Day 351 Writing Short Stories

Coral

They danced under the naked sky, flowing like water, armed with nothing but corals of the ocean. They danced for the island to rise, the heat of the oceans to cool, and the ancient ones to waken.

They were watched, observed, measured.

To please the gods, there was blood and sorrow. Only death would bring about a new beginning. The dancers knew that. The corals cut deep, and blood flowed from the dancers to the dusty ground.

Their price was accepted. The island came with the riches of the ocean gods. There would be no hunger, no poverty. It was seen. It was bought for a year to come until the dance would be performed again.

Extremes

Goodness is a concept. So is badness. They are tied to the looker, to the beat of the time. They are tied to the sayer and the performer. One act deemed good, another one bad. No betweens. Nothing but a judgment.

Apollo

Love was one for the poets, the musicians. It was never meant for the gods. But there she was, her cheeks as rosy as the storytellers told. She was to wed his brother. The God of War. She was to be his. But that heart of hers, it would be crushed under his rule, under his power.

He could speak to her about lyrics, of prophecies, of truth. He could make her soul shine, her lips sing.

Their love would be immortal. But she was promised to his brother.

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

Only small snippets today. My cat is standing between me and the keyboard. I think he is trying to tell me something. I’m feeling it too. We are both hungry.

I edited my book today, and what usually takes 20 minutes took 2 hours today. I had to rethink sentences, structures, and the flow of everything. The editing made it better, but it tired me out; hence the snippets today.

The pressure to finish my book is weighing me down. So are all the other decisions I have to make before publishing it. I thought I had found a good cover artist for it, but I was disappointed to learn that he uses AI to generate them. Of course, he does. It seems to be a thing nowadays. So now I need to find someone else. It feels hard. Everything feels hard, especially since I know there are a lot of things that need to be done to publish a book properly, so that it has legs to stand on. And I can’t seem to be bothered to do those things. I get stuck finding readers for my book beforehand, and I fret over it, yet I do nothing—a silly bugger. I think I’m making things bigger than they are. I just need to find a system that works and implement it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. I just have to do something. Doing something is usually better than doing nothing in these situations. Though I realize as I get older that actually, too often doing nothing is the right call, but I guess with actions like these, it isn’t. The universe doesn’t magically align itself.

Now the other cat came to announce that it is her feeding time too. I have to go.

Thank you for reading ❤ Have a day when the universe just aligns itself!