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Post by Layla "Nimbus" Karimi on Dec 7, 2013 14:00:16 GMT -5
I'd enjoy picking this up again soon too. New prompt on Monday sounds good
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Post by Deleted on Dec 7, 2013 14:02:25 GMT -5
Excellent! That will give me time to finish my finals on Wednesday and then use the rest of the week to write. Which I am super excited for.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 7, 2013 15:36:47 GMT -5
Psssst. Can I make the next prompt? I'd love to get in on the fun.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 7, 2013 15:55:44 GMT -5
Psssst. Can I make the next prompt? I'd love to get in on the fun. Certainly! That would be wonderful!
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Post by Hayley on Dec 9, 2013 20:17:56 GMT -5
This is an awesome idea. I'd love to get in on this once the prompt is up for this week!!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 9, 2013 20:29:18 GMT -5
This is an awesome idea. I'd love to get in on this once the prompt is up for this week!! Excellent! It's great to have you here!
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Post by Hayley on Dec 9, 2013 20:32:50 GMT -5
Thanks lol! I've been so busy with college I haven't been on here >_> Or writing very much. This would be a fun exercise since it's finals week
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Post by Deleted on Dec 9, 2013 20:55:29 GMT -5
Thanks lol! I've been so busy with college I haven't been on here >_> Or writing very much. This would be a fun exercise since it's finals week Hehe, happy finals week! May we all survive.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2013 10:31:13 GMT -5
Prompt time!
A strange encounter forces a character to rethink their way of life.
Feel free to take lots of liberties with every part of this sentence. >>
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Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2013 12:06:06 GMT -5
Ooh, awesome prompt! I'm excited to do something with it after finals.
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Post by Danielle on Dec 11, 2013 10:57:32 GMT -5
Prompt time! A strange encounter forces a character to rethink their way of life.Feel free to take lots of liberties with every part of this sentence. >> Nice prompt *u*
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2013 11:41:20 GMT -5
Well, I woke up this morning with an idea for the prompt bouncing around my head. xD I'll make writing it my reward for finishing my finals!
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Post by Layla "Nimbus" Karimi on Dec 11, 2013 20:05:59 GMT -5
I've got a couple of loose ideas bouncing around, but nothing really coherent yet. Having ideas is probably a good sign though >.> (Nice prompt btw )
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2013 20:26:13 GMT -5
Yep, at least you have ideas!
I started working on mine, but I'm exhausted from finals, so I'll probably pick it back up tomorrow.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 16, 2013 11:23:52 GMT -5
All right, here's mine! This basically came to me off the top of my head early one morning as I was waking up. Those are the best kinds of ideas. The darkness began to glow weak and blue ahead, and he drifted toward it in bottomless space. As he approached, the light resolved into a thin slit barely taller than himself.
He slipped a black shaggy paw in and pushed the shadows aside. That sent a solid mass sliding away to reveal a window - no, a door – to a small room, barely illuminated by moonlight filtering past blinds. He poked his muzzle out, his hind paws following. Directly across from him was a simple wooden bed, and in that bed a girl was sitting, looking straight at him.
“Hi,” she said.
He blinked his beady black eyes. “You’re supposed to be afraid of me.”
She tilted her head. “I always thought I would be afraid of monsters in my closet, but now that one’s happened, I just can’t bring myself to be. What are you doing here?”
“This is where monsters go when we dream.” He shuffled uncomfortably, his long leonine tail lashing behind him. He was too used to screaming and sobbing from children, not polite conversation.
She leaned over and turned on her bedside lamp. “What’s your name? I’m Lauren.” Her long, light brown hair fell haphazardly over her shoulders, framing her brown eyes, freckled nose, and the gap between her two front teeth.
The monster’s eyes narrowed at the sudden intrusion of light. “Mrrk.”
“What?” She fumbled for her glasses.
