million-monkeys-blog - Tumblr blog

[million-monkeys-blog]

orz

So I've been trying to do some daily prompts as a challenge for this termbreak but the thing is, I usually get inspiration from my other tumblr which is very not focused on writing at all, so that's a challenge within itself.

Also I decided that reposting them here would be stupid because of reasons, same with reblogging, so instead, I present to you

30 days of prompts, or until I can't- THE MASTERPOST

(N.B- If you're too lazy to keep track of this post, just track #a million monkeys keymashing)

prompt one

prompt two 

prompt three

prompt four

prompt five

prompt six

prompt seven

prompt eight

prompt nine

[million-monkeys-blog]

Blank page- a writer's ramble

The scariest thing for me as a writer is seeing a blank page and having obligations that you do not feel like fulfilling. An untouched white page is oh so blank, but oh so empty, like a void that gets whiter the further down you go, until you’re swallowed in a world of whiteness that no snowstorm could ever compare to. But there is no need to fall. The emptiness of it embraces you until you might as well be chained in place forever by heavy (white) metal cuffs, and its whiteness bleaches any thoughts out of your mind. Unless, somehow… Sometimes if the time and the conditions are right, you can escape. Perhaps a speck of grey might appear among the white. Perhaps, if you seize it, embrace it, fan its flames, it might grow and grow and in the growing, snap your chains and curl across the white like ink in water, and maybe traversing the pale, blank page will not be so lonely after all because there are other words to keep you company and to fan your imagination in turn.

[million-monkeys-blog]

Little Red Riding Hood- The REDux, ch. 2

Oooh, hello there new follower! -waves- Happy reading! EDIT: Another follower... I guess this means I have to take my writing responsibilities more seriously now! -starts on chapter 3- 

And here is chapter 2! It was hard enough doing only half a chapter... I am so not looking forwards to completing another 1000+ word chapter without any pre-written stuff.

THIS HAD BETTER IMPROVE MY WRITERING SKILLS OR I WANT MY MONEY BACK.

Little Red Riding Hood- The REDux

Chapter 2

Red slept as well as could be expected that night. The bark kept on digging into her back and the goddamned tree wouldn’t stop rustling but she was a heavy sleeper, and even these slight discomforts weren’t enough to keep her awake.

No, almost blank. There was a circular design that featured some sort of bird -a swan, maybe?- embossed onto the otherwise smooth metal surface. She rubbed her thumb over it, frowning. It looked awfully familiar, she thought, racking her brains. Eventually, though, she drew a blank and exasperatedly shoved it back inside the basket, deciding to puzzle it out later. She had a forest to cross.

~

Red plonked down at the side of the river. Admittedly, she had covered less distance than planned, after getting sidetracked by a doe and her fawn, but she had a while to get there, didn't she? And besides, they were so adorable...

A flicker of silver in the river caught her eye. There were some good-sized fish in there, and she knew how to catch them. So did she want more rabbit, or fish? A wide yawn shook her body, and she decided on rabbit. She had no energy to set up a fish trap today. Maybe another time, when she didn't go gallivanting after deer. 

As she turned to get her sling, she suddenly realised the whole forest had gone silent. The next few moments occurred almost in slow-motion for her.

There was a loud rustle and a burst of movement as from the corner of her eye, she saw a grey, blurry shape hurl itself out of the bush in her direction. Red tensed and prepared to dive out of the way, but realised at the last instant her attacker was aiming for the basket on her right. Red felt like hitting herself. Of course! They'd want the basket. No way in hell was she going to let them get it.

Red changed direction, and instead of jumping to the left, she sprung to her right and drove her elbow into their side as they ran past. The blow wasn't as strong as she would have liked, but she supposed it was passable with about half a second's warning. Despite that, the blow still knocked the person off balance so they collapsed onto the ground, and it jarred her elbow rather badly. She recovered and got up. The person was cursing under his breath; it was probably the stranger from earlier, she realised- 

Wait. Did she say person?

As she got a better look at the stranger, Red realised that perhaps 'person' wasn't the best word for him after all. Although he was wearing clothes, his body appeared to be covered in a layer of shaggy grey fur, his fingernails were freakishly sharp and his head looked almost exactly like a wolf's.

She was suddenly glad for her 9 years (and counting) of karate, and thankful for her dad for pushing her to do so.

