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14 January, 19XX Tonight’s weird things from Azha, sounds like instructions: “Pile the green with the shade of a unicorn’s sigh. Rest until fractal flourish. Return nine months hence. Time is short.”
23 April, 19XX Tonight’s weird things from Girtab, in a whisper: It will hurt, you know. It will tear you up. You will watch every day, and you will wait, never knowing. You will wait, never knowing, and it will tear you up, because you know. You Know. It will hurt and we will be here for you. We love you. We want you to Know. Every day, watch for the Signs. You will See them. Don’t tell a soul.
28 August, 19XX Tonight’s weird things from Ain, kind of like a song: His name is Julian. He’s not the one. He’s the other one. It should be obvious when you get there which one he is, but I still don’t know why him. Older than you, but not more responsible. Holds himself like a stack of papers he’s just finished picking up off the floor in front of someone important. Blue eyes— but they both do, a pair of stonewashed jeans you’ll never wear out. Not too handsome when he smiles, though. Not too handsome at all. He’s the one who will look at you as if you’re a lion behind a pane of paper thin glass. He’ll call you a witch. You are. You are. But first, you will meet Garrett. You will meet him in one year and three days. He’s the one. And he isn’t. You will know him on sight, because you have known him before. He is the one with the limp, and he’s shorter than he seems. You will be the one to tell him he can cook, and it will make his world turn, if only with the thought of you. The thought of you will season every dish. When he laughs, joy and all his other emotions will leak from his eyes; it will well in his smile until then. He’s the one who will look at you as if you are God. You can never have him. Love him as if you can. He will do the same. He always has, and always will. You will live forever. Further news from Minkar will arrive in four years, six months.
6 October, 19XX it was always Going to be this way it has to its the only way wed Make it because Something BIG is Going to Happen and theres all these little TWISTS
Youd Never get the Brewery if Julian didn’t ruin things with this You know as well as I hed never give it to You without the brewery Youd Never start the restaurant without the restaurant our BOY wouldnt come back Home And if HE didnt come back Home I dont know when Id see You
Youre leavin
No not leaving just not coming back
Gary I will see You again this isnt a Promise not exactly I just KNOW it isnt the end. But MY LOVE its going to be a long long LONG LONG LONG LONG LONG LONG time.
tell me what I Need to do
Just Remember that No Matter Anything Anyone says you KNOW it and I do, hes OURS.(Tonight’s weird things from Porrima, screaming)
The tip of a silver lime wand hovered at the start of the redacted text, trembling with his hand. It wouldn't be difficult to divine the words his mother had scribbled out so long ago; it was only ink, and she was only ten. It wouldn't be difficult to Know, as the Star Girtab apparently put it (as he knew it for himself, now) with the use of a spell of his own at the command of her wand. It hadn’t been her wand then. In a way, it wasn’t anymore either. There was a knock at the door before it opened, and he looked up from the page. The hall light bloomed in a halo around his uncle’s blond curls as the man leaned his head against the wood, peering in. “You finished through that box already?” Garrett asked, though the way he spoke was less a question than a remark on his surprise. He didn’t wait for the answer he could see in the pile of Ariadne's journals and old playthings that Icarus had lined up on the bed, bless him. “Dinner’s up, if you’re hungry. Little bowtie pastas in garlic butter with a mixed veg on the side.” It was not an offer. It was a hope. “Thanks,” Icarus murmured, squinting against the light. His mouth twisted with a want to speak. His brow twitched, as if tied to the skip of his heartbeat around a name he did not know if he could ever say. “I’ll be right down.”
72
You didn’t see what happened, didn’t feel a thing. Whatever it was, it was quick. A blink as though falling asleep and waking up all at once. You were floating among the stars.
Everyone wore black. It was expected at a funeral. You would have preferred a party instead. A celebration of life rather than all these solemn expressions, some of them from your school days. Names you could no longer remember but there were memories tied to their faces.
