Jun Fei, Not a Han (or Rachel, Not a Han Either)

“Don’t stare,” Sonny said, tugged me toward the lockers.

“Why would I stare?” I trotted to keep up so he wouldn’t dislocate my arm. “Johnny’s just your cousin, right? From the Mainland?”

Something unreadable crossed Sonny’s face. “It’s hard to explain. Just - be cool.” Then he craned his neck and called, “Hey Johnny!”

I craned my neck too but didn’t spot any Chinese-looking boy in the lunchtime crowd. No one responded, either.

“Johnny!” Sonny called again.

Still no response. I’d heard loads about this unfortunate cousin, abandoned with Shao Lin monks in the mountains of northern China, half-civilized from living their ascetic ways. Sonny and I’d had long conversations about the antics his mother had gotten up to, trying to Americanize ‘Johnny’. I felt bad for the kid being thrown into a new culture, forced to conform against all he knew.

Sonny rolled his eyes and called out in sharp Mandarin. “Jun Fei! Get over here!”

The crowd shifted. I couldn’t help but stare. Jun Fei was...tall. Well over six feet, and lean, with golden skin and Persian-dark eyes, round eyes, caucasian eyes. His head was shaved, just like monks had their heads shaved, and he was dressed in shabby gray trousers and a matching gray tunic, like monks wore in kung fu movies, and he was even wearing little black slippers, but there was no way that boy was Chinese.

“Good day, Cousin,” Jun Fei said, inclined his head politely.

“Hey,” Sonny said in English. “Rachel, this is Johnny, my cousin. Johnny, this is Rachel.”

I offered my hand and forced myself to blink a few times so it wasn’t so obvious I was staring. “Pleased to meet you, Johnny.”

“My name is Jun Fei, despite what Song Fei insists on calling me,” Jun Fei said, and Sonny winced at use of his proper name. “But it is good to meet you.” And then he spoke in rapid-fire Mandarin, too fast for me to keep up.

“Whoa, hey,” Sonny broke in, “Rachel was raised by gweilos - she doesn’t speak the Mother Tongue.”

Jun Fei blinked solemnly at me. “You are not Han?” he asked.

“Er...biologically, sure. But biology doesn’t make a girl fluent in Chinese.” I couldn’t help but look him up and down and notice that he was lean, built along clean lines, like a runner, but I could see the smooth slide of muscles beneath his skin when he moved. And then I asked it. “Are you Han?”

Jun Fei blinked again, that puzzled blink that Chinese boys gave me when they knew the answer to a question but refused to give it.

“I’m guessing someone gave you a mirror eventually,” I said. “So, you want to sit with us for lunch?”

“That would be...nice,” Johnny said cautiously. He spoke careful, unaccented English, which was pretty good for a Shao Lin monk.

“C’mon.” Sonny headed for a table.

After a moment, Jun Fei and I fell into step behind him.

(500 words)

Sarah - (extra post - Edited)

"Hi Sarah!"

I smiled at the pleasant voice as the door swung shut behind me, "Hi Joyce, how are you today?"

"Well little Ben has the chicken pox, but other than that, life moves along," she said in a rolling Irish accent.

I could almost picture her as she had been described to me; a petite frame sitting behind the desk in the Student Services office, bright green eyes and a wide smile surrounded by short curly red hair and a smattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose.

"I've heard that oatmeal baths help with the itching," I offered as I leaned on the counter. Diana nudged my leg and I reached down to rub her behind the ears with one hand.

"Yes," Joyce agreed, "his Papa is home with him today, and I can just imagine the trouble those two are getting themselves into."

I laughed at the mental image that I got of little Ben and his father running amok through the house. "Well, at least you'll have it over with early," I said by way of consolation.

"Thank heaven," she mock whispered.

I laughed again. Joyce was fun to talk to. "Is Chapter One of the Corporations text ready to go?" I asked. I had to listen to it before the test on Monday.

