Literary Lion. AM.

 

Last week’s forest inspired prompt set the setting for many clandestine tales in the woods, but this week the theme is ‘morning‘.

 

You have seven days to craft a post of 400 words of less, inspired by ‘morning’. Remember to include the tag ‘Literary Lion’ in your piece and to pingback to this post so we can find your work in the WordPress reader. Here is my morning tale…

 

Wake up.

I became aware of the frown on my face as soon as I gained consciousness. A radiant ray glistened from the window across my left eye. It narrowed the pupil and created warmth in a strip along my skin. The sunlight was headache inducing.

Dusty particles pirouetted across the beam, vanishing as soon as they crossed to the other side. I took a deep breath and a pungent stench attacked my insides. I opened my mouth to avoid it, but the smell enveloped my lungs after clinging to the back of my throat.

I tried to stand. My legs weren’t listening, they stayed heavy on the floor. As I shifted my head away from the sunlight the rest of the room became clear.

I was just one of many.

Rows and rows of them and the only one moving was me.

 

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Literary Lion. Into the Woods.

Since launching Literary Lion last week, I have read tales of loss, love, space ships, stars, time travel, petri dishes, dogs and only children. Thank you to all those that have taken part so far, I await with bated breathe to see what this week will bring. A little slip of green this week has set the theme, and it is ‘story in the woods‘.

You have a week to craft your forest inspired tales of 400 words or less. Remember to include the tag ‘Literary Lion’ in your piece and to pingback to this post so we can find your work in the WordPress reader.

Happy writing, and here is my ‘story in the woods’…

 

As she sleeps.

When the snow finally stopped falling its rested flakes reduced to water. The powdered shards on her eyelashes melted to tears, meandering down the side of her face towards raven strands of hair, making tale telling tracks along the skin.

A slither of light blazed through the gap in the trees. It dutifully followed the contours of her face, leaving no crease untouched in its column of illumination along her right side. Warming the surface with an orange hue, the lit strip sat in contrast against the cold blue of her surrounding skin.

I had been hollowing space in the ground since sunset, now I was saluted by the sunrise in recognition of my exertion. A thick aroma of dirt swayed in the air, settling at the back of my throat and hanging in my nostrils, as stubborn as the muddy particles that were forced beneath the nails that lay heavily against my icy rose fingertips. She could be sleeping. Her lashes feathered onto the skin below her eyes and her lips parted at the centre around a darkness I had seen many times before.

I forced her weight with the tip of my shoe and she rolled, sinking into the earth. The leaves started to patter with plump tears from above. The clouds had forgotten the snowflakes and were beginning to send their worst onto the ground below. All malevolence vanished with every droplet.

 

The Monday Muse. 27 hours.

This afternoon I realised that it takes me four minutes and 29 seconds to peel a satsuma. That’s over 31 minutes a week, which is around 1,631 minutes a year… otherwise known as 27 hours.

It has come as quite a shock to me that such a block of my time is dedicated to one of my five a day, and it has had me wondering how much time I waste on other humdrum tasks.

Five minutes more wasted and I have come up with this little list.

1. Trying to get rid of pins and needles – 260 minutes
2. Hiccuping – 312 minutes
3. Stifling a yawn – 60 minutes
4. Proofreading my text messages – 1,820 minutes
5. Figuring out the meaning of an emoji – 60 minutes
6. Trying to decide if I want sugar in my tea – 260 minutes

I hope you can understand why I am keeping this post short. I’m off to invent some time-saving, multi-tasking techniques.

NB If you think my satsuma peeling time is excessive, it’s because I have a fear of the straggly white bits.

 

 

Roar. Calling all my fellow writers…

There are many animals strewn across my abode. None of them are actually in the land of the living, but until the day the boy and I commit to a feline sidekick, I am muddling through with the inanimate creatures of the interior decor kingdom.

The above lion jar is a typical Laura find. He’s probably supposed to guard biscuits or some other sugar-infused confectionary, but instead he is a warden of words. He is also the inspiration for a new feature I am launching today, Literary Lion.

Whenever someone visits my living quarters they are presented with a collection of rainbow-hued paper strips, upon which they must write a word, a sentence or a saying, and then throw it to the lion’s den: the little glass jar.

After several visitors, here sits a container filled with prompts for when the ideas have dried out and the day looks stale, in other words, it is my writer’s back-up.

Every Wednesday I shall delve into the lion guarded pot, and after penning a piece inspired by the coloured strip of paper, I shall publish my flash fiction story here on ismithwords.com.

Then, and here comes the exciting bit, I shall be throwing down the gauntlet and challenging any of my fellow wordsmiths to take on the story prompt themselves. You can interpret the theme as you wish, as long as you keep it short, under 400 words, and remember to pingback to the challenge so I can see it.

Click here to see the latest line of challenges.

Good luck, and may the wordsmith gods smile on you.