PROMPT 21 "COLD LEMONADE"

“Cold Lemonade,” the sign read. Jack Johnson wasn’t one to follow signs especially when they were painted in a haphazard manner like the one before him, but it was a sweltering hot day and the heat seemed to be radiating off the pavement so instead of following the route that he normally took day after day he made a quick detour–at least that’s what he thought.

Twelve minutes later after following sign after sign he finally came to an overturned milk cart that had two little girls sitting there. They looked so professional in their little matching outfits and out of the corner of his eye he could see their mother lounging under the shade of a large spruce. He waved to the mother who waved back after glancing up from her magazine. “Hello!” she called out with a bright smile. “Girls, why don’t you sell the nice man some lemonade?”

“Yes!” the girls squealed with joy as they looked expectantly up at the friend. “Would you like to buy some lemonade?” asked one of the girls with the bright blue eyes.

“Yes!” the other one agreed. “It’s wonderful and we have some ice cubes right in…” she paused and looked in the cooler at their feet. “Oh no!”

“What is it?” Jack asked sympathetically.

“The ice,” the blue eyed girl complained. “It’s all gone.”

“Mama!” the other girl called out. “We need more ice.”

“Our power is out Sally,” the mother answered. “No more ice.”

Jack smiled comfortingly at the girls. “Well then I’ll take a glass without ice.”

“But it won’t be cold lemonade without the ice,” Sally pointed out.

“Yeah,” the blue-eyed girl agreed. “We advertised cold lemonade.”

The guy laughed. “Well I won’t hold it against you this time…”

The girls smiled and sold him a glass of lemonade for five cents and he went merrily on his way. It wasn’t so refreshing but it did temporarily quench his thirst and he knew that he had done a good deed by helping the girls out with their fledgling business.

PROMPT 20 "DELECTABLE"

This is pure goo from the brain…

“Ladies and gentlemen of the tribes, welcome to our new meeting place on this delectable of days…”

Brisa tuned out after that statement. She was not one to agree with their current situation being overly and extremely beautiful. She knew as did everyone there who was standing around her that the day was the beginning of the end. Some might thing that it was the end of the beginning, but she didn’t agree.

The four tribes had lived apart for so long, the fact that they were coming together now was just an insane and crazy idea.

“…we welcome you to join our groups. The balance must be maintained and…”

Carl, a man standing a few feet away from Brisa scoffed at the notion of balance. He was a member of the Pegasus tribe. He knew more than anyone that stability and balance was an illusion. The wind was the only constant and it was so unpredictable that nothing could be counted on.

“If we reach upwards while still maintaining our roots then…”

Terra tuned out at that point. She was a member of the Sphinx tribe and as a being of the earth she knew that there was no way that they as a people could reach upwards considering the fact that they had just thrown history of thousands of years away.

“…and if we work together…”

Zi laughed. He couldn’t work together with anyone, no matter who they were or how hard they tried. The other tribe members were so inferior and his phoenix mentality meant that he would someday rule the world.

“So thank you once again,” the announcer finished. “And may you all go in peace.”

Peace. That was such a funny word, for a highly funny delectable day.

PROMPT 19 "VIRTUOUS"

Only those who are truly virtuous can enter here, the plaque on the wall read. It was a ratty old thing. Wooden in places, metal in others. The script went from being fine, like the greatest of penmanship to block-like in places and even child like in places. But Sarah Williams didn’t really care about how the plaque looked. She cared more about what in meant.

“So I have to be virtuous to enter here?” she asked her guide, a spritely woman named Keylala who was barely five-feet high with outrageous orange hair and eyes to match set against a porcelain white skin.

The sprite nodded. “Indeed you do. For ages untold the virtuous have entered here and received what it was that they were looking for….” she paused and looked over at Sarah. “What is it that you seek?”