"Let me check. I'm pretty sure that it is," she said. I listened to her shuffle papers around on the desk and a drawer open and close, pens sliding around inside. "Ah! Here it is," she said, and placed it on the counter so that it touched my elbow.

I dropped my hand and picked up the cassette tape, sliding it into my pocket with a smile. "Thank you Joyce," I said and turned toward the door.

*****

"I'm home!" I called as soon as I shut the front door. By the echoing I could tell that no one was home. I didn't mind; it meant I could be alone for a while.

"Come on Diane, let's get you comfortable and find something to eat," I said as I took off her harness and rubbed her down.

"Yuck! Diane!" I laughed and wiped the saliva from my cheek where she licked me.

We padded towards the kitchen where I filled her food dishes and set my pack on the table. As if on cue, my stomach rumbled as I opened the fridge door and grabbed an apple.

The apple gave way with a satisfying crunch as I moved back to the table. A small study area set up with a tape player waited for me and I slid the new recording into the machine. I felt a smile spread across my face as his voice filled the room.

Corporations: Chapter One...

I had to force myself to concentrate on the information he was reading and not on the smooth rhythm of his voice. It was a steady voice, strong and deep; the tone pure. I was sure that if he sang he would sing Bass.

I tried not to let my mind drift towards wondering about the man behind the voice; a voice I could listen to for hours even if I didn't need to. He made even a dry legal text worth listening to. It was one of the few voices that I would never be able to put a face to, a man I had never met.

A man I could never see.

Anne and Jane

Sparks jumped from the flint and stone that I held loosely to a small pile of tinder, catching and sputtering in the dark. I held the small flame to the wick of the lantern on the table. And the next, and the next. Soon the room was filled with the soft glow of lamplight, and warmth began radiating through the chilly room; shadows retreating to the far corners.

I worked at the laces of my bodice with numb fingers, pausing occasionally to hold them over an open flame, trying to restore some feeling. I let out a breath of relief when at last the constricting garment gave way and I could breathe easier.

"Mistress, Anne? Do you need any help?"

I thought for a moment before answering, "Alright Jane, come in."

Jane entered the room quietly, almost timidly. She was a small waif of a girl, not more than twelve I would have guessed. Given over to the great houses service by her parents for a pittance of money that I knew would not last a month.

I watched Jane move quietly around the chamber, her eyes downcast, almost fearful of being noticed, yet determined to do her work.

I slipped out of the bodice and the skirt and handed them to Jane who folded them precisely and placed them in the wardrobe. She removed my dressing gown and a soft robe and helped me into them before picking up a brush.

I sank into a low chair and hummed a little with pleasure as I felt the brush move rhythmically through my hair; Jane's soft, child hands, untangling my long black locks before loosely braiding it and tying it off with a ribbon.

Jane placed the warming pan filled with coals from the community fire between the sheets of my bed and turned down the covers. "Will you be needing anything else Mistress Anne?" she asked quietly.

"No Jane, thank you," I said gently and watched her move towards the door.

The little girl remained in my thoughts long after she silently slipped from the room to seek her own bed in a far, cold servants room.

Chris, Student

Chris squinted at the italicized font and sighed, raked a hand through his hair in frustration. He reached out and pressed the ‘pause’ button on the recorder and attempted to sound out the words.

“Day-zhoor? Day-zhoor-ay?”

“Talking to yourself again?” his roommate Evan asked.

Chris held up the thick law tome. “How do you pronounce this phrase?” He pointed to de jure.

Evan shrugged. “Not a lawyer, man.” And he went back to his chemistry and punk music.

“Thanks anyway.” Chris tugged his headphones back on and pressed the button to resume recording, continued reading. “ ‘A corporation formed according to legal formalities is a corporation de jure. If a corporation is not formed de jure, it may still be considered a corporation de facto...’”

After a while he got into the rhythm of reading, and he felt the words roll smoothly off his tongue even though he didn’t really understand any of what he was reading. He’d read so many textbooks on so many topics that they started to blur together. But as he read, he gazed at the photograph pinned above his desk, of Sarah and her guide dog, and thought, She doesn’t know I’m alive, but she depends on my voice.

