Day 187 Writing Short Stories

Pepper

She had always hated her name, hated her face, hated her body, hated everything about her. Why did her parents have to name her Pepper? All the kids in the village called her fiery Pepper after her red hair. They laughed at her curls. Her scrawny body. All about her. She would draw her fist and bite and kick them, but all it did was get her in more trouble.

It was a cursed name.

She pushed a rock into the water, watching it make ripples in the river. She had taken shelter from her duties and all the stupid people outside the village walls. The river and the tree above her were her sanctuary. The only place where she didn’t get in trouble.

Today was especially bad. Her sister had joined in the mocking. She always did, but today it had been especially brutal. They loved her sister. She was cute; she had brown hair, she always laughed, and she always dressed pretty. She never raised her fists to embarrass herself. Of course, their parents had named her Violet, like the flower, and not an explosive device like her.

She crunched her face tight.

“It will stay that way,” a voice came from high above her. She glanced up and saw a small elvish creature sitting on a tree branch, staring at her.

She tilted her head and stared back. The old lore said to run. That elves were to guide you to their lands and rob you of your soul and mind. They were nasty, but that was what they said about her, too, and she didn’t feel particularly nasty inside.

“What does it matter?” she asked.

“I guess it doesn’t. I was trying to be kind,” the elf said.

“Oh, I thought your kind wasn’t meant to be kind,” she stated.

There came a laugh like bells ringing. It woke the entire woods, making the birds scatter and fly high in the sky.

“You are a strange one. I have been watching you for a while now, and you are always alone and in ill temper,” the elf said, and the laughter stopped. It made the woods around them sound silent, as if it were holding its breath.

“So what? My temper is mine, and it is none to you.” She went back to watching the river.

The elf slipped down the tree. He was taller than she had thought him to be. He took a spot near her, but not too near, circling her like a predator would, keeping his attention on her.

“So are you going to guide me to your land and eat me?” she asked.

The elf smirked. “What’s the fun in that?”

She shrugged.

“Would you want me to?”

She said nothing for a while. Everything sounded better than returning to the village, but she enjoyed having a mind of her own. It was the reason she was in trouble in the first place. If she had been like Violet, always smiling and agreeing, she might have been able to keep her friends.

“Nah,” she said after a while.

“Thought so,” the elf retorted.

“Aren’t you supposed to enchant me or something?” she asked, daring to glance at him. His eyes sparkled in the low midday light. They were emerald green, pulling her in, making it hard to look away.

He laughed, and thousands of bells chimed. “Do you want me to?”

“No, not particularly,” she said, wanting to say yes as the eyes kept drawing her to him.

He said nothing, just kept his gaze in hers. She felt a nudge on her body, telling her to stand up. He kept smiling.

“Pepper!” came loud and clear, breaking the spell. It was Violet’s voice, croaking hard and in fear. Her big sister hated the woods. They were too wild for her. “Where are you? Father says to come home,” she croaked again.

She glanced away from the elf from where her sister’s voice was coming.

“I have to go,” she said, feeling something break, feeling like she could breathe again.

“Don’t be a stranger, prey,” the elf replied as she ran away.

The bells chimed again when she found Violet, and as she took her hand. Her sister said nothing when her hand trembled.

Detective

I didn’t write this one. It was about a dense woman being interviewed, and her thinking the detective was flirting with her.

Personal Assistant

A personal assistant finds the campaign donors of a politician odd.

The prompts are from the book A Year of Creative Writing Prompts.

It has become a habit that I can only write one of the prompts. The other two didn’t spark joy, so I ran the Pepper story long. Too long, but I didn’t know how to end it. I knew the elf was trouble, but I didn’t know how to stop Pepper from going with him. Luckily, Violet came to get her, or she would have lost her mind to the elves.

In Finnish folklore, elves are bad. They guide you astray for their own amusement and selfish reasons. The house-elves are different. They can be nasty if a contract is broken and if the master of the house doesn’t respect them, but if they are treated right, they bring good luck and protect the house. There are a few customs you need to follow to be on good terms with the house-elves. Some of them are related to the sauna, and others are about leaving food around. But it is a rare person who will get to walk away from the elves in the woods. And they rarely remember what happened.

It’s Father’s Day today, here. So happy Father’s Day!

Have a wonderful day! Thank you for reading ❤