Your first kiss, a friend you played chess with, the professor that caught you cheating during exams. Your mother was absent because you never met her. Your father left you in the care of his sister when he abandoned you both. Two lonely children, raised in a castle, shipped off to attend school in another.
Eithne. She was there. Your sister. Calm, collected. There was a hard look in her eyes that you didn’t like; it was the same look she gave you when you went to the pub with friends. She always was particular, about appearances, reputation.
Though she never admitted it aloud, you could tell she didn’t approve of your muggle friends. You didn’t exactly leave the magical world behind when you left school but you might as well have. Drifting apart was normal, and these muggles were nice, vastly different from what you were told growing up.
Time went by. Eithne got worse. You could see it in the way her shoulders tensed when Dymphna mentioned her school friends. See it in the way she vocalized her disproval of how the child was being raised: among muggles despite what happened. You knew your sisters hatred started before your death, but your murder only added fuel to the flames.
You didn’t care for vengeance. It was unlike you. Your time had passed, though you created ripples in the lives of those still breathing. It would always be the way, you knew. Eithne wouldn’t change. She would refuse to see another way. Still, there was hope.
The family would continue to grow. You would watch, though you couldn’t guide them, in hopes they would come to understand. That blood purity and magical ability didn’t matter. Nor did what sort of family you came from. You were proof of that.
73
Books
The books were strewn across the desk when I approached with a hand outstretched. I really hadn’t intended to find anything other than the letter opener in Dad’s desk that August afternoon, but instead I inadvertently cut a fresh gash, a paper cut across my future, and ever since then, I’ve walked with worry bleeding like ink within my veins.
People have noticed—professors aren’t blind—but no one has dared ask me about it. Perhaps they are afraid because they are grown-ups and grown-ups know that there are a lot of things beyond control, unscripted. I think that’s why Dad hasn’t told me and hasn’t made an appointment.
An appointment is concrete, and its outcome is the law—a gavel striking across the pages of my brain. And before the neurons break apart, I can see my father’s face looking sullen and uncertain as if he were facing an ethical quandary of one of his textbooks. Not because of what would happen—this always could have happened—but because of the arbitrary way the genes happened to align themselves in his family story without his consent.
Sometimes, I wonder if he knew when they married or when they first met. They must have talked about it. Perhaps she even tried to tell me with a comforting glance or a kiss on my forehead as she comforted me on the steps of Holyrood during a dreich rainstorm. She looked back at me that day too, when I was wading through the drawers on the desk and pushing past our tired law books, from behind a photo frame. Her hair curled neatly around her round cheeks as her blue eyes washed over me—a gentle cleansing of my fears through her reflection.
My reflection, I suppose. Dad always said we looked alike, but I had his systematic way of going about things and of arguing my way through things (gracefully, of course). But we were different too: I lacked her ease, her beauty, and the way the wind caught up in her curls as she visited the shops on Grassmarket.
Our books too were different. I’ve tried, of course, to learn her craft, but I fear my poems are too tight, wound by the same constraint that faces my future now. She read me some of hers then—and the greats: Blake, Barret Browning and the American called Frost—to try and soothe me to sleep, but Dad just jokes I’d point to the law books. There was something about the thickness and rust colors of the spine that drew my attention, even then.
Here, on Dad’s desk, they always looked so magnificent, even deep in the semester when the desk was at its messiest. It was here, tucked under the pages of Arlidge, Eady & Smith’s On Contempt, that I found the doctor’s note and with it, the word: hereditary. I’d gone through the drawers first—it was much more logical that way, for something to be where it should be.
I guess that’s what they’ll do, the doctors: find something where it should be, where it had been all along. They’ll trace my genes like letters only to unfurl them onto a page with Latin words of warning and vast numbers concealed with meaning—like the one I found.