He finished the chapter and stopped the tape, popped it out of the machine and scrawled Corporations, Chapter One on the label. He had to deliver it to the student support center and then get on with his own homework. Maybe, on his way across campus, he would see Sarah and Diane sitting on the grass, basking in the sun, picture-perfect and completely oblivious to it.

Chris scooped up his jacket and headed for the door, and the phone started to ring. Evan was closest, but he continued bobbing his head to his music and balancing chemical equations. Chris sighed and crossed the room, scooped up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Dear, it’s your mother.”

Chris winced. She sounded more frail than usual. “Hi, Mom. What’s going on? What can I do for you?”

“I got a call from the pharmacy again today...”

Of course. The creditors had come calling again. Chris let her words wash over him, making humming noises in all the right places. When she was done, he had to resist the urge to slam the receiver back into place. Then he stared down at his knuckles, red and swollen and scraped raw in several places, and he picked the receiver back up, dialed.

“Hey, Matt? Yeah, it’s Chris. Tell Tony it’s on tonight. I’ll meet him down at The Pit. Yeah, bare knuckles. Bring some sports tape. Put me down three-to-one on me, all right?” He glanced over at Evan, but he was lost in his music.

Good.

He probably wouldn’t notice when Chris came back after midnight with a new black eye. Chris shrugged on his jacket, grabbed the tape, and slipped out the door. He did stupid things for the people he loved.

(496 words)

Lillian, Cryptologist (or Nick, Bricklayer)

Lillian stared at herself in the mirror. She felt horribly self-conscious. Her nanny hadn’t had time to alter her uniform, so her trousers were rolled up around her ankles, and the sleeves came far past her wrists and she had to keep pushing them back up. Her frizzy black hair was fraying out of the braids her nanny had woven in that morning, and she looked like a pale scarecrow stuffed into someone else’s oversized clothing.

Apart from the bearded man who’d let her into the building, no one else was there. The man - Mr. Lewis - spoke briefly to her nanny, then told her to wait in the corner until the others arrived. It was nearly a quarter to six, and she was still the only one besides Mr. Lewis at the dojo, and didn’t class start at six?

As if on cue, the door swung open. A young man strolled into the building, backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Hey,” he said easily. “You new?”

“I am,” she said. “My name is Lillian Fairbanks.” She offered a hand. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

The man’s brow furrowed, but then he shook her hand. “Good to meet you too, kid. I’m Nick. When we’re in class, you’ll have to call me Sensei Vincent.”

“Of course. I understand hierarchical authority is important in martial arts.”

“Hier-what now?” Nick set down his backpack, toed off his sneakers and kicked them into one of the cubbies along the wall next to the mirror. “How old are you, kid?”

“I’m seven,” Lillian said. “Also, I am not a juvenile goat.”

“You talk like a dictionary.” Nick tugged a pile of clothes and a black belt from his backpack and started toward the men’s room.

“I’m sorry,” Lillian said. She ducked her head. “I’m around scholars all day, and their manner of speech is typically quite pedantic, and I find it’s best to conform lest - lest they disregard me because of my age.”

Nick leaned down and peered into her eyes. “No need to apologize. It’s just different, is all. What do you do all day, that you talk like that?”

“I’m a cryptologist,” Lillian said.

Nick raised his eyebrows. “Which means in real English...?”

“A code-breaker.” Lillian tugged one of her pigtails. She saw it, the flare of surprise in his eyes, followed by understanding. She was waiting for it, the revulsion, the disgusted curiosity, but instead she saw something she’d never seen before; she suspected it was that thing called empathy.

“Cool. I’m a bricklayer most days,” Nick said. He beckoned. “C’mere. Show me how you throw a punch.”

Lillian took a deep breath. She realized this was martial arts, but she’d been raised to avoid physical violence and instead attempt to end all arguments with logic. But Nick smiled and beckoned again, and she said,

“Yes, Sensei.”