“That’s my name. Mrrk.” In all fairness it did sound more like a growl than a name, but it was what he called himself, regardless. He took a few more steps into her room, his claws sinking into the carpet and his leaf-shaped ears flicking around to try to catch any stray sounds. Her light breathing; crickets outside; a dog barking at the moon somewhere far away. That was all.
She smiled and folded her hands in her lap, glasses now perched firmly on her nose. “I’ve always wanted to meet a monster.”
Mrrk chuckled throatily. “Have you, now?”
“Yep. They seem really cool in movies and books.” She glanced over at a few boxes stacked against the wall that served as an impromptu bookshelf. “Too bad they’re almost always the bad guys.”
“Maybe I’m a bad guy,” Mrrk pointed out, holding his hairy arms. “You don’t know what I do when I’m awake.”
“You don’t seem so bad,” she replied. “Besides, you’re not awake right now. You’re dreaming. I had a really cool dream last night that a dragon landed at my school and I rode away on it.”
“I’ve wrestled dragons.” He grinned, exposing a row of needle-sharp fangs, before moving to sit at the foot of her bed, the boards creaking under his weight. “What’s this?” He reached down to the floor and picked up a small blue collar.
Lauren’s face fell. “That was my cat’s. We had to put her to sleep last week.”
Mrrk turned the collar over in his paws, fingering the buckle. “I’m sorry.”
The girl scrunched herself inward, drawing her knees to her chin. “We’d had her since before I was born. She was old and in a lot of pain. That’s what Mom said.” Lauren crawled toward Mrrk, sitting next to him and putting a hand on the collar. “She… she used to sleep on my bed every night. She was my only friend.”
The monster blinked slowly. “She was?”
“I don’t have any friends,” Lauren replied, kicking out her legs as they dangled from the mattress. “Will you be my friend? I figure maybe a monster wouldn’t mind so much talking to somebody ugly and stupid.”
Mrrk’s ears pricked back. “Who says you’re ugly and stupid?”
“Everybody at school.” She wiped an arm across her face. “I don’t like math, it’s boring and I’m not allowed to do it the way I want, even though I get the right answers. So my teacher says I’m stupid. And the boys call me ugly and they kick me at recess.” Her voice brimmed with restrained, seething anger.
Mrrk grimaced, a low growl rising in his throat. “What about the girls?”
“They ignore me. Probably because I don’t like makeup or boys and I don’t care about clothes.” Lauren turned to him with a scowl. “Why can’t anybody be interested in dinosaurs or space or, or slime mold?! You know, the cool stuff!”
The monster observed her for a moment, his head tilted, before letting out a laugh and patting her hair affectionately. “You are not stupid, you are very smart. It is not your fault your species cannot handle intelligence.” He used a finger to tilt her chin upward. “And you are not ugly. Don’t listen to their idiotic lies. Humans hate what they cannot understand, Lauren.”
She stared up at him. “You really think so?”
“Take it from someone who knows from experience.” He stood up and lifted himself to his full height, puffing out his chest and flexing his claws. “If anyone here gets to be ugly, it’s me,” he boasted.
“… You’re not ugly.” Lauren rose to her feet.
He glanced down at her. “Well, that’s the first time I’ve heard that.”
“I think you’re really neat,” she continued, pacing around him and inspecting him. “I mean, you have this cool tail,” she began, picking up his tail and flipping the end so the tuft waved back and forth, “and such lovely fur.” She held one of his paws palm-up. “And look at these claws!”
Mrrk smiled. “Thank you. I wish more humans were like you.” He sighed, his hunched shoulders sagging. “I know how you feel. I have been taunted and reviled, even in my times of greatest need and distress.”
“What did you do about it?” Lauren asked.
He gave her a toothy grin again. “Those who inflicted cruelty upon me had it returned tenfold.”
The girl’s face paled. “I don’t want to do that. Can’t I just get everybody to leave me alone?”