With a snarl, the wolfman rose and charged at her. He was obviously used to using brute force to get his way, plus he was rather careless and not very bright, so Red figured it wouldn't be too hard to get rid of him. She waited until the last moment, then stepped out of the way, hooked her leg around his and yanked. Dirty tactics for dirty people, she thought smugly as he lost his balance. The wolfman toppled into the river, yelping in discomfort as he was drenched in freezing cold water, and thrashed around madly.

Red chose this moment to scoop up her basket, dash across the path and climb up the nearest tree. Her tree-climbing skills from her younger days seemed to have returned, and, fueled by adrenaline, she was seven metres off the ground when the wolfman got out of the river a few metres away.

"Give me the basket and no-one gets hurt," he growled, splaying his fingers and showing his fingernail-claws in all their dirty glory.

Red would have smirked, had she been able to control her face muscles sufficiently. She rummaged in the basket for something -two things-, and relaxed a little when she found them on her first try. "Come and get it, puppy." 

The wolfman snarled at the insult, and ran over to the tree, ignoring the strange whirring sound coming from above. He tensed, preparing to launch himself into the tree...

THUD.

The stone was a little off-target, cracking into his forehead rather than his temple. Caught in mid-spring, the wolfman wobbled and toppled slightly, wildly grasping for a hold to steady himself on. "You... you... the other four will get you, I swear!"  he gasped. Red didn't give him another chance to recover. She loaded another sling-bullet and let it fly just as he stilled for an instant. This time her aim was true and the wolfman collapsed onto the path. 

Red climbed down the tree and approached his still form warily. It would be very awkward if she got killed whilst checking if her foe was still alive. She put away her sling and took out her hunting knife instead. It wasn't designed for combat, but it would have to suffice for protection. Holding the blade to his neck with one hand, she held her fingers to the other side of it to check for a pulse. It was weak, but there nonetheless. She brushed her fingers over his eyelashes. Not a twitch of movement. He was definitely not faking. But what would she do with him? He'd come to sometime, perhaps even in a few hours- she needed more time than that. She'd have to tie him up.

Red hacked down some tough creepers from the surrounding forest- she wasn't about to waste her precious rope on this guy. Dragging him against a tree trunk into a sitting position, she tied his hands to his back- behind the tree. Red then lashed a few more of them around his neck and shoulders. Hopefully, with less upper body strength available, she thought grimly, he'll have a hard time getting out. Although, judging by his last words, she'd have another four furries on her hands in a while.

She stood up and, after retrieving her two sling bullets, rinsed them in the river, contemplating her next course of action. She could go home, but no. Never. She was determined not to fail, not in any sense of the word. Retreating counted as failure. But blast it, if she was going to continue...

"I'm going to need some back-up," she huffed out loud. Some company would be wonderful, as well as some helping hands. 

And as if karma decided to be nice to her for once, she heard a faint rumbling sound in the distance. One that made her grin and groan at the same time. If she guessed right, it should be arriving just... about... now.

A modified motorcycle burst through the undergrowth, and her two best friends grinned at her from its back.

"Hey."

[million-monkeys-blog]

Lightbulb

I see you on Facebook. You say you miss talking to me, so why don't you? I'd start the conversation, except you said you'd talk to me. But you aren't. And now I sound like some sort of whiny butt-hurt bitch. Thanks. (I'm frustrated, but I don't think I can ever be angry at you)

So Chapter 2 of 'Little Red Riding Hood- The REDux' is completed, but I'm going to post it tomorrow so as to not have irregular update times (they'll happen anyway, but a girl can dream, right?). So while you wait, have a filler fic which my muse sprung upon me. It's based on the picture here.

Also is lightbulb one word, two, or hyphenated? I personally think it looks better as one word, but what is it actually?

Rating: 6/10 | Genre: Angst/Romance | Time: about 1/2 hr | Word count: 565

Lightbulb

The lightbulb is her greatest treasure. She always takes great care to hide it under a loose floorboard under her bed, but there's always the familiar pang of guilt in her chest when she pulls the floorboard down. Its clean, clear, perfect surface has no place in her shack of a flat.  (crystal liquid surface/ bright sparks of glowing light/ dirty grimy rough and grey) The bounty of a king deserves the finest silk and velvet rather than her old rags.

One morning she's in a rush, and running late to work. The old hags will punish her again if she's late, and besides, an important Resistance meeting is on today, so she shoves it under her pillow. No-one should go into her room anyway. In a few minutes she's dressed, out the door and racing through the Central Park an hour later than she usually does.

