Day 199 Writing Short Stories

Gap

The paintings of angels rose above him. The Creek statues made the hollow space look even more alien than it was supposed to be. He had used the gap; he had made the space and time slide to him, and he found himself inside the Vatican. It was not what he had meant to do. Luckily, the tourist paid no attention to him materializing from thin air. He was like any other person there, irrelevant to most, and paid only little attention.

He could try to make the gap appear again, but there were too many people around, and he might accidentally take someone with him. He straightened his back and walked around the statues, searching for a place where no one would see him. But there were people everywhere, and where there were none, there were guards.

He would have to get out of there. He would have to take the tour with the group.

—

I don’t know where to go with this one.

Adoption

She could feel the baby move inside her body. It was too late to get rid of it. She had left it too late, and there was only the choice of keeping it or giving it up to someone who knew what to do with it. She snarled at the thought of calling it, but if she named the baby, she knew there was no getting rid of it. She would have to keep the baby, and only the gods knew what the future would hold. With the other family, the curse might not follow it.

She put her hand on her stomach and felt the baby press against her hand. She knew it was a girl. She had been a girl, her mother had been a girl, her grandma had been a girl. So the line went. They would get pregnant, have their children, and pass down the curse of seeing.

The small backroom of the shop felt stuffy. Mary had told her that her next customer was already waiting. She would do her reading, she would look into their future and see it as it was. That was the curse. She couldn’t do her readings out in the open. She had tried to do other things to support herself, but this was all she knew how to do. And one day it would be her punishment, one day the seekers would find her and take her to the gallows for what she did.

She pushed herself up from the low wooden stool. The baby was already pressing against her bladder, causing a dull ache in her back and the constant urge to pee. If only she hadn’t fallen in love. If only she had stuck to the side alleys and kept to herself. But no, she had gone out there and found him, and there now was a baby. She couldn’t take her to him. His family would know. They would treat her poorly. The baby needed someone who adored her. Someone who would give her everything she couldn’t. A new future.

She touched the baby’s foot again and saw it all. The child’s future unfolded before her. She would change everything one day. She would make their gift shine. She knew where she had to take her. The child’s destiny was not with her. There was a family that would take her as their own, and they would give her everything. She would be out in society, and when the gift manifested, they would guard her, they would use her, and rise in power. Her baby would rise in power.

Song

A boy sings a song of his own making to woo her.

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

I feel so out of place now that I have finished writing my sci-fi novel. Before, I have always jumped into another book, but now I haven’t been able to do that. As I wrote before, the book I’m working on doesn’t work. I thought I fixed the issue by changing one of the characters, but that wasn’t it. There seems to be a Cruxh issue. His storyline is leading the major plot down the wrong path. Also, the situation with Penny, a major character, halts the story’s progression. It feels like I need to fix all of that before I can start writing, but I do my best thinking while writing, so I’m stuck. And not writing a book is making me grumpy.

And I ate more chocolate. That makes me grumpy, too.

I need to figure out a way out of the stuck thing. I have all those industrialization books open. I already removed a few books from the list because they were not what I was looking for. But I still have a handful to look through. I could start from there and see if inspiration strikes today. Also, it might be a good idea not to do anything to let my brain rest.

Thank you for reading ❤ I wish you a day of seeing!