“I seek the Staff of Peace and the Sword of War,” Sarah answered slowly, tyring to remember if she had gotten the names in the right order. “Yes,” she continued, muttering to herself. “Swords bring war, staffs bring peace…” Sarah looked at her sprite. “…I need to find them.”

“Yes,” the sprite confirmed.

“There’s just one thing that I don’t understand…”

“And what is that?” asked the sprite.

Sarah looked rather guilty, as though she had done something wrong and in a way she had. Countless times she had been told the reason for her quest but for whatever reason, the answers could never sit in her head. And so, she stood there, feeling horrible because she couldn’t remember why it was she had to be searching for whatever it was that she was searching for. And she told the sprite as such; “I don’t know why I have to get them.”

The sprite sighed. “This is going to be a long night,”

PROMPT 18 "LAST NIGHT"

“So are you going to tell me what happened last night?” she asked as her twin sister finally got out of the bathroom. Jessica and Sarah Hill were twins in every sense of the word. They looked the same, they dressed the same (most of the time) and they talked the same. The only distinguishing feature was that Jessica had blue eyes and Sarah had brown. They were the best of friends their entire lives and yet when high school came they found each other running in slightly different circles. “Or am I going to have to pry the answer out of you?”

“Last night…” Jessica sighed as she flopped onto her bed. “Last night I nearly kissed Henry.”

“Kissed?” Sarah exclaimed in utter shock. “You almost kissed him?”

Jessica nodded and buried her face in her pillow. “I know. I know!”

“Whatever possessed you to do such a thing?” Sarah asked. “He’s your best friend!”

“I know!” Jessica cried. “I know that Henry is my best friend. But he was just there and I was there and leaned over and kissed him…”

“Did he kiss you back?” Sarah inquired, wanting to know all the juicy details. “Did he?”

Jessica flopped over onto her back and looked at her sister with tears in her eyes.

“Oh sis,” Sarah began in a comforting tone. “He didn’t kiss you back?”

Jessica shook her head. “No he did kiss me back.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that Henry isn’t over Jenny yet,” Jessica stated with a sigh. “He kissed me and then told me that while I was a great girl that’s a lot of fun to be around he–“

“Likes you as a friend,” Sarah finished with a sigh of her own. “Oh the dreaded friend talk.”

Jessica nodded. “Now what do I do?”

Sarah shrugged his shoulders. “Try and get back with Chris?”

Jessica shook her head. “No way in hell.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Be patient?” asked Jessica with a shrug. “I like the guy. I’m willing to be patient.”

Sarah shook her head. “If you’re willing to be patient then all the power to you.”

PROMPT 17 "OVERPRECISE"

Chef Christopher Young wondered if it was possible to be over precise in his measurements. His mentor had always told hi that while following the recipe was essential, there had to be a certain amount of creativity and inspiration infused with the dish that was being created. Christopher himself had never subscribed to such a concept and thus followed everything to the letter–never deviating–never changing…all in all he supposed that it was a rather boring way to cook. He would see his colleagues having fun in the kitchen, making messes and creating utter crap–but there was a joy there for them. For Chris it wasn’t so much as joy as a simple comfort. He took comfort, a great deal of comfort in knowing exactly what was going into his dish. He liked the predictability of it all and if he ever believed that he would change his tune, he would have thought that the other person was delusional… until now.

“Alright ladies and gentlemen it looks like Chef Young has hit a bit of a snag,”

A bit of a snag, he thought forlornly to himself as he looked at his brittle chocolate. You can say that again.

“Christoph?” asked his blonde, Russian assistant. “What are we going to do?”

Christopher shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I have no plan.”

“Stuff the plan,” she prompted. “Improvise.”

Christopher turned to his assistant with narrowed eyes. “I don’t know how.”

“Clear your mind,” she suggested. “Just let your hands do the work. You are a genius Christoph you can do this…”

With a deep sigh Christopher turned back to his work space and surveyed the materials that he had at his disposal. It wasn’t much, but he was determined to finish come hell or high water. Hell, maybe he’d be able to pull out a win, at the very least he was going to finish.

