Sunday, July 27, 2014

Prompt: Wishing we were different

Slighth rolled through the shallows, avoiding everyone in her path. The cool waves washed them all in frothy yellow, with green sand swirling up from below. The sun reflected on colored limbs all around her, and she sighed, glancing down at her own pale scales. Twisting past a dark-blue female and a dark purple male, she longed for scales that refracted the light with more than her own undistinguished light blues.

If only she had the same glinting teal as that female over there, curling her long tubes in the water as if she wasn’t aware of her effect on every male in sight. Slighth brushed past a pair of young dark brown males, who ignored her, entranced as they were by the myriad of other, darker scales all around.

Reaching the water’s edge, Slighth stretched out her standing tubes and rose above the waves. As she reached her fronds toward the warming sun, she pretended to be invisible…

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Author’s note:
Here’s an idea that has fizzled. It came to me as I was walking on the beach, admiring the beautiful tanned men and women, of all shapes and sizes. I was struck by those sunbathing with such an air of relaxation…I have never been able to do this. My skin is too fair, and I don’t have the patience or tolerance to sit in the heat, when I know I will never have skin that beautiful color. We don’t even have to get into all the health issues, because this is at heart a perception-of-self issue.

So I started thinking about how to turn that little self dialogue into a different kind of scene, and rather than a fantasy setting, I came up with an otherworldly, alien setting. Which sounded fun. Trouble is, I have a setting and an initial character, but no actual story…

Sometimes these things all come together, and sometimes, they don’t.

So give it a try, and let me know what you come up with!

Time writing
20 minutes


July word count
10,692


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