“That’s a little more difficult, I’m afraid.” The monster sat back down on her bed.
She perched next to him again. “Can’t you scare them away for me?”
“My jurisdiction here is limited,” Mrrk admitted. “I can visit them with nightmares, I can fill their nights with visions of warning, but I cannot force them to learn anything. That will take time and experiences I cannot give them.” He looked her in the eye rather sternly. “Until then, you have no obligation to associate with them.”
Lauren nodded. “What about my teacher?”
“Adults know less than they like to think,” Mrrk growled, baring his fangs. “Do what you need to get through school, but don’t ever let anyone call you stupid, regardless of their position of authority.”
She leaned against him. “Thanks. Nobody’s ever said anything like that to me before. I wish they had.”
The monster was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that a person could have absolutely no fear of him, but he placed his arm over her shoulders. “You’re welcome. I guess it’s a good thing I ended up in your closet.”
Lauren smiled. “You’re a good friend, Mrrk.”
His eyes creased. “Nobody’s ever said anything like that to me before,” he echoed. “I wish they had.”
“Are you going away? Do you have anywhere else you need to be?” the girl suddenly asked with concern, clinging to his hand like he was already slipping.
“Well, I have to wake up sometime,” Mrrk reminded her, “but until then… I don’t see the harm in staying. And I’ll come back whenever I can. I would like to hear more about these things called dinosaurs and slime mold.”
The girl’s face lit up like she’d just been given a pile of gems. “Awesome! I would love to tell you about them! And I can show you my books, and the pictures I’ve drawn and the things I’ve written—“ She cut herself off with a large yawn.
“Do you have school tomorrow?” Mrrk asked.
Her smile faded. “Yeah…”
He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Remember what I told you. I want to know how it goes.”
Lauren nodded. “Okay.”
She ended up telling him about the moons of Jupiter until she finally drifted off to sleep. He tucked her in and turned to the closet door, the back wall lost in darkness. Holding his breath, he reached in and began a slow tumble into shadow as a familiar chiming grew louder.
***
Mrrk woke with a start, rubbing his muzzle groggily and tossing aside his thermal-regulator blanket. Someone was calling his comm—that explained the chiming. He pounded a fist on the answer button. “Hello?” he snarled, ripping open the blinds to look out the porthole of his cabin. Outside, the endless clouds were a dusky rose hue. Their uppermost tips, miles above, shone with the golden light of a distant dawn.
First Mate Xie’s hologram appeared beside him. “Unusual of you to oversleep, Captain,” she noted dryly, her head-tentacles draped loosely around her broad shoulders and her thick arms folded over her chest.
“It happens,” he grunted, glancing over at the chronometer on the wall. “It was only half an hour, anyway. What did you call me for?”
“We’ve spotted a merchant vessel, probably heading for Enessa Outpost. They’ll have to bear south if they want to navigate around the Gliese Storm,” Xie reported. “Intel suggests they’re carrying a cargo of ati crystals.”
“Hm.” Mrrk stroked his chin. Those crystals were valuable rawmat, true. “Leave them.”
Xie did a double-take, her four eyes wide. “Captain? Are you sure?”
“We have all of the money and supplies we need right now, correct?”
“Well, yes, but, are we really going to pass up this opportunity? It’s not often ati shipments come to Dropal.”
“Tell me, Xie, do you ever get tired of this?” Mrrk folded his hands behind his head. “We have the skills to go legitimate, after all.”
She raised a scaly eyebrow. “Was it ever about skill, sir? What about the thrill of the hunt?”
He rolled his eyes. “The thrill has lost its savor, I guess. It gets a little tiring playing the bad guy. Maybe it’s time to be the neutral guy.”
The first mate chuckled. “Man, what happened to you?”
“I had an interesting dream last night.”
Maybe not the most polished thing in the world, but it was fun. Secret fact: I used to be afraid of monsters in my closet when I was a kid. I wish they'd been like this.
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