said

                “Really?”  Asked Tony, “Cause I remember you all telling me that you were too worried about me making some kind of mistake, so you took it away from me.”

                “Hmph, they would do that, the ungrateful idiots.”  Mr. Dreaks said, calming down greatly once Tony showed up.  They had said something along those lines many times in the past, but had stopped quite awhile ago, since it just gave Tony more leverage to set them up. 

                “We did nothing of the sort.”  Said Larry.  “We all want to stay focused on our own work, so we don’t have time to worry about him.” 

                “Then why was the report printed on your paper, Larry?”  Mr. Dreaks said.  He showed them the paper he was currently holding.  It was indeed very different from the normal paper.  Larry had a problem using the company provided paper.  He thought it was too cheap and flimsy.  So he brought in his own, much higher quality paper from home.  Everyone in the pod used it, and work had been handed in from all five of them with the high quality material. 

                “What does that prove?  We all use it.  Larry even started putting it in the group printer.”  Said Kelly.

                “Is there any in there now?”  Tony asked.

                “You know there isn’t. You used the last sheet in there when you printed that report up.”  Larry said.  He did tend to keep track of how many sheets he let the others use, and currently the only paper the other four had available was the cheaper company provided paper. 

                “Well, there’s no way to prove that is there?”  Tony asked smugly.  "All we know for sure is that right now, Larry is the only one with this particular kind of paper."

                “Alright, enough of this.”  Mr. Dreaks said, “I don’t care which one of you fixes this, just correct it and get it to me.  Before Lunch.”  He turned and stormed off.

                Tony slipped into his chair and leaned back, placing his arms in back of his head, clearly basking in his victory.

                “How in the world do you do that?”  Sheila asked.

                “Do what?”  Tony said looking at her.

                “Pass your mistakes off like that.”

                “Mistakes?  I don’t make mistakes.  You guys make them for me.”

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 Yeah, we all know this guy, don't we?  I'm pretty sure that just about every office has someone like this.  And if yours doesn't, then it might just be you.  Either that, or you are a very lucky person indeed.

Word: cerise

cerise

\ suh-REES \  , noun;

1. moderate to deep red.

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                “Where’s that red?  I know I put it right here, and now it’s gone.”  Ben said, looking over his collection of tubes of colored paints.  They were all resting exactly where he had left them on the small table, with the exception of the red he was currently searching for.

                “I'm afraid I can’t help you there.”  Said Arthur, dabbing his canvas with his brush.

                “Well then, let me borrow yours.”  Ben said, walking over to his fellow painter.

                “I’d love to, but I don’t have any red to give you at the moment.” 

                “What are you talking about?  You have plenty or red.  I can see three tubes of it right over there.”  He pointed to the paints in question.  There were indeed three different kinds of red paint in Arthurs collection.  Arthur looked at them as well.  He then turned and looked at Ben, rolling his eyes as he did.

                “Those are not red.  The one on the right is maroon, the center one is cerise, and the left one is vermilion.”   He said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.  Ben groaned quietly to himself.  He really should have known better to bring that up.  Arthur was distressingly anal when it came to colors.  It was an admirable trait in a painter really, it’s just that Arthur was extremely particular, about such things, and tended to get a bit snippy with people who confused one color with another, regardless of how similar they may be.   Ben knew not to bother saying anything to argue about colors, and so thought about which shade of red he should be borrowing.

                “Fine then.  Let me borrow the maroon then.”  He said finally.

                “Well, now I don’t think I want to let you.”

                Ben took a deep breath and held his head in his hand, hoping there wasn’t any wet paint on it as he did. 

                “Why not?  You know I won’t use any more of it than needed, and I need it for my painting.” He said.

                “Really?  I thought you needed red.”  Arthur’s words were dripping with disdain.  There was no way Ben would get anything out of the other painter now.  Well, there was one.  He had to really appeal to the man’s artistic sense and hope for the best.

                “Well, why don’t you come over and see for yourself.  You know colors better than I do anyway.”  Ben said.  Adding in appeals to vanity and pride never hurt either.  Arthur looked like he was considering it, but it was mainly for show.  Ben knew he would look.  And probably trash the painting, forcing him to completely change his intent by doing something he didn’t want to do.

                “Well then, let me take a look at what you have.”

                Ben’s painting was almost done really.  It was of a pretty young woman sitting in a bright, cheery room looking out a window, with a small, delicate smile on her face.  In the foreground was a table with a silk scarf with an elaborate floral pattern on it.  The only part of the painting that was left uncovered was the end of the scarf, which lay draped over the table.  Ben wanted to place a splotch of dark, bloody red there.  His intent was to show the darkness that hovered just beneath the surface of an otherwise cheery life.  Well, that’s what he would tell people anyway.  Really, he just wanted to paint his new girlfriend sitting at a window and needed something to make it more interesting.  The red was really an idea he came up with half an hour ago.

                “Why exactly do you need the red?  Or my maroon?”  Arthur said. 

                “I’m gonna mix it up a bit and put it at the end of the scarf.  You know, make it look like a blood stain.”

                “Why?  I the rest of its fine as is.  Just finish off the scarf like the rest and call it a day.”

                Ben sighed and gave his dressed up interpretation of what he wanted to do, hoping that would work.  Arthur could be very difficult to work with, but once you got to know what he liked, it was much easier to get what you wanted out of him.  Well, most of the time anyway.  At others he could be just plain stubborn about something.  Ben was hoping that this wouldn’t be one of those times.   

                Arthur looked at Ben’s work so far and considered what he was trying to do.  He took a step back and tilted his head from side to side.  He closed one eye, then the other.  He was clearly trying to stall.  Quite possibly just for the sake of making Ben sweat.  Finally, he turned to Ben and spoke.

                “Very well, you may use my maroon.  Just don’t waist it like you did with my sunflower yellow on your last project.”

                Ben sighed in a combination of relief at getting the paint, and exasperation.  But, for now, he had a painting to finish.    

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In case you happen to be wondering: maroon, cerise, vermilion.  Oh, and if you're really curious:  sunflower yellow.  Have a nice day.