(477 words)

Night in the Day

"Sarah."

I raised my head from off of my folded arms when I heard my mother call my name. I knew she couldn't see me unless I sat up, the grass was to long for that. I sighed at the tone in my mothers voice and let my head fall back onto my arms again, content to not be found; if only for a few moments longer. I closed my eyes and let the sun warm my skin to a tingle before turning my face away from the warmth. A light breeze rustled the grass and cooled my skin before passing on to the South.

"Sarah!"

I rolled over in the grass and covered my head with my arms. I knew I couldn't hide for much longer.

"Diane!"

From beside me Diane jumped to all fours and shook herself out. I knew that mom could see her, knew she knew where I was. I drew in a breath and sat up, running my fingers through my hair to dislodge any stray grass that had gotten tangled up in it and stood up.

I felt Diane brush against my leg and I reached out for the harness, gripping the soft foam handle loosely.

"Home. Diana," I said and let her lead me back to the house.

Nothing

My name is Shane.

At least that's what they tell me. Anything that came before waking up in the hospital is lost to me. All I can remember is opening my eyes and seeing bright fluorescent lights above my head and hearing a beeping to my left.

I remember taking a deep breath and trying to clear my dry throat; it was scratchy and sore, as if it hadn't been used in a long time.

"Hello?" I called out, and suddenly I was surrounded by many people; some checking machines, and others checking me and asking me questions that I couldn't answer. All I could say was, "I don't know."

It felt like that was all I could say for the longest time. "What's you're name?... I don't know...Where are you from...I don't know... Do you know what happened to you...I don't know..." I felt like a broken record.

After what seemed like forever they all went away; left me to my thoughts; though those were rather blank as well. It was like a soft black wall that I could push against, but I couldn't get through it. Whatever was beyond the wall stayed hidden from me.

I sat in silent thought for a long time, only interrupted when a young woman brought in a few things and placed them in my lap. A wallet, keys, and a few papers.

I flipped open the wallet to reveal the face of a smiling young man; dark brown hair and laughing bright blue eyes. The name read Shane Briarwood. Five foot ten, one hundred and sixty-two pounds. He lived in a city in California.

I set aside the wallet and picked up the keys. It was a simple set of keys. Two brass keys on a ring as well as some type of car key; but to what kind of car I couldn't tell. I set the keys next to the wallet

I next picked up the papers. They were covered in close neat writing, addresses and names. Snatches of poetry, random and unfinished. Nothing was familiar.

"Mr. Briarwood?" a voice said from the door.

I assumed I was being spoken to so I turned my head towards the voice.

"Mr. Briarwood, you had quite an accident. Can you remember what happened?" the doctor said.

I blinked. The name held no recognition for me.

"Mr. Briarwood?"

...Nothing...

Jeffrey, Baritone

“Your name?” Samuel asked.

The boy wore black skinny jeans that were somehow too big on him and a faded black t-shirt featuring some obscure 80’s band. Beneath his shaggy black hair (he was obviously due for a haircut) he had thick-rimmed glasses, and Samuel was quite sure the boy had not made proper eye-contact the entire ten seconds he’d been onstage. Wasn’t there some sort of pre-screening process by underlings? The mite looked terrified beneath the bright lights, standing before a crowd of thousands.

“Jeffrey,” the boy said. His voice was soft, almost inaudible even with a microphone.

Samuel twirled his pen, the gesture impatient. “All right, Jeffrey, and what are you going to do for us today?”

His response was a mumble.

“Pardon?” Samuel asked.

Jeffrey cleared his throat. “I’m going to sing,” he said.

The Celandine and Ben cast Samuel dubious looks, but he nodded. “All right. Take it away.”

Jeffrey lifted a hand in an awkward gesture, likely to signal someone to start his chosen music, and then something happened. He uncurled his shoulders and stood up straighter, lifted his head, and for the first time the judges could see that he had a pleasant face, a wide-lipped mouth curved in the faintest smile, a strong, solid jaw-line. When the music poured over the speakers, Samuel raised his eyebrows. He’d been expecting melancholy electric guitars, not orchestral strains.