A young couple, kissing, catch her eye as she runs past. They're obviously in love, and don't want to be spotted, but detecting such things have almost become second nature to her. She smiles for a moment. The young man reminds her of her own. They both wear green scarves. He almost never takes his off...

Wait. That young man's scarf looks awfully, horribly identical.

She stops, turns. A step closer, and there is no mistake. (faint-headed weightlessness/ cold and hot and cold/ heavy heart, heavy shoulders)

The young couple have spotted her now, and her young- that young man, that stranger, reaches out to her, his mouth forming words, excuses she doesn't want to hear. She backs away awkwardly, one step, then another, and suddenly she is racing back to her flat in the direction she came.

She is tense, and out of breath, and she screams into her pillow when she gets home, but halfway through her screams turn into choked sobs and then she is crying rivers when her hand brushes against a cool, familiar shape, and she knows what it is without even looking at it. 

The inside of the lightbulb is blooming today, like it's spring and all the new leaves are unfurling. The inner radiance makes the green glow- just like his eyes and she feels hot again how could he how dare he-

She throws the lightbulb onto the wooden floor and it fractures into a million bits of kaleidoscope glass when a cloud of light billows up and the room is lost to her. (bright spots of colour/ sharp prickly pain creeps/ relax release pure bliss)

They check her room that afternoon when she fails to turn up to the Resistance meeting, but there is only a puddle of crimson on the floor, mixed in with fragments of clouded, filthy glass.

[million-monkeys-blog]

The Journey of a Lifetime... in a few months. Hopefully.

The video I just posted before this was a project done by another friend of mine. I kept on bugging her to make a full movie of it, but she actually didn't have a full plot sorted out. And so because I love to torture myself and she's awesome, I told her I was going to write a version of the movie for her and complete it by her birthday.

To put this in perspective, I have about 2 chapters (which took me a few months to write) and the protagonist has only just entered the setting where everything takes place. And her birthday's in September. 

So entereth the mighty writing Tumblr!

I've been happily surprised at the amount of words I've managed to crap out on this. Hopefully I can complete a chapter of this every two or three days and maybe get it finished by her birthday D: 

The first chapter of the rough draft will be posted above this.

Maybe I can even post some random oneshots in between this! #notbloodylikely

N.B. Because I'm trying to meet a deadline, my writing standard will be even lower. Consider yourself warned.

[million-monkeys-blog]

Little Red Riding Hood- The REDux, ch. 1

And with no further ado, here is:

Little Red Riding Hood- The REDux

Chapter One

“...was broken into, with almost one million dollars’ worth of jewelry stolen. Police say there is no trace of the burglars as the CCTV cameras had been switched off, and no official eye-witness accounts have been given. However, there has been one informal eye-witness, seven-year-old Jamie Cooper-Whyte, who reported seeing five hairy, muscular people coming out of the shop shortly before the break-in was reported. We go to Christina Lynch, live at the scene of the crime...”

“Rebecca?” Her mother came into the dining room, holding a brown picnic basket. Rebecca wrinkled her nose at the use of her proper name. Everyone else called her Red- a nickname she encouraged. It was better, she thought, than the pretentious ‘Rebecca’. “Mum...”

“I know, I know. You prefer Red, but I prefer Rebecca. I’m too old for your new-fangled nicknames,” said her mother. “Anyway, darling, I need you to take this basket to your grandmother’s house.” She set the basket on the table.

“But that’s ages away! She lives on the other side of the forest, ma, if you forgot.” “Which is exactly why you’re doing it. I recall you pestering me yesterday about never getting out of the house to practise your survival skills, which are vital for surviving at the edge of a forest, as I remember you saying.”

Red stifled a groan. She did remember saying that the other day... But maybe this trip would turn out to be exciting, Red thought. It wasn’t every day that you got to hike through a forest on your own. “...Fine... What am I taking to her?”