Funny, it was here amongst the law books he uses everyday, just like another lesson plan or an ungraded essay. Does he read it regularly? Or even every now and again? Maybe that’s why he’s not remarried—because Mum is still here, in this house, amongst our books. Maybe he, like me, enjoys being alone: the subtle comfort it brings of knowing your pain is written only for you.
Except I see him—I see the way the wrinkles scrunch up in his face as he grades, the way he sighs on Mum’s anniversary, the way he holds me close when I get off the train—and I think it’s a lie. I think we only work because we have each other—because I see that, and he sees my hidden moments, the way I hover over my books and pull them close. We don’t talk about it—why should we?—but we’re there. We’re here.
If he made the appointment, and I wasn’t here anymore, he’d just have his books. Smith, and Bingham and Bertrand Russell. Although they comprise both his comfort and mine, I doubt they could bridge the gap. And then, unlike before, no little hands would hold yours.
I don’t want to leave you, Dad, without a hand to hold—
—again.
74
« Last post by Alan Noble on 04/19/2022 at 07:36 »
A Once Cozy Home
Spring was quickly fading, and Summer was fast approaching. As the seasons changed, neglect progressively seeped its way homeward, as once a cozy, clean flat has flipped itself upside down. Stacks of boxes, an unmade bed, an assortment of dishes uncleaned and half-eaten meals strewn everywhere. One would assume this place had become abandoned.
In the small, clean flat back in its hay day, a spring cleaning was frequent when two lives had become one—with an addition of a feline companion. Then, times like those were simple—an ideal "happy" life. However, things had changed when one life had split apart into two once more—with a feline friend missing.
Neglect eventually turned into desperation as the lingering plumes of hope brushed their way through his memory. A seemingly ruined home quickly found itself clearing; minute after minute, second after second, He progressed in finding a feline friend that seemed lost. However, calls of hope once more came to pass; with a semi-clean flat, things were starting to clear and make sense.
He cleaned the dishes piling up across the sink and stored them away; he took out the trash, putting in the effort. As he sifted through the boxes came a portrait of a couple dressed for the occasion, the day that he and her became one. Shivering at the thought, he placed the portrait back in the box, stacking it high.
Throughout a filled room of neglect was the slither of hope, the sounds of purring and calls for help between the stacks of boxes. A box tips over, turning progress into nothing; He shudders and pauses as their feline friend forces itself free, pawing at him and then ducking between the mess that was once a cozy, clean flat.
Sounds of rattling and broken glad echoed in the direction the feline friend had fled; on the ground was a portrait. Flipping it over revealed a shattered picture of a couple dressed for the occasion, a reminder that he was left alone as neglect began to seep itself home for the Summer.
Kneeling, the Feline friend returns cautiously tiptoeing over the shattered remains of the past, nuzzling its head against his leg, prompting him to ask his feline friend knowing the answer, “She’s not coming back, is she?”
75
"Angry colours, or warm colours," Avery countered quickly. Looking at Vega with her determination and thinned lips, he didn't need to ask which one kept her warm at night. He raised an eyebrow, decidedly not commenting that maybe she should try crystals for a change.
Instead, like it was much better, he muttered, "I don't think any crystal has that much energy to give."
Looking between his telescope and hers, Avery frowned, adding, "Are you even looking at the Pleiades cluster?"
76
first meeting, 1942 When Benjamin Orellana first met Ninon, he thought the kid sister his Muggleborn best mate kept talking about was actually a kid brother, and that Ethan's whole tragic poor family situation was just a ruse to get Benjamin to stay over at Ethan's house for the summer. For one, Ninon Dubois' blonde hair had been cropped tight around her ears and her bangs were sheared across her forehead that screamed unflattering, boyish, and self-maintained. For another, she scowled fiercely at him from the start, like a cat angry at having its territory invaded. He could barely cross the threshold of the home before she was snarling at him. " What are you looking at?" she had snarled at him when Ethan had introduced them. He'd noticed she was trembling in her hand-me-down trousers and shirt. " Haven't you seen a non-mag before?" He had smiled widely at her sparking green eyes and flushed cheeks but had snapped back just as quickly, " Not one as poorly dressed as you, that's for certain." When Ninon flushed a deeper red and opened her mouth to give him a scathing reply, Benjamin realized it was love at first hate.