And then Jeffrey began to sing. Samuel dropped his pen. He hadn’t expected a voice that deep and powerful to come out of such a skinny boy, but he had perfect pitch and enunciated as if he’d been born speaking Italian. He scaled the notes with breathtaking ease as if he were simply speaking, and he sailed through the tricky syllables without tripping once. Impossible. It took years of training to be able to sing like this, didn’t it?

Whenever Jeffrey hit a particularly impossible note, the audience roared, and Samuel felt something spark in his blood. Whoever had decided to let this skinny moppet onstage had discovered something special; Samuel suspected the lads in the wings were smirking then and there.

Samuel held his breath, nervous, waiting, because that last note was the hardest to hit, the easiest to ruin, and then behind him, the audience was on its feet as Jeffrey hit that final, magical note and took it to the rafters. Beside Samuel, Celandine was crying.

Then the music faded, and the audience kept roaring, and Jeffrey seemed to shrink back in on himself, hunching his shoulders, jamming his hands into his pockets. He stepped back from the mic, and Samuel realized he was getting ready to bolt offstage, so he spoke.

“Where did you learn to do that?”

Jeffrey shrugged, clearly uneasy. “My grandmother always listens to opera music. I like to sing along sometimes.”

Samuel suspected there were two sides to this boy, and he’d just seen the best and the worst in turn.

(498 words)

Project #71: New Characters!

We have beloved 'verses we keep writing in, some with over a hundred tagged entries to them, some with less than twenty, all created with tender loving care. This week the challenge is to come up with brand new characters, one a day, 100-500 words. You can go for a Sweet Valley-style exposition, you can go for the Hollywood introduction, or just drop right into the new person's storyline. Give it a whirl and see how it goes, and see if any of the new faces will make it in the crowd that runs the halls of Master & Madness academy. Good luck!

Overview #70: Color

Okay, so I will freely admit, I had a heck of a lot of fun with this one. I challenged myself to pick colors for the boys not usually considered in conjunction with said boys (DJ tends to be blue, Keith tends to be red or green, Gabriel tends to be gray, Tobias tends to be brown or black, James tends to be green), and I came up with some pretty startling but altogether fun results. My favorite scene of the week was probably DJ's, because as much as Nick's death is pretty much ipso facto part of DJ's story, I never did much with it, and it turned out better than I thought it would be, and it taught me some things about DJ too. I didn't finish out this week, but I'm in the middle of bar prep, so I'm going to forgive myself, and chances are I will fail next week, but hey - here's to writing as often as possible and improving as I go.

They say as long as you write every day you will improve, and I am writing every day - mostly to the tune of bar essays, but writing nonetheless. So I am writing. Just not always here, and not anything anyone but a bar examiner would want to read.

Ultimate fail...

Okay I must sincerely apologize to my fellow writers. I epically failed this week to get my posts done... guilt...

My only excuse is that I have been so busy. I work eight hours a day at my normal job and then come home and put in another 4-7 hours worth of training and contacting. I am so busy that I often don't get to bed until after midnight... and I'll be honest... It slipped my mind... I vow to mend my ways and I will do better this next week!

Please forgive me fellow writers...

White Fright

Most people were afraid of the dark, the black, the shadows. Gabriel had been afraid of many colors in his life - the blue, the gray, either meaning a gunshot on sight depending on his own colors. Gabriel wasn't afraid of the dark, though, not the way most people were. No, he was afraid of the white.

The whites of eyes and teeth bared in frozen, lifeless grinned, lips skinned back in eternally silent laughter, dozens of faces circling his windows so that when Gabriel rose in the night to draw a drink of water from the pail and sought the midnight sky, all he saw was the white, white, white.

For one moment he was still, terrified, sure they were the faces of the dancing skeletons foretold by the vodun priests. Too much blood had been spilt along these rows of soft-white cotton; souls would not rest easily here.

