I stumbled on to the word rapacity and am dying to use it! I also like the word shoals. I was reintroduced to both words while reading quotes by Erasmus Darwin. An amazing man he was. More quotable than that other Darwin, his wayward grandson ... what was his name? Oh yes, 'Charles' I believe. “Such is the condition of organic nature! whose first law might be expressed in the words 'Eat or be eaten!' and which would seem to be one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice!” -Erasmus Darwin
Good word. I've only ever used "rapacious" and usually in academic writing. Rapacity is something I definitely should add into my everyday conversation.
My grandmother used to have a set of Harlequin Romances on her top shelf, when she passed away we finally brought them down and almost every one of them had a scene filled with what was described as 'rapacious lovemaking.'
Oh, those are beautiful and perfectly describe some things one of my characters is going through. [Puts on thinking cap]
I remember a teacher who used to describe some of his students as 'twitterpated.' He was funny and always used it in a joking way. Students loved the guy. I think he also used 'squirrely' as an adjective with a similar meaning.
You should read some of Erasmus Darwin's work, even his poetry is pretty amazing. He wrote quite a bit about botanical subject matter, and if you think it might be boring you'd be wrong in the case of Erasmus. He was big on using anthropomorphisms. Plants, animals, his musings on the cosmos all have this very elemental human emotion to it. There's even a sexual component to his writing that must of been quite innovative for the time.
What you described sounds a lot like Japanese fairytales. There's this one I remember of a kind man who saved a crane. Later that man goes home to find a beautiful woman in his house and he's like, "I'm sorry. I must be in the wrong house!" And she's like, "No, this is your home, and I am your wife." And the man says, "But I am too poor to have a wife. I cannot feed us both." And the woman says, "I have rice." Anyway, they lived happily together. And I don't remember the details but somehow they needed money, and the wife tells the man not to disturb her in her room for a week, or some lengthy period of time. When she emerges, she bore a beautiful length of cloth and told the man to sell it for X amount of gold. He does it and brings home the gold. And again the wife disappears into her room, asking not to be disturbed. Anyway, the husband became curious and one night sneaks a peek into the room to find his wife had transformed into the crane he had saved so long ago. The crane became extremely sad because now that he knew the truth, she had to leave him, and she does. I think "Snow Girl" is quite similar too, though I don't remember that one well enough to tell except that it also included a beautiful woman with a secret, who becomes a man's wife.
