Day 17 Writing Short Stories

Ruby

Your dapper smock of gray and black was not made for slides, but you cared not as you slid down the hot tin roof. You heard your boots scrape against the painted metal and thud against the railing when your flee was stopped from certain death.

You looked behind you and saw the coppers, undecided whether to follow you. They leered at you from the rooftop window. You gripped the railing and swung yourself against the building wall and began hopping your hands one by one towards the right, where another building waited for your escape. The urn attached to your back rattled and moaned. For an unwanted moment, you remembered what you were doing. A matter of a broken heart. You pushed that memory away and swung yourself to the roof of another building, finding balance on its beam.

You let out a low caw of relief. But unlike the crows of your past, like the souls in the urn, you knew not how to fly. You were earthbound as the dark magic had made your kind. Turned you into common like the coppers who had rushed out of the inner city mansion and now were rushing down the cobblestones to catch you.

The roofs were your liberation, pardoning you from the sins the streets hid in them. You rushed the narrow path, your feet dancing as they should, nimble, agile, precise. You were a crow boy after all.

When the city was left behind, and the roofs of tin turned into wood and tarp, you knew you had escaped. The coppers wouldn’t follow you here, the nest of all unwanted. You made your way to your window, slipping down the roof. The urn was still in your back, as secure as you had done it in haste.

The little apartment, nest, you called your own, was empty. Once there had been a string of hooded birds like you, but one by one they were plucked and flocked. The great magician who had taken the city away from you hated your kind. Death was what they called for you, the magician and his human friends. But no more, you had stolen the soul back. You had liberated the wings on your back. You laid the urn on the bare wooden floor. You took the lid off and saw the ruby pulse inside the ashes of your ancestors.

The window creaked, and you saw her, the crow girl, him, the crow boy, and all the mothers and fathers come to you, sensing the ruby of their hearts.

—

Oh, oh, oh, this was fun to write. I didn’t set out to write the story as it was, but I watched a crow play on the roof of a music hall a street over, and the story came. Lately, I have been more mindful of crows, seeing them everywhere. Another day, I wrote in my notebook a poem about a crow boy playing in a puddle, and here he appeared again in my writing rescuing his kind.

Today’s prompt was: period writing, action, tragedy, and second-person point of view. I think the second-person fits well in the story. I think it’s a fun style for short stories, but in full-length novels, I still find it jarring to read and write.

Thank you for reading! Have a soulful day ❤