When Gabriel took a deep breath and looked closer, saw the faces had flesh, he realized he knew those white eyes and white smiles set in black faces. The Drummer Boys and Fast-Hand Jim, Smilin' Sam and Charlie Haystack. All slaves from Old Man Harris's plantation.

All dead and strung up along the slave barracks for every slave to see in the dawn. Only it was the black of night, and Gabriel had discovered them all.

For the first time in his life, he wished he could scream.

And then he smelled it, smoke, burning. He wheeled around, tore through the house, searching for the danger, and some of the others muttered sleepily, but he didn't find it. He turned, searched, but at every window and door he was hemmed in bodies, faces,white smiles, and he thought, They're going to burn us alive in here.

One of the women screamed, and as one the barracks woke; people poured into the safety of the darkness, of fresh night air, and there, in the middle of the fields, was a burning cross, and around it stood demons with pointed skulls, all arrayed in glorious white.

(345 words)

Green and Lost

Green, yellow-green, faded green mottled with red, green brown around the edges, green sticky and velvet like moss, green ugly like a fading bruise. Tobias tore through the undergrowth, breathing hard but silent, desperate to outrun the other boys. He knew his way through the forest blind, but the fear pounding in his heart and his lungs and his ears had blinded him, and now everything was one morass of the same color: green.

And lost.

Tobias dove behind a tree, winced at the scrape of rough bark against his skull, and waited. They’d come by, any moment, charge past like a herd of elephants, and then he could double back, climb a tree and search the surface of the forest, orient himself.

It almost worked. One by one they streamed past him, hell-bent on capturing him. And then one of them glanced sideways, and his green eyes gleamed with predatory triumph. He lunged. Tobias cried out, fell backward, went head-over-heels and face-first into a bed of ferns.

A boot connected with his ribs.

He couldn’t even cry out.

And then the green began to change, shift so it was almost neon, infrared, as if he were looking at light in the middle of the night through night-vision goggles, and then he realized he was seeing plants.

Outlined in heat.

He was seeing heat, the plants in shades of greens and blue.

And there they were, the humans, in reds and yellows.

Tobias threw his head back and howled.

(255 words)

Gray and Guinness

The world was a distressing grayscale, from the walls to the floors to the skies out the windows. Even the stones on the mountain and the very dirt were gray, gray, gray. When Angel had first told Keith he’d be training up in the mountains of China, he’d envisioned shaving his head and living with a load of blokes in saffron robes, but no, even his tunic and trousers were stone-boring gray.

One of the other lads had shaved his head, and the place had no mirrors, so there wasn’t even a splash of blue or red to liven his day.

Keith had been more than glad to get out of Ireland, away from the ashes (gray) of his past and the prospect of criminal charges and life in an English prison. He just hadn’t thought he’d miss the magic that was green.

Green hills and sky, green laughter and green smoke...he missed it all.

At night, when he lay in bed and stared up at the black sky with its gray moon, he realized that what he really missed was Holly.

And Guinness.

Seeing Red

Red. He’d seen true red in his lifetime, had gone without drinking or vice for a week to save up enough to buy a tube of red pigment, and when he’d first dared to squeeze a dollop onto his palette, his world had turned upside down.

No one had ever told him red could be alive -- or dead.

“What have you done?” He looked up at Søren, blue eyes solemn. Then he looked back down at the blood on his hands from where he’d pressed them against the wounds in Nick’s lifeless body.

Søren lowered the gun with shaking hands. His eyes were still wild with the chemicals. “He owed me money, man. You get that, don’t you? I know you were a good kid, Nicky, but --”

“I’m not Nick,” Dylan said. “He is.”

The red kept drip, drip dripping from Nick’s body. In the first few moments, when Nick had been gasping for breath, trying to say his brother’s name, the red had been alive, but now...now it was dead, and sticky, and getting cold.

Someone else - Torin? Brain? - said, “The cops are coming.”

Dylan said, “I’m not leaving him.”