1948-50 He fell in love with her again when he was exhausted. Exhausted of the politics, the Hexenreich, the Resistance, and all issues in between. He couldn't remember the last time he had flown his broom for the sheer joy of flying and not just as part of the job. Edward kept bothering him to visit, to stop travelling and just settle down in one place for a year or two. After another trying day attempting to slap sense into the latest batch of cocky players who took their ability to play for granted, Benjamin had packed up his worldly things and escaped to the Dubois' household. Ninon was running a smooth ship at this point. She had whipped the Dubois household into financially stable, organized shape. Ninon had sat Benjamin down at their table, told him to watch his manners and eat well, and had organized the whole family into distracting the former Slytherin from his stress. The hand-me-down trousers had been replaced by working class Muggle utility clothing; skill, patriotism, and efficiency breathed in every inch of her body. Benji thought she looked glorious. While Benji and Edward had faced trouble in the magical world, Ninon grew into the world through the flame of wartime. Every snarky scold across her lips made her more beautiful to him, bringing to focus fiery green eyes and a hostile mouth. Later that night, drowsy with food, comfort, warmth and wine, Benjamin hadn't been able to control his exhaustion. He'd reached over the table to Ninon mid-sentence and said: " Marry me." Ninon refused outright. She had glared green icicles at him and smacked him in the face with her blonde hair when she stormed away. Edward had laughed. Benjamin had to argue with her for over a year to get her to finally agree.
1960 Ninon had been furious at him. He'd been gone for nearly three months coaching a team for the Quidditch World Cup. When he came back, she had harangued him about leaving the family alone for so long. "Dienne is barely holding on! I'm so worried for her!" Ninon had shouted at him. "Holding on? Holding on to what?" He had asked. "She's six, Ben, and she's acting like she's a full time babysitter. I don't see her play with friends her age or do anything for herself. She just clings to me and asks to help with anything I'm doing for Benji and Judi. I don't see how she'll want anything for herself when she's always in the middle of her siblings." Ninon explained. They were whisper arguing in the pantry in the middle of the night, as Ninon force fed Ben dinner after seeing how skinny he was getting. "How am I supposed to help that?" Ben questioned, mouth full of potatoes. Ninon rolled her eyes at him. His breath still caught at the scornful, bossy look she gave him with those green eyes of hers. His heart thrummed, waiting in anticipation of what guidance she would give, how right she would always be. "Take her with you. I don't care where. Take her with you so she knows the world is bigger than just rude school kids, and that she doesn't have to be suffocated in this town. She's bright, Ben," Ninon declared. "She's interested in so much but she's so scared of Benji or Judi laughing at her. I'm worried she won't ever try anything new if she doesn't get out." Ben shoveled green beans and a roll into his mouth, and replied over his chewing. "Alright, stop fussing. I'll take her with me on the next trip." His job wasn't so rigid that it would protest the presence of a shy, quiet six-year-old. Dienne was a good girl; never caused trouble, never threw tantrums. He'd probably bore her death.
