Writing Challenge ~ 1st - 15th June 2011

WRITING CHALLENGE ~ JUNE 2011 ~ PART ONE​

Here’s this month’s first prompt...


You can involve the prompt itself in your piece and make your link to the prompt as obvious or as subtle as you like or use it simply as inspiration for something else. You can use part of the prompt, just one aspect of the image, or use it in its entirety.

The word limit for this challenge is 3,000 words and your submission can take whatever form you desire – poetry or prose, complete story or a vignette. Erotic or not, serious or light hearted, it’s whatever you want it to be!!

Post only your submissions in this thread, constructive comments and reviews are to be posted in the appropriately named – Writing Challenge Review Thread

The deadline for this month’s challenge is Wednesday 15th June 2011, with the second prompt ‘going live’ on the 16th!

Previous challenges and reviews can be found here.

Happy writing!

Georgia

through Georgia's eyes
I see beauty in desolation
through her hand
I see passion in the poppy
it is a more fragrant world
with more strength
more fragility
through Georgia's eyes

There are many legends of this area, it's rich in culture and history, and one must only listen to hear her tale....

The dirt crunched under her bare foot, it hurt, but only slightly. She was here for a purpose. A invisible pull to this land had brought her here, and she was surrounded by the desolate grace of a seemingly dead land. Or at least in the blinding heat of the day it felt that way. But the night's cool breath had freed the life of this land from the captive, burning, warmth that sapped their strength and sent them into hiding. Into hiding under the earth, where her feet were placed.

Just as she could imagine the world spinning around her, could she feel the restless movement of the world beneath her. I was enough to send her to her knees.

She had a purpose. To understand the world, her place in it. Her people had demanded it of her. This land, so dead in appearance was teeming, and she had to learn it's secrets, to learn how to be, how to breathe and succeed with this land. To become both it's keeper and occupant.

Her fingers sunk into the dirt, and her nose filled with sap of the pines around her. It felt decadent, as though she had come home. Something scurried around her, but she felt no real fear. What would happen here, was meant to happen.

She breathed and felt the wind of the earth move around her. A tickle on one of her fingertips, the touch sent tingles through her body. Something stung that finger and she gasped, but didn't move when the pain dripped through her body in the same path as the pleasure of touch did mere moments earlier.

Her finger throbbed and so did her body begin to react to the pain, soft panting from her lips, tears dripped to the earth like raindrops and a stab of fear washed over her. She pushed it aside and collapsed to the ground completely.

The poison of the creature swam through her veins and she fairly hummed with it. It made her body blush from heat, and tightened her nipples and clit without a single touch. She moaned.

Thunder cracked through the canyon walls and she gasped. Sliding her fingers over her belly, over her tits, the rain began, dripping and caressing her overheated skin. Another moan and lightening lit the sky, her hand snaked it's way to her slit and she fucked herself as the world flooded around her, from her.

She writhed over the mud, gasping from the intensity of the storm in her, above her, because of her. The earth kept her, held her, pushed her higher, scared her, and finally in a culmination, pushed her over the edge. She screamed as she succumbed to her own body, but nothing was heard over the clap of thunder and flash of violent lightening....

They say her body was never found, that the earth took her, but some say you can hear moans when the wind caresses the canyons, her gasps in the lightening, you can see her eye in the glint off the summer sands...

She had reached such heights and feelings that Adrianna never thought would exist. Then he arrived, and showed her more. He made what she went through seem pale, weak, almost nothing. Then he started to teach her. The euphoria was washed way by the tears she shed every night. It was all too hard to understand, let alone put into practice. What made it worse was the way he would look at her. That slight smile that said 'You can do it, only in you try.' She had seen that smile on the face of more teachers t her schools that she cared to remember.

Why did he have to bring me here? Of all the places he could have chosen.

"Because this place is special."