Her mother’s eyes flickered with an unidentifiable emotion. Fear? Worry? It had passed so quickly Red wasn’t even sure she had seen anything in the first place. “Oh, nothing important,” said her mother nonchalantly. “Just something your grandmother wants. Now come on and get changed. It should be quite warm-”

“I’m going now?” Red said, momentarily diverted by the subject change. “Yes, your grandma wants the basket as soon as possible.” ~ It was nice and shady in the undergrowth, and the rabbit had found a good patch of grass to nibble on. Hopping about lazily, he stopped in the middle of passing a pellet. There was a strange humming noise, like a giant bee steadily getting louder. He swiveled his ears for a moment, then decided that the sound was nonthreatening. THWACK. The rabbit dropped limply onto the grass as a smooth stone struck its head. From a few metres away, Red shoved her sling back into the basket and went over to her kill. With practised efficiency she cleaned and chopped the carcass, threading the pieces onto a stick and, a short while later, she was watching the rabbit meat sizzle over a crackling fire. The warmth from the fire was good protection from the rapidly approaching night although her cloak should be protection enough, worn as it was. It was pretty amazing, Red mused, how the cloak was still warm all those years after her dad- Her dad. An icy fist clenched her heart as she fought back tears and a sudden pang of sorrow. She hugged her knees to her chest, burying her nose in its familiar scent of pine and snow. It was almost a ritual for her. Every time the pain of losing her dad threatened to overwhelm her, she would always run to her cloak, letting its unique and familiar scent comfort her. When she had reached for it as she left for Grandma’s this morning her mother had sighed. “Rebecca, you don’t have to wear that old thing. Don’t you think it’s getting a bit worn out?” Red had replied vehemently. “I’m not going to ever throw it out! The day I throw it out will be the day dad comes back, and you know people never come back from limbo, or wherever the hell people who disappear go to!”

Only over her dead body would she let anybody throw it out. How could mum have forgotten her twelfth birthday, when dad had given the cloak to her? It was far too long for her then, but he had said, that she could grow into it, and he’d make her a new one when it got too big, he’d promised, with a twinkle in his eye. She loved it nonetheless. But he couldn’t keep that promise. So Red had bought extra fabric and crookedly stitched on another few inches. He would have laughed and demanded that he have the cloak to fix it. Certainly, according to her mother, at least, she was too old for such little girls’ clothes. But she wore it, if only to keep a part of him close. An especially loud crackle from the fire snapped her out of her reverie, and with a start, Red remembered where she was.With a mind of its own, her hand reached out to the sweet smelling rabbit’s meat, grabbed the base of the kebab it was impaled onto and removed it from the fire. Mouth already watering, she ate the lot, not caring about drying some up for supplies, and besides, she had plenty of dried beef in the basket. However, her stomach had mysteriously shrunk to the size of a walnut and Red had plenty of leftovers for the next day’s breakfast. Whilst cleaning up, Red debated whether to sleep in a tree with a long belt tied around her waist and said tree to stop her from falling out, or simply sleep where she was. However, she was a bit of a restless sleeper and didn’t want to roll into the fire (something she had done a few months before) but that could be remedied if she got the big log she had been sitting on and placed it between herself and the fire. Besides, the fire would keep her warm and warn lesser animals away. Then again, sleeping in a tree would draw less attention to her. Decisions, decisions...

Suddenly a chilling howl pierced her, causing goosebumps to rise from her skin and the hairs on the nape of her neck to rise up. It sounded close, so gathering up some dirt she put out the fire and covered it, snuffing it out and kicking all traces of it off the path. Whipping her belt out of her basket she stalked over a small distance away off the path and climbed a pine tree to a reasonable height, sticking her basket in a branch above her then belting herself in for the night, settling the folds of her cloak about her and ignoring the fresh tears which rolled steadily down her cheeks.

[million-monkeys-blog]

I am about to embark on an unprecedented journey, the likes of which I have never done before... to be explained in the post which is probably above this!

[million-monkeys-blog]

Elemental

I really want to take a certain person by the shoulders and shake them, yelling "TALK TO ME DAMMIT I MISS TALKING TO YOU AND IF YOU MISS TALKING TO ME TOO THEN WHY DON'T YOU TALK TO ME AND IT'S YOUR TURN TO TAKE THE INITIATIVE DAMMIT!" Then I figure that person's really smart and kind of busy with schoolwork and stuff and they're too sensible to hold a conversation with a foolish git like me.

I don't even know why I'm writing now, especially since I have two internals tomorrow. Bloody muse. Plus I had a whole other story set up, I even wrote a paragraph for it yesterday, but my muse was like NO WRITE THIS INSTEAD. Thus I bring to you Elemental. Keep reading after the jump!