Months later, 1961 "WHO LET MY DAUGHTER GET ON A FIREBOLT?" Benjamin roared at the quaking Quidditch players. Professional players who currently stood at attention--or perhaps like those awaiting death before the firing squad that was Coach Orellana--whimpering beneath the normally mild coach's rage. Ben continued to blister them with questions. Who decided a seven-year-old could ride a full-size broom? Why were there idiots on the team who didn't think to, perhaps, partner ride with her. How was he expected to train this team to win the World Cup if they couldn't even be trusted to watch a child? Ben was sweating. His wife would absolutely murder him. Poison his dinner and wine and smile at him with that lovely grin of hers as he perished in a pool of his own vomit. He was on the border of swearing outright at his team when his little daughter reached up and grabbed his arm. Dienne was grinning--grinning!--up at him. Her hand hung at her side, broken at the wrist and dislocated at the shoulder. She didn't even look like she felt the pain. Three of her teeth were missing and blood trickled out of the gap. The team healer was kneeling beside her, trying to get the girl to drink a noxious concoction and possibly knock her out for more healing after the violent landing she had taken. Ben Orellana stared down at her, flabbergasted. He couldn't remember ever seeing Dienne look so fiercely satisfied. His daughter was always unreadable, wasn't she? "I 'anted to 'ee the 'irebolt go one-'ifty, Da!" Dienne's grin grew wider, blood more prominent on her mouth. "Goblins made the 'ron--they're wicked!" Ben couldn't even check his response. "You HATE flying! Why are you looking at brooms? I swear, Dienne, I will lock up all of my brooms. You are never to touch them again!" Dienne's good hand curled into a tight fist around his forearm. She glared up at him, the dark eyes that she had inherited from him shining up in anger--anger, his sweet daughter was angry--beneath her dark mop of hair. "I WILL!" she shouted right back in his face. "I'll 'oo what I want, Da! 'ou can't stop me from looking at dem!" Oh, no. He recognized that belligerent, ferocious look on her face. Dienne's mind had set on something interesting, and he saw his wife in every line of her stubborn chin. Ben could feel his anger trickling away as that familiar affection bled into his heart. Damn him for being soft for headstrong women. How could he not fall in love again?
77
Bottles
It was an ordinary day—un jour plus ordinaire—the day you died. At least, it was for most people. They’d walk through French stonework on the way to class, worried about some exam or the way that girl with a skirt an inch too short looked at them—or didn’t. Watching them now, it’s all fun, fun, fun. Anything to get away from their dreary, boring two bezant lives. But not you.
You were perfect: your swagger made me believe you just didn’t care, your subtle arrows of words pierced those centuried walls, and your smile let us walk slyly by. You’re here—not there, not under their clutches—maman, papa, grand-mère, la dernier soeur.
Besides the glass, you curl up and stare up at me, wondering if I’ll notice, if I’ll remember, if I’ll cry. No, never. And yet, your blue eyes do not meet my silhouette. What’s stopping you? Why don’t you get up and start a conversation—ask me about my day? Je vous mets au défi. What’s to stop you from sliding an extra bezant into that sullied man’s hand as he pays for his triple-strength wit-sharpening potion, or from lifting that extra glass of giggle water from the bar and topping it up with a splash of lime? The bartender is about twenty-seven, your age, and seems, like you, to be alone. Slide her a smile—the cunning one.
You’ll knock over my things—that’s how you’ll get my attention. First the small bottles—the empty ones. You always thought there were too many—brown ones, green ones—and it didn’t matter that they were cheap. Wash your hands, get yourself dirty.
Mistake, mistake, mistake—arrête ma chouchoutte—you whisper in my ear as you watch the ingredients flit down into the cauldron: chubara scales and thyme. The wind whistles your song—a French lullaby—to pass the time. Fais dodo, colas mon p’tit frère. Her voice, high-pitched but unstrained, informs your rendition, turning my cauldron into a childhood plaything.
The way you look back at me through the glass—it’s not real to you, is it? You’re filled with chrysanthemums, and basilisk oil, and pine nettles—all commonplace to you because it's so much easier to sit on a shelf than be out in the world. Out, out, out amongst the chaos of the field, chasing Kelpies rather than answers.
Oh, that’s not what it was? Tell me. Dis-le moi maintenant.
Now, that’s not fair: the way your smile curls around the side of the bottle just like that. She’s my customer—just look at how skillfully she flicks the bones in her wrist as she pours a glass of giggle water—and you've had your chance.
