Entanglements

8th November 2021: lionfish, n. Any of several venomous spiny fishes of the family Scorpaenidae, esp. of the genus Pterois, which are native to the Indo-Pacific region and have bright contrasting stripes and spiky fin rays.

9th November 2021: mullocky, adj. English regional (west midlands). Dirty, untidy; rotten.

10th November 2021: cromulent, adj. Acceptable, adequate, satisfactory.

11th November 2021: roundaboutation, n. Speaking in a roundabout or indirect way; circumlocution.

12th November 2021: commonplaceness, n. The quality or condition of being commonplace; ordinariness. Also: an instance of this.

13th November 2021: mudlarking, n. The activity or occupation of a mudlark (in various senses), esp. the action of riding, playing, or driving in mud.

14th November 2021: anatical, adj. Chiefly Alchemy. Consisting of equal quantities of each ingredient.

This lion is a feather fish with a scorpion’s sting. It floats above the mullocky beds with its carnival stripes and predator’s hunger. Spines like spears, tipped with venom. A cromulent kill with every prick. Even giants can suffer mightily, should they tread without care, upon this beast. At first he’ll feel the sharp pain, and then will come the pins and needles. Within twenty seconds he is slurring his speech, roundaboutations of words as he struggles to maintain his balance, and the flat-surface commonplaceness of his world starts to rock like a ship at sea. Until down he falls, down into the sea-soft sand, to gargle on the silt, in amongst the mudlarking curlews and godwits, gradually resting in anatical balance, as a few brown bubbles rise then cease to rise.