Rating: 5.5/10 | Genre: Action/Fantasy | Time: 2 hrs, on and off | Word count: 1054

Elemental

It was quite possibly the strangest gathering a human would ever observe, if they were allowed to. A half man, half deer complete with a royal set of antlers was trying to calm down a noisy argument between a male griffin-like creature and a female owl with excessively long tail feathers.

Nympha's entrance into the clearing distracted the warring siblings. She was no less strange, being a polar bear with a long scaly sea-serpent's tail in place of hind legs. It was her tardiness that caught their attention.

The deer-man crossed his arms. "Took you a while," he said grumpily. "You're never late."

Nympha shrugged and drew the water into a smooth sphere around her, leaving only her polar bear head poking out. "Tiellus, I don't recall you being any easier to wake up. And Fuenis, put out that fire and leave Caeli alone, for once."

The owl scowled and her suspiciously reddening wingtips turned back to a normal golden-brown, grumbling something about "wiping that smirk off his face." In her defense, the griffin was smirking as much as a griffin could.

A sudden blast of air almost knocked Fuenis off her perch. She shrieked and swung herself upright again, aiming a bolt of flames at Caeli. He neatly dodged and raised a talon to retaliate, but tentacles of water zipped out from Nympha's sphere of water, curled around both Fuenis' and Caeli's feet and froze, locking them in place. Another strand of water moved to put the small fire ignited out.

"Stop it, you two, or I'll tell Father Nulo to give you a time-out and you know he always listens to me."

Caeli meekly folded his wings, and Fuenis ruffled her feathers indignantly, but settled after the ice crept up her legs a little. 

Tiellus sighed. "Well, now that's all settled, I wonder why Mother Omne called us here- it has to be Mother, no-one else can disturb Nympha from her precious sleep." Nympha huffed, preparing a retort, but Tiellus ignored her and kept talking. "She hasn't called us together for what, now, a few hundred years?"

"Yes," agreed Caeli, "almost a thousand, I think."

Suddenly, a brilliant ray of white light shone on the group of elemental spirits. They reflexively raised their arms to prepare to attack with their elements, but they just dissolved after they were conjured. "Mother..." whispered Fuenis, shading her eyes.

Then, as abruptly as it had come, the ray of light disappeared. The four blinked spots out of their vision as they adjusted their eyesight. Nympha frowned in thought. "That's odd. Mother usually says something when she appears-" she stopped mid-sentence as a forgotten, prickly feeling crept up her spine. From the way everyone else was looking, they were feeling the same thing. 

Caeli frowned and wriggled his shoulders. "This feels... familiar."

A pause, as everyone tried to figure out what it is. Nympha searched through her memories. No, it wasn't a bad, evil prickling. For some reason, it had both exciting and dangerous connotations. Realisation dawned on her as she realised what it was, and she opened her mouth to speak.

"Mother's going to Manifest us!" exclaimed Tiellus. Darn. Beaten by my own younger brother, she thought, in the instant before her senses switched off.

~

When Nympha came to, she was laid out on a bed. She automatically sat up and drew water from the air to protect herself, but let it dissipate back when she remember what had  happened. A Manifestation! Mother rarely forced the elemental spirits to take shapes other than what they chose. Which reminded her... She sat up and looked down at herself. Two legs with feet and two arms with hands. Ten fingers, ten toes. How interesting. The manifestation Mother chose was human.

She stood up, slightly shaky, on her legs and looked around her room. Blue walls and curtains, a desk, its chair with a blue robe slung over it, a full bookshelf, some doors set into the walls...aha! A mirror. A pale face with long, dark hair and blue eyes stared back at her. She wondered what her siblings looked like, and pulled on the blue robe before leaving the room.

The house was huge, and even with her innate sense of direction, she almost took a few wrong turns on her way to the lounge. Kicking back on the sofa, she relaxed, waiting for the others. She didn't have to wait long. Soon after she had settled down, a male head with dark hair and green eyes poked into the lounge. 

"Tiellus?"

"The one and only. I wonder what Mother's planning."

Not long after he had finished speaking, another male- blond this time, with tanned skin and grey eyes- slouched into the lounge room and flopped on another couch. "Manifestations make me so tired," said Caeli, yawning.

However, he was a much better condition than Fuenis, who trudged into the living room, auburn hair mussed up, eyes half closed, and dropped on the floor and began snoring.

Caeli blinked. "Well. I suppose I don't have it too badly after all."