You won’t go. You’ll keep her waiting in your polished leather shoes, the ones Oncle Alexandre bought for you in Confluences. How proud you had been then, freshly nineteen and a true Lyonnais. Go on, tell me how ashamed you are to find me Parisian. Smell me. Pick up the washed tones of La Seine in my hair, and trace her veins from the outskirts to find me.
That’s how you did it, personne ne t'a dit? How do you reflect yourself into every glass? You see my face and you pull on the fat in my cheeks until the lines resemble yours—except they always did. When you lay on the shore, cold, your skin was my skin. I had not your skill then, but I have your skin. Your skin curls around this bottle I crafted. Should I crush it? Would you want that?
Non, ici quand tout vous abandonne, on se fabrique une famille invisible.
You haunt me still. You haunt me in the nettles. In the instructions on the parchment. In conversations with customers and vendors alike. In the leather that dons my back. In dark alleyways, familiar and foriegn. And in the giggle water that seals a coy deal.
Toi, mon frère, I feel your soul in the glass—in every single bottle.
78
Boxes
No matter the number on the check, a warehouse looked exactly the same: a dark and lonely wasteland for the parts of ourselves we’d prefer were not so ingrained that no matter how hard or how often we tug at them, we cannot let them go. Perhaps this was helped by the fact that it was muggle and therefore devoid of the enchantments that could make it feel more homely or comforting to a pierced heart. That had been a deliberate decision on the part of the blonde, to stow away here, in a place devoid of magic, the most enchanted moments of her life—to cast them away here like wretched, cursed artifacts, never to be touched.
An almost electric buzz ran along her fingers as they traced the edges of a simple cardboard box. Little Kirsty had had a dozen of these when they were teenagers, each charged with memory, but none so much as this. Her sister had courted three beautiful boys over the course of her schooling, and Ruthie could have matched her, if it hadn’t been for him.
So many things, she thought, fingers trembling, would have been if it hadn’t been for him. But she recalled what she had told the researcher one day before: she wouldn’t be here now if all the things hadn’t happened, including him. Maybe it was all soaked in, deep under the pores of her skin now, and her mother, with that country-wise smile, was right: it should be sold.
The money was irrelevant—athletics were an investment for life—but rather it was the process of giving up—a final step—that laid like a heavy rock of motivation in her gut. Somehow, the apartment itself had been easier, especially once they had painted it beige.
“It’s like they erased everything,” she had whispered into what had once been the sitting room where they had curled up on the couch, watching the city lights pop up on the other side of an evening window. Her fingers had reached easily into the dent where a stray bludger had knocked into a wall, which he neglected to fix because it reminded him of her as he left the apartment. And just over there, on the hook she’d seen the pink embroidered jumper that had never been in her wardrobe—not even for a minute. Into a deep cream had faded the good and the bad, and everything in between.
Not here. Here, in between the metal walls, inside these crudely packed cardboard boxes, everything was perfectly preserved: his hats, her scarves, the jewelry he’d bought her, the china they’d shared on the table. Even the photographs still moved in the golden frames though no one had looked upon them in years. The round mirror she’d found at that vintage shop in Glenrothes all those years ago stared back at her and her alone, unlike before.
Her blonde ringlets waved back at her in the image reflected as dust flickered through from a nearby air vent. When she bought it, she never dreamt it would end up here—any of it. These items had been purposeful then—when they were new, when boxes were only temporary homes.
Gripping the box-cutter in her right hand, she raised it, keeping the next box steady with her other hand, and cut in deep like it was a fresh piece of meat. Pushing the right flap open, she reached in with both hands. Between her fingertips, she felt the rub of some linen. “You hated those dinners,” she scoffed, as she pulled out a lace tablecloth, the kind they’d use when they wanted to impress a publicist. Maybe that had been the mistake—or one of them—getting famous.
Picking up the whole thing, she stood up to bring the corners together and fold it into itself. It looked better this way: just corners of lace. There was something less overwhelming about that. At least, she pictured that was how it might seem on her mother’s table for sale with the rest of a life she had once dreamed of.