THE FINAL REVISION…

…for now at least. It has to be the umpteenth update for what was once entitled Pen’s Dreamscape but after going on submissions to literary agents I figured that the novel needed sprucing up. It was ripped apart and put back together with nearly 40k words less and I think that it’s a lot stronger.

It’s actually really exciting. The novel is finished and now all I have to do is work on the query letter and the summary / synopsis and hopefully by Wednesday I’ll be sending my baby out on submissions again. *crosses fingers* Here’s hoping for the best.

Oh, and to celebrate my novel I’ve created a wordle for it…

…so the biggest words are the two main characters (Kimberly being the focus) but surprisingly asked, dream, looked, just, eyes, back, thread, around & stated are used quite frequently as well. Interesting…. ^_^

PROMPT 16 "INEFFABLE"

“Oh me, oh my, the feelings I have for you my love are completely ineffable and–“

“Stop!” the director cried out with a sigh, causing the actors on stage to groan quietly under their breaths. “Take five…”

As the director stalked away, the two leads turned back to each other before breaking out into giggle.

“Ineffable?” the female lead asked with a snort. “Who write this stuff?”

“The director does,” the male lead responded. “Apparently.”

“Yeah but it’s so Victorian,”

“Stone age is more like it.”

The female lead nodded. “That’s for sure…”

Quickly before the male lead could do anything she swiped his script and began reading out the highlighted line. “The feelings I have for you my love is are completely ineffable and I just want you to know that no matter whatever come, we shall weather the storm together.”

The male lead took back his script. “That’s not a very good impression of me,”

The female pouted. “You angry?”

He shook his head. “Oh no,” he began as he took a step towards her.

“Then what?”

The male said nothing, he just raised his eye brow and reached out for the girl.

YET ANOTHER TIME TRAVEL STORY

I have to say that this idea isn’t entirely my own, it was taken from the Adopt the Plot thread on the 2009 or 2008 National Novel Writing Month boards and I’ve sorta just taken the concept and run with it. I have to present an idea for my writing class (yes I’m taking a writing class at the local library) on Tuesday and this is an idea that I can work on intermittently without burning out my muses for NANO which starts in sixteen days.

There was something especially torturous about lines, mused herself as she peered forward and to the side just enough to see that she was finally inching towards the desk. She had been in line for a couple of hours and as each moment passed her anxiousness grew. Finally she heard the magic words, “Yes how can I help you,” and she stepped forward past the yellow line and handed her papers to the woman on the other side of the desk. The endless seconds ticked by and Avery wondered if she could take much more of the waiting but finally the woman looked up with a bright smile on her face.

“I am sorry,” she apologized with a grin. “But your visa has been denied.”

Avery felt her stomach drop to the floor. “What?” she exclaimed loudly, pausing only momentarily to look around as customers in other lines turned their heads towards her. “What?” she asked again more quietly, partly out of embarrassment and partly as a self-check to keep her anger under control. “What do you mean mean my visa has been denied?”

She leaned forward onto the metal desk, her fingers plastered against the see-through plexi glass which separated her from the Visa Authority Customer Service Rep on the other side.

“Your visa has been denied under sub-section five-forty-three kay of rule seven forty nine-bee which states that no person shall leave the zone laid out by the written declaration of the visa,” the woman paused and looked up at Avery with a sickly sweet smile on her face. “You left your designated area of travel…”

Avery wanted to scream. “Well of course I left my designated area of travel,” she began sarcastically. “I had no choice BUT to leave the area. As I told the Personal Safety Authority Officers when I came back through, I was being chased by these men in blue suits and…”

“I am sorry,” the woman apologized as she handed Avery back her papers with a big fat red line through the carefully filled out boxes. “But any complaints will have to go through Veena Dejardin in room forty-two on the seventy-seventh floor.”