"Pfft, live a few thousand more years and when you wake up after a Manifestation change, you'll be as fresh as a mountain top glacier."

"So why do you think we got Manifestations? Our last ones were ages ago!"

"Weren't we wolves last time?"

"Now that was what you'd call a close shave."

"Hmm. It appears that we always get Manifested whenever the species of our Manifestation as well as us as spirits are in danger." 

"I'm guessing the humans are in danger then. Ugh, Mother, hurry up with some instructions already!"

As if Mother Omne had heard Caeli, a beam of bright white light, not unlike the one earlier, shone through the skylight and onto the coffee table for a brief moment, then disappeared, leaving behind a folded piece of paper.

[million-monkeys-blog]

No writing today :c

So I thought up this story idea after events such as stuff which made me feel emotions both of which I will not describe because of reasons and I’ll just quote this: “There they go, here we are, alone in the gym, just you and me, two alone people. Together. Alone.”  Why this quote? Why not. Anyway. I tried writing it but it's sucky because my muse is stone cold dead so it sounds even more worse than it would usually. It's now keeping another stub company in my Drafts.

I have such a mindblock. No writing yesterday or today. And tomorrow's only 15 mins away.

asdfghjkl muse where are youuuuuu

[million-monkeys-blog]

Bushfire

Whoohoo! I did end up updating after all, even if this entry was quite short. Whatever, it's still practice, although I may polish this one up later on and enter it into the BNZ Short Short story award for shits and giggles. Read on after the jump~ 

Rating: 6/10 | Genre: um...General? | Time: 30 mins | Word count: 124

Bushfire

The firemen wipe their sweaty foreheads, smudging their faces with sooty warpaint. They are prepared to continue doing battle, but the call to retreat is sounded.

A while later, its hunger satiated, the fire dies out. The bush becomes still and silent again, daubed with a gray-scale in ash and cinders.

Soon, yet a new crackling starts up again, not the destructive one, but-

A seed falls out of a newly-heated seedpod and lands on the ground.

[million-monkeys-blog]

Mercy

So, I missed 2 days of writing. In my defense, I was sick. Actually I was only seriously fatigued Tuesday night and sick Wednesday morning. But whatever. I think it's hard to write if you haven't been out of the house at least once per day. Gosh, one thing I do not recommend is trying to last through 2 consecutive periods of Calculus when you're half dizzy and it hurts whenever you swallow. Also the student office lady is a bitch. Anyway, I should probably try update again later tonight because this is technically cheating seeing as I wrote most of this piece on Wednesday. And it's pretty crappy anyway... didn't turn out like I conceptualised it to be.

tl;dr- I cheated because I was sick, so imma update again today...hopefully. Read after the jump!

Rating: 5/10 | Genre: Angst | Time: about 1 hr and 15 mins on and off. | Word count: 357

Mercy

He twitched, and she automatically raised her stylus, preparing to draw the catcher's net rune, but he became still and his glassy green eyes stayed unfocused.

How she hated those eyes! She despised every part of him, from the hands that murdered her family to the sneer-creased mouth that honeyed lies dripped from.

His face materialised in the wall. "You'll never have the steel to kill a fly, let alone kill an old man, however evil he is, for information. You'll never be able to do what it takes to protect your family and friends- or rather, what's left of them. You'll never see-"  "Just... just shut UP!" she shrieked, her hands trembling. "Coward." His lips twisted into the familiar smirk. "Why they chose a girl-child from such a lily-livered family to face me is beyond my comprehension... Why, did you know they begged for their deaths in front of me?"

She literally shook herself from the memory- she was trembling with rage. Channelling her anger and frustration, she drew the third-strongest rune she knew: end. A pause, as the rune sunk into his flesh. For a moment, she thought she saw his green eyes clear up, and an unidentifiable emotion flicker across them. But a bright flash of light from the rune interrupted her thoughts.

When the spots cleared from her vision, all that remained of him was his ashes on the mattress. Good riddance, she thought, and she spun on her heel and went back to her own cabin.

She tossed and turned in her bed that night, unsuccessfully trying to doze off, before casting a night rest rune on herself. It was no better in her sleep. Clear green eyes haunted her in uneasy dreams of mercy and vengeance, dashed with blood and ashen shadows.

[million-monkeys-blog]

[million-monkeys-blog]

Cats

Again, nothing special, just a little piece of writing practice. Remember to keep reading after the jump.

