Day 13 Writing Short Stories

Hero

You have always been small, so small that no one has taken you seriously. They never thought you would amount to anything, laughing at your attempts to join all their adventures. They left you behind countless times. You watch them return as heroes, people praising their courage. You are done staying behind.

You sneak into their wagons when they are not looking, taking your daggers and satchel with you. You have been adding food to their rations and counting your needs into them. This will be your only chance to leave the village.

You lay your head against your satchel, listening to the rain beat on the tarp over the wagon. You fall asleep, dreaming of big things: dragons, gargoyles, monsters you will fight. You dream about bringing riches back to the village and them singing songs about you.

When you wake up, the rain has stopped. There is just an eerie silence. The wagon has stopped moving. You slowly creep out from between all the boxes, clutching your daggers. You peer outside and see that you are in the middle of a forest road. The woods around you look terrifying in their muted silence. Your party is not there. You drop to the ground, listening to the silence.

There’s breathing. You can hear its raggedness. You look up at the trees and see your friends tied to the trees with nets made of spider silk, and then you see the monster—a spider bigger than the wagon. It had seen you; it launches at you from the trees, hanging only by the thin thread of its making. You drop your satchel, jump to the top of the wagon, and aim from there at the thread. You slice the silk in half, causing it to drop to the ground.

You don’t give the spider time. You rush towards it as soon as your feet hit the ground. It has already staggered up. It lifts its forelegs high in the air, vibrating them, sending sharp, spear-like hairs towards you. You hit them with your dagger to make them change their direction. You keep running toward the spider. You are already near it, seeing its poisonous fangs.

It tries to bite you. But you slide lower underneath it and push your daggers up, cutting its belly in half. When you slide out from under its belly, the spider collapses on the ground. You watch its dead body for only a fraction of a second, to rush towards your friends to cut them loose from their silk cocoons. You are happy to see that all of them are alive.

They let you tag along.

—

This was fun to write. I had fun picturing the scene and what would happen next. It was nice to make the protagonist small and agile. And I think I hit all the marks with this one: voice-driven, action, voyage and return, and second-person POV. Okay, they haven’t returned yet, but once they do, they’ll be hailed as a hero. That’s for sure.

Fun, fun, fun.

Thank you for reading! Have a fun day ❤