And tardy, too.
All the people who share their works skip an intro or put it in the message referring to their Google Docs, but I’m a sucker for doing things in a novel way, so here we are! *finger guns* (I am dead inside-)
…Yeah, I laughed too.
Feel free to skip this lengthy beginning to something supposedly short. I know your time is valuable. Homeschoolers, am I right?
(Faithful followers reading this post, feel free to interact in the comment section. This is pretty much an ordinary…thing, and I still appreciate…likes and comments if you have any to offer! Not to guilt trip you guys into doing that or-or anything. Heh, ahem. Moving on.)
Sharing the prompt at the start would spoil a lot, so you must brave my write-up to see it. Or just scroll down. Because you can.
…I’m embarrassing myself.
Anyway, onto what you came here for. Feedback is appreciated! Sorry if it’s a smidge too long. Remember, and this is extremely important, that I am an amateur.
“A lot of junk here, huh?” Eloise sifted through the yellowed and thinned parchments in her hands.
“Useful junk,” Harper corrected. She placed a lock of hair behind her ear as she rummaged further through a trunk by the wall. “One hundred and twenty years,” Harper said with an awestruck shake of her head, “Grandmother lived a hundred and twenty years, El. That’s something truly remarkable if you asked me.”
Eloise tossed the parchments to a nearby table, a cloud of dust poofing into the air as she did, and shoved her hands in her dress pockets. “A considerable amount of that time in this mess of a house, and yet she never spent any time cleaning it.”
Harper’s hand hovered mid-air. She leaned back on her knees. “I think Grandmother had her reasons. She may not be here to defend herself,” she reminded carefully, “but it doesn’t mean we can assume things beyond our knowledge.”
Her sister stepped over a pile of books to look outside the window, blazing red bun bobbing.
Harper cleared her throat as she dusted off a few emblems and odd things that glowed in the trunk. She picked up one of the latter—a dazzling emerald hue—to observe it in the sun’s light. “What do you think about the tales of enchantresses?”
“The witches?” Eloise made no effort to hide the sting in her tone. “The one people accuse our deceased grandmother of being one of?”
Harper winced, pursing her lips. “I don’t-“
“The claims are either completely unfounded or,” Eloise turned her head to her sister and paused for dramatic effect, “we’re currently in the attic of a spell-casting sorceress.”
She blinked. Then she creased her forehead. “You’re being ridiculous, El. Grandmother was not a powerful enchantress.”
“Witch.”
“No, I won’t believe it. Mind you, this is the same woman who needed help turning on the kettle because she didn’t like the noise it made!”
Eloise shrugged. “Prove it.”
“What?”
She bent over to pick a book from a pile, undoubtedly having scanned it before. She plopped the book in front of her sister. “Prove it. Do a spell or whatchamadoo to prove that our grandmother was just a wacko who kept spellbooks, nothing more.”
Harper looked from the book to her sister. She sighed and then adjusted her position. Eloise sat pretzel-legged across her, a serious look plastered on.
Harper ran a hand through the cover. The simple words Spell Book scribbled on the exterior. She took her time, unlatching it with a click to find…
…empty pages. Browned at the edges but void of any text. She flipped through the book, one by one and then by the bulk. Nothing. How anticlimactic.
She turned the page backward just to see if she’d missed something. Huh, she had. A page with a mirror illustration in the top left corner and shiny text looked back at her. How did she miss that?
Eloise furrowed her brows. “What does it say?”
Harper squinted at the page. “Something about putting two mirrors face-to-face…but there’s a part missing. Maybe the outcome?” She looked up at her sister to find she had already stood, looking for the mirrors, perhaps.
Why was she suddenly so eager about this?
“Do you think this will do?” Eloise reemerged with a mirror a tad larger than herself. She placed it down and went back for the other.
Harper saw herself in the reflection and noted an odd purple tint if it was tipped at just the right angle. “How are you lifting it? Isn’t it heavy?”
“Not at all,” Eloise replied, a little shocked herself. She placed down the second mirror, one with a light yellow tint. Now the two mirrors were side-by-side. She looked at her sister expectantly. “Now what?”
Harper glanced back at the spell on her lap. “Nothing. Just clear some space, they said.”
Eloise nodded, and Harper stood to help her sister adjust the mystery mirrors. Once all set reflection-to-reflection, they held their breaths, watching. Waiting.
And nothing happened. For five minutes straight. But it looked cool.
Harper’s shoulders fell, and Eloise placed her hands on her hips. “Well, I guess that settles it, then.”
They didn’t know what they expected, but they couldn’t deny the settling disappointment in their chests. Harper went to help her sisters stow the mirrors away, but before they could start, her eye caught something in the mirror. Something, someone inside it.
She tapped her sister’s shoulder, and they looked together at a blurry figure of an approaching creature and a wood-ish backdrop.
Eloise cocked her head to the side. “It almost looks like it’s coming toward us.” That’s when they heard a muffled voice.
They looked at each other, confusion painted in both their round eyes. Eloise jerked her sister aside just as the thing emerged from their mirror.
“What took you so long? I was waiting for goodness knows-” the creature started. He examined the horror-struck sisters under bushy brows. “You’re not the Sorceress.”
The girls screamed. The half-man screamed. It was a great disturbance in the otherwise peaceful woodlands. It lasted half a minute.
Eloise acted first. She grabbed a nearby candelabrum and brandished it against the queer creature. His torso and face looked like that of a middle-aged man, excluding the tiny horns take poked through each side of his head, but his lower body was covered in stark black fur. Harper stared on. A satyr, perhaps?
“Who are you?” Eloise demanded.
His beady eyes seemed just as terrified as the two girls. “I’m Erkyr of the Minolar tribe. Who by the crown of the King are you?!”
The prompt: “One day, you decide to put two mirrors in front of each to find out what that looks like; it was cool at first, but then you notice SOMETHING in the reflection, and it looks like it’s coming right towards you…”
Yet again, the original prompt was altered. Sorry about that, but what’s done is done.
Stuff like this is fun because you can stretch your writing muscles AND make characters and plots you never return to. Remember when I said I hate it when authors leave us dangling on a cliffhanger? Well, too bad, cuz writing it is so gosh darn fun!
(I just realized how similar this is to the Prompt to Paper tag Miss Texan and I made. Huh.)
Thanks for reading!
What do you think about the story? Was it an eyesore, or did it leave you intrigued? Share your constructive criticism below! Or elsewhere, heh. Yeah.
A Christian Kid's Journal 