“I gotta get the hell outta here --”

Dylan lifted his head, pinned Søren with a glare. “No! You - you’re staying right here, understand?”

Søren started to back up, and for the first time, Dylan understood what it meant to see red.

He was still seeing red when the police pulled him off his cousin thirty seconds later. He still had red on his hands when they took him down to the station, and he didn’t know why the red was blurring and browning and drying, and he didn’t know why he was crying.

(284 words)

Summer Rounds

Like burning shades of golden twine;
We dance in summer rounds.
An emerald sea beneath our feet
Whispers, as the sun goes down.

Azure mantle round our heads,
Pearl white clouds our crown.
Diamond stars to kiss our brows
As ebony night enshrouds the land.

Everything Blue

“I don’t like this one bit.” Christian swiped a hand over his forehead, and the blue mark glimmered; his eyes glowed just a bit, too. How had anyone ever believed he was fully human? Perhaps that was evidence of his father’s power, that people had just accepted that he was Ranolfe’s baby brother and not his son of an illicit affair with the Queen of the Wild Hunt.

Anna slapped his wrist lightly. “If you stop touching it, no one will see, will they?”

Christian hefted his new sword, looked down at his new armor. It looked just like his old armor, if a touch shinier and perhaps glowing again with that faint, surreal blue that was the mark of Quislai magic.

“They’ll see the color, though, won’t they?” He turned away from the mirror pool and sighed.


Anna was dressed as a servant again, clutching her harp. “What color?”

“The blue.”


“What blue?”

Christian gaped at her. “The everything blue,” he said, making a sweeping gesture to indicate his armor and weapon and even the blue mark on his skin. Then he saw that Anna was trying not to laugh.

She reached out, brushed her fingertip over the mark, and he felt it hum before it vanished from view.

“No one will notice,” she said. “After all, the sky is blue, as is the sea, and people rarely take the time to notice them.” She started back toward the manor house.

Christian trotted after her. “The sea is blue?”

Anna blinked at him. “Ah. Right. You’ve never seen it. Yes, the sea is blue, except for when it’s green.”

(270 words)

Project Assignment # 70 - Color

Lets use color as the vehicle of our stories this week. A vibrant colorful scene, a world of color, or one purposely devoid of colors. It can be story, poetry, anything you want.

Let's keep it under 500

Overview #69: Plot Kink

At first I was stuck for a plot kink, then I realized that I had somewhat set one up already simply by the fact that I had identical twins in my story, and it was already established that they get confused fairly often. So it was easy enough to pick mistaken identity as my plot device. But coming up with a situation to fit it was harder. I chose to set the story in their high school years because there is so much possibility for angst and drama over a confusion. Now obviously it didn't end up angsty, but I think it did bring a little more light onto Bryan's personality. That while he can seem unconcerned and carefree, and often unthoughtful, he does care about the girl enough to worry that she might think he had been lying to her on purpose, and what she would think of him when he told her the truth, and even if he wanted to tell her the truth because of the fear of rejection. He really does like her and doesn't want to lie to her, and the endless 'What if she really prefers Mark and that is why she likes me' type of thing. It was fun to run with for a week.

Overview #69: Plot Kink

I have so many favorite plot kinks that it was hard to pick, but I'd been messing with this one for a while during the crazy finals/graduation hiatus, so I went with this one. It was honestly difficult to arc the subtleties, nuances, humor, and reality (as much reality as there is) for a body-swap in just six posts, so I hit the highlights, and I had fun with this. It didn't turn out quite how I'd like, but then that seems to be the nature of the beast when it comes to writing 400-word bursts over six days. Nevertheless, even though the fun of the plot kink didn't get fully explored, I developed a sense of the characters, and it was good times, and I think more good times would likely unfold if I ever tried to turn it into a proper story.

I learned something this week, even if it wasn't what I had set out wanting to learn. Next time, who knows which twist I'll pick?

Also...game on to Madness, who finally gets to pick a challenge after all my dreadful procrastination.