Or, at least a life imagined she recalled as she felt their soles brush the edges of her fingertips: the baby shoes. A deep breath surged within her, from the very base of her spine, as she picked them up out of the box and set them on top of another unopened box, staring at her with a fury. Funny how one little scare could make you buy things—white and embroidered—as if it was actually going to happen. And that too—a new life for you—was terrifying.
All the more terrifying now it was because she knew what it could have been—how hard, how draining, how terrible for a child to be looked at with disdain because of the circumstances of its birth. If it had been born—would she even have done that? Before learning the truth or after?
Shaking her head, she turned back towards the box, wanting to discover any remaining contents, when she heard a voice by the door, “Miss?” Yes, a ‘Miss’ again she was, if only removed from the youth associated with the title. “This rolled out of your room and into the corridor,” said an older man with a shinty bat extended towards her.
With a nod, she thanked him and pulled her father’s bat into the room with her. An artifact from her Highland childhood, it wasn’t all that surprising it had ended up here; the desperate need to flee had swooped everything in the apartment up like furious windstorm wiping the off color across the Quiraing.
Feeling the wood in her hand, firm like a beater’s bat she didn’t wield, she grit her teeth, curled her fingers strong around the handle, pulled back—a breath—and let go. And in front of her brown eyes, the cardboard box knocked into itself and each into another, falling to the floor and spilling out the contents: papers, fabric, cutlery. But the clanging was just a din compared to the clatter of the lamp as its glass hit the ground like a fabergé egg. One, two, three strikes across the nearest boxes she made like the athlete she was: each punctuated with strength and fury.
But as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t swipe at them—not the baby shoes.
79
He didn’t usually come outside when it was this cold.
Should’ve worn a thicker jumper, then, shouldn’t you, she almost snapped and would have done so if he hadn’t kept rambling on about his crystals.
Sometimes, Vega thought that Avery Elliot couldn’t open himself up to any more mockery, even if he tried. Then he said things like, crystals are used for energy, and she remembered that whenever she thought he had the maximum weirdness a person could reach, he always had to take it one step further just to prove her wrong.
Amber, ruby, carnelian.
No, she didn’t want to borrow one. Her accuracy was fine without any divine help. Even if she didn’t know what she was supposed to be looking for. They were just stars—how hard could it be?
Vega let her gaze flicker to the stones in the palm of his hand, taking pains to look careless, indifferent. Then, as she pressed her eye to the telescope again and began fiddling randomly with the lens, “They’re all very angry colours, aren’t they.”
Orange and red, like flames in the palm of his hand.
“What are they meant to do, psych you up for two hours in the cold with me?”
If so, they clearly weren’t working.
80
Summer Workshop Prompt #1 Welcome to Jurassic Park! Change and loss are a part of life. Some experience it earlier than others, but everyone will experience it in some way or another during their lifetime. This prompt looks at the things (or people!) that our characters have lost along the way...and offers them a second chance.
Your Task Write a piece in which you bring back something in your character’s life that they thought was over. This could be something tangible like an object (perhaps an old toy or a possession belonging to a family member), a person/relationship (e.g. a friendship, familial relationship, or romantic relationship), or something intangible, like a memory or a feeling. Is this thing, whatever it might be, better off staying in the past? If so, why/if not, why not? What are the consequences (if any) of the thing’s return? Does your character lose the thing again? And if so, how do they feel about letting it go for a second time? As always with our workshops, there are no rules on word counts, tenses, person, general format etc., as long as you adhere to our site rules and site rating!
How do I start? three simple steps 1. Start a new thread in the Summer Workshop forum. It should be called Prompt 1: Title of Your Piece2. Write your piece, following the prompt above. 3. Review the pieces of others (see How To Workshop).
All credit to DEVI DEVARAJAH for this prompt!
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