They came into the kitchen just as Lois was putting the last of the food into a small brown sack. There were a few loaves of bread wrapped in towels, some jerky and salted meats and a variety of dried fruits. A canteen dangled from one of the straps.
"Ah! There you are." She said when she spotted her daughter and the young man in the doorway. "I've got everything ready for your journey. Oh--!"
She ran into the large pantry and came out a moment later with a small wooden box.
"Can't forget these!" she exclaimed, shaking the box at them before stuffing it into the bag.
I just dropped by to remind you that today (December 21) is GOFPD. Because I'd hate you to miss a perfectly pseudo-scientific reason to 'gasm.
Make love, not war.
Dinner was sitting on the counter getting cold, but the girl still wasn't home. Lois rested her chin in her hand. Just for a moment, she thought. But a moment became a nap, and Lois was soon snoring loudly. The fire in the hearth flickered and sputtered. As it began to die out, sparks flew out and landed on the flagstone floor. At least, they would seem to be sparks to the common eye. But these were long and skinny, and when they landed, they began to scuttle about.
The little hogboon was miles away when he heard the earth rumble, but he recognised the sound of that bit of earth. Every rock and every cave had its own unique vibration, and it was his gift to tell them apart. He turned toward the source of that ill-fated sound and took off running as fast as his tiny legs would carry him. Soon enough he came within sight of a plume of dust rising from a cliff in the distance. His home! The creature held back a fearful tear. How could this have happened? It was then that he noticed more than dust coming from the cliff. A strange man, grinning, yet full of malice, strode out of the thick dust and made his way purposefully back toward the town.
It was then that he spotted her riding down the hill on a black and grey mare. He was mesmerised. She was somehow both beautiful and plain; all at once familiar and mysterious - even more so than the standing stone at the heart of town. He had to know who she was and tried to catch her up, but she breezed right past him, unseeing, as she made her way to the north end of town. He followed on foot, so inexplicably drawn to her. As he rounded the corner, he saw her look all round suspiciously, though her eyes did not land on him. Then she kicked her horse and it exploded at top speed into the vast countryside where he could not follow on foot. He sighed and turned back. An introduction would have to wait. But she had come from the house on the hill. Surely his mother's new friend could tell him who she was.
One slow step after the next, he carved a circle around the mammoth oddity. Looking it up and down he could not place where he'd seen it before. Here, at the center of town, the giant stone overlooked every aspect of the villagers lives. They shopped, they gossiped, they harvested and held festivals in its shadow, seeing it as a time honoured friend. But, as he paced his ever shrinking circle around the lonely standing stone, he could only see it as a mystery.
In regard to my new little experiment 'a paragraph a day' it only took my first attempt for me to realise it wasn't going to work as I'd hoped. You see, I'm the creative type who always feels a need to create, but I am unfortunately not the type that is a fountain of ideas waiting to break forth. Like if you're someone who loves to drive, but has nowhere to go. Or maybe just no gas. You may sit in your car and stare out the window with your hands on the wheel, but you're just not going to get anywhere.
So trying to come up with a whole new narrative idea every day is just too much for me. It just isn't there. Hopefully I will be able to come up with a few prompt based ideas or completely random ideas every now and then. But I think the thing that made NaNo work is that I was just constantly building on the same ideas.
So I've decided to try to use that a bit more, and I'm going to write paragraphs based on my NaNo novel and its associated epic. Expanding on things, showing other characters' perspectives or events not fully described. All without giving too much of my actual story away, of course.
The man tread slowly through her garden, pausing every once in a while to inspect a leaf of one of her plants. She grew uncommon things here; things with many names, most of which were long forgotten. Plants with purpose; plants with uses seldom sought or even remembered. But he remembered. And he needed only one. One plant whose magical powers worked tenfold when stolen. As he finally lifted the odiferous blue-green leaves he sought and sliced them off the plant, his face formed a malicious grin. How wonderfully fitting that this plant, made so powerful by his theft, would allow him to forever control the very woman he stole it from.
The prompt:
His glass bubbled over with frothy perfection, and the ring box was bulging in his pocket. Nothing could ruin this perfect night, he thought, as he spied her in the corner booth, tapping her foot and eying him suspiciously. Paying no mind to the innocent billiards player he mowed over, he staggered toward his girl, winking in a manner he thought quite dashing. She was aglow, sparkling even; gleaming like a diamond even as she pulled a face and turned her back on him. Or maybe it was the booze.He was fond of a lass and fond of a glass, and fond of a ran-dan