“You don’t understand,” Avery pressed as she clutched the papers in her hand, doing her best to remain calm. “My sister is back there. We got separated and she hasn’t returned,”

“All incoming passengers can be found on sub-floor five,” the woman interrupted. “Please go to arrivals to see if she has come through or not.”

Avery shook her head. “She’s hurt,” she tried to explain. “She got hurt running from the men in blue suits.”

“All medical inquiries must be taken up in room seven-twenty-three on floor eighty-two.”

Avery felt like she was going to scream, but screaming would get her nowhere so she turned and stalked away, muttering every expletive and curse word that she knew under her breath. Her day was definitely going from bad to worse. First she had to leave her little sister in a place where she was likely to be hanged for a witch, and second when she returned to get help she had been horrified to learn that not only wasn’t she to be believed, but she couldn’t even go back to do the job herself.

“That’s what happens when I go through the TTA,” she thought spitefully to herself as she exited the large imposing building and crossed the aluminum plated streets. “But as the old saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there’s more than one way to travel through time.”

PROMPT 15 "EMPTY"

This is my hand at trying mystery…the inspiration ran out rather quickly and I’m not sure if I like it or not, hmm…that doesn’t bode well for November.

Empty. The safe was completely and utterly empty. The box which had been filled to the brim, so full that you could not make out a single square millimetre of grey steel was now empty and the grey steel shone under the halogen lights, mocking the detective as she stood there pondering. “Now this is going to be a challenge,” she muttered to herself as she regarded the scene. “Not only do we have no finger prints which could have seriously helped us with this case, but we also have no security cameras and no possible suspects.” She sighed and looked to her partner in crime. “What do you think Jason?”

Jason, a tall and handsome man by any definition of the word just looked at the lead detective and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he admitted with a sigh. “I mean, a crime has been committed here obviously and yet we have no leads.”

“There has got to be a lead,” the detective corrected. “We just haven’t found any yet.”

“No,” Jason agreed. “And we’re not going to find any until forensics come back.”

The detective nodded. “That’s going to be a couple hours at the least so lets go interview the employees. Maybe they know something…”

PROMPT 14 "UNBREAKABLE"

Unbreakable, the thing was unbreakable. No matter how hard she wacked it against the walls, the floor or even on one occasion the cieling, it just wouldn’t break. “I don’t understand it,” she told herself as she stared at the little piece of metal. “You’re not that strong. You’re not that great. Why the hell areyou able to withstand such an onslaught?”

Of course, talking to a little piece of metal was useless. The item wasn’t so important, just a relic of a relationship gone bad and she was heck sure that she didn’t want it hanging around her house anymore. To make matters worse she really didn’t want to throw the thing away because that would have been far to simple. She wanted the satisfaction, the utter satisfactio n and pleasure of destroying the thing herself. But of course, her well laid plans eventually always seemed to fall apart.

“Well I guess if I can’t break you alone,” she muttered wistfully as she stared at the item in questino. “Then I’m going to need some help.”

WIth that she left the item on the table where it sat while she went to the next room to make a phone call. “Yes Carla?” she asked into the mouth piece, glad to know that her firend had actually been the one to pick up on the other end of the line. “I need to get rid of the funniest thing… yes it was from Paul…no I don’t want to throw it out….” she paused and listened to the chatter on the other end. When her friend Carla began to talk it was a near unbreakable stream of chatter which made her head spin. “…No!” she exclaimed finally, getting a word in edge wise. “You can’t have it; if you want to help me then you can come over here with your blowtorch and we can roast the sucker.”

Her friend laughed and she felt her unease dissapearing. “Alright,” she concluded finally. “See you in a bit.”

She hung up the the phone and turned to the little piece of work. “Well my little friend,” she began with some enthusiasm. “You’re life on this earth is soon to be at an end. “I have had a great amount of fun letting you best me, but your unbreakable nature will soon be broken…”