Rating: 5/10 | Genre: Family/Comfort | Time: about 45 mins, on and off. | Word count: 345

Cats

The small litter of kittens purred in content. "That's a nice story, mama," yawned one, and promptly fell asleep, snuggling into the side of her already slumbering sister.  "Do you think the sun will catch the moon one day?" asked another, wide-eyed. "Of course not, not for as long as our brothers and sisters in the sky continue to aid her. Now sleep, it's past your bedtime." The mother cat nudged him down next to his siblings and she curled up beside them, belatedly realising that the last of her litter had snuck out of the group and was standing at the edge of the alley, staring into the night sky.  "It's time to go to bed," she called quietly, but he didn't move.

"It's just a story for little kittens, isn't it, mom. There really is no dog and cat in the sky, and the stars aren't really dead cats." 

The mother cat padded out to stand beside her kitten. "Well, I suppose it depends how you look at things. Every story has a grain of truth in it, and every truth can be a story, if you choose to think of it that way. You could even say that we are part of a gigantic story playing out in our universe."

The kitten was silent for a moment. "Then... then do you think dad's in the sky?" "I'm sure he's watching over you every day, every time he can. And even if he wasn't in the sky, you know what he'd say now? He'd say that you should go to sleep because growing kittens need their rest."

He turned his head and sneaked one more look at the night sky as he reluctantly slunk back inside the alley behind his mother. Perhaps it was his imagination, but it looked like one of the brighter stars was twinkling at him.  

[million-monkeys-blog]

Birthright

So this piece turned out a lot different than I intended it to be, and it's not particularly fantastic either. Oh well. It's still writing practice. Remember to read on after the jump.

Rating: 5/10 | Genre: Family | Time: 1 hour, on and off | Word count: 485

Birthright

The only thing my sister was lacking were balls.

I don't mean in a metaphorical, abstract-noun-y sense; not at all. She had bucket-loads of bravery and willpower and what have you. No, I mean physical ones, ones that hurt if you knee them. A combat and elemental prodigy, gifted with social and intellectual skills- apart from the supposed misfortune of her gender, she was almost perfect in my father's eyes.

If, perhaps, conditions were different, she would be the almost definite heir. But as it was, the Council of Sages were wary of putting a female on the throne. And not only a female, but a secondborn to boot. There were many precedents in history for secondborns to become the heir rather than the firstborn, but a female? Despite my father's blatant favouritism, even he knew better than to go against centuries of cultural traditions without even the Council's support.

My father made up for this my having my sister show me up at almost every single opportunity possible. Where I had struggled for hours to remember the names of the Phoenix Lords up to the tenth generation back in the correct order, she could casually reel off their names and important parts of their histories without breaking a sweat. When it came to sparring after our lessons were over, I could attack her all I wanted without making a dent in her defenses, and when I started to tire, with one brilliant move she would pin me down.

Our father subtly encouraged any animosity between us. We'd sneer at each other in the hallways. She'd taunt me about my failures and my weaknesses. I'd sabotage her attempts to show off. In return, she'd blame everything that went wrong on me.

But sometimes in the dead of night, she'd sneak into my room and onto my bed, crying silently for mother, trembling and holding her chest to make sure there were no claw marks there, that it was all just a dream and oh mother why. In the morning she'd be gone, only leaving behind a damp mark on the pillow, and we'd be back to our usual hate and insults.

I didn't like it. But what else could I do? I was her older brother, and I felt I was honor-bound to take care of my little sister however I could. I couldn't say no, especially not when she'd appear, shivering, at my door, looking like the little girl she used to be, the little girl that used to demand for storytime, the one that tried to help me with my lessons, the one that left little bouquets of wildflowers all over my desk. I miss that little girl, and I wonder if she still exists under those layers of dresses and ceremonial armor, and, if I iron out the creases on my sister's face, whether ever I'll see her smile so happily again.

[million-monkeys-blog]

So it begins

I am content. Most of the time. I sit back and while away my hours on the internet, or writing at my muse's whim, and I am satisfied.

Then I notice my friend, and how high her standards are, and realise how lazy, how unproductive I am, how low my standards are, and I am a little ashamed of my carefree nature. 

This Tumblr is a result of my musings (and a bout of procrastination). I shall dedicate it to my muse, and to writing. Let it stand as a reminder to myself to get off my ass and write more. Perhaps I shall post some writing once a month. We shall see.

So. Let it begin.