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View Full Version : Feel free to add, edit, change, finish; Short Story #1



Yehuwdiy
September 27th, 2014, 07:22 AM
When I again have access to a scanner the originals will be presented, horrible hand and all. However, to get things rolling a typed short story lurks below. The original was written with my Sheaffer Imperial Stirling Silver, stream of consciousness. Both Black Quink and Lamy Green were used over two nights (I only have about 20 minutes a night in which to write). The typed version below has not been altered in any way save spelling corrections. It seems so littel when typed, but is several pages and many side-tracks into altering and practising specific letter forms.

Please feel free to add, edit, change, finish, expand...or simply ignore the tale below. Note: All capitals, or lack thereof, were written with purpose. Feel free to change these as well though! I have an idea of where I was going to take the story, but I think it will be interesting to see where you take it, let's see if my premise is clear or not :)

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Frightened and sickened I ran from the japer. Frantically clawing at rock, root and molded soil I sobbed for aid. But none heard my plea, save the japer.

...

Morning oozed over the sullen mountains. Bold fire, flames thick with the joy of living, caressed my cabin. I sat, at ease, and slowly packed my pipe. Feet, paw, hoof and claw ceased to move. Their silence by absence rang across the ash-tinted snow.

I looked to the rising sun and filled my being with hope. Perhaps today. Perhaps today I will fall and hurt myself, lay there until night and death. Perhaps today I will find more than drink and baccy. In the final weeks that was all anyone had stockpiled. No food, no water, no diaries and no memories.

The valley below me lay in two halves, split down the middle by an ugly slug of a river. On the last night I had sat outside my cabin, my charred cob throwing wispy fingers to the stars, and watched that river sparkle from bonfires at every homestead along the valley. It lay there, dormant, like a single strand of Christmas lights with bulbs burning out one by one.

Every day I struck out for another homestead. As the weeks went by I learnt to recognize the markers of caches, returning sometimes proved fruitful, but rarely now did I find food. As they said goodbye people had eaten, burned, sacrificed to the Gods what little food remained. Their final act of defiance, of gluttony, had condemned me. A few short days after that night not a creature stirred in the Valley.