Adrianna turned, a small cloud of dust rising as high as her jean clad knee. She pulled the jacket together a little tighter as she looked back at her mentor. As always, he wore a short sleeve polo style shirt, jeans made of hemp canvas, and a belt made of some unusual leather running through the loops. His canvas loafer style shoes showed no signs of the dust that caked her boots, even though they walked through the same terrain.

"You're reading my mind again."

Adrian ignored the flt tone of the statement. "I was monitoring your emotions. If you don't want me to hear you, don't think so strongly about things. You practically shouted it loud enough for me to hear you a couple of miles away."

He paused beside her, looking around at the spare vegetation and the magnificent rock outcrop. He closed his eyes for a moment. He breathed deeply, letting himself gain a feel for the land he was standing on. He opened his eyes, turning to look at Adrianna. "Have a look about. See the place with your new eyesight. This place must be much more colourful for you this time around."

Adrianna was too grumpy to allow herself the ability to agree with him. Everything was much clearer, brighter and better defined than when she came there with her family over a decade ago. "Yeah, it all looks better. You had to drag me out to the middle of fucking nowhere just to show me the difference in how things look. As if I haven't noticed at home."

"I brought you here so you could see the difference more clearly."

"Hah!" She stomped off a few paces. "Take me away from civilization, to a place with fuck all to show for it. The food sucks. What did you do? Buy 50 year old leather instead of meat?" She stormed back to face him. "And that fucking thing you call a tent? My sleeping bag at home has more room in it."

"Have you finished? Or would you like to say what you feel about me? You don't have to, as I have heard it all as you were composing it. You know, for most people, what you said is not physically possible. Someone with my talents, however, can do those things. Not that I would, as it would bring me no extra pleasure. But with enough training, I am sure that you would be able to do it."

Adrianna blushed deeply, turning away and trying to calm herself down enough so he wouldn't hear what she was thinking. It still unsettled her knowing what he could do. What she had the potential to do. part of her still didn't believe it, no matter how much evidence piled up in front of her. But he did things that should not be possible, and told her that she could do those things too.

"Adrianna."

The way he spoke to her, she knew he was in his teaching mode.

"There were even more important reasons for your coming here. One of them was to open your sight further. To allow you to see some of the things I am able to see. For you to take the first steps in gaining the fullest use of your inheritance. Like all of us, you will learn to see Life in others, to know how Life is and works. Now remember what you have been taught."

"I CAN'T. I have tried, remember? Every time I have done one of the simple rituals, done exactly as you asked me and told me, I have not been able to do it." Adrianna ran away from him, tears pouring down her cheeks. "I didn't ask for this. I sure as hell don't want it now. Take it back."

"It is not something I can take back." Adrian stood still, his eyes following her as she moved about.

"LIAR. You can do anything. You said it yourself. Anything you imagine you do." She ran back to him, sliding over the last few feet on her knees. "Imagine it for me! Imagine that I am not like you and make it happen."

"If I could do it, I wouldn't. You have been chosen for a reason. Now, do as you have been instructed, Apprentice."

"NO!" She leapt to her feet, grabbing large fistfuls of his shirt. "I can't."

Adrian reached to his belt and pulled out an old, plain but highly functional dagger. His free hand grabbed one of her fists. His fingers pried her fingers loose, enabling him to grab her thumb. He brought the dagger's edge to her thumb, slicing it cleanly to let her blood well and run free down the digit. "Do it."

Adrianna felt the steel in his voice. She let go of him, stepping back. Shaking with fear, she closed her eyes and pressed her bleeding thumb to each eyelid. Please let me do this Her lips quivered as she spoke, "Water of Life; make the rose tinted lens; show me the Life; within all I can see."

She opened her eyes, flooding with tears of fear, shame and the sting from her thumb. Beyond her, everything looked unchanged. It hadn't worked. The sinking feeling within her started to pool and drag her down into the well of self loathing that was growing stronger.

"Adrianna! Don't beg for it to work. Make it work. Believe in it and it will work!"

"Fuck off, Adrian. I can't do it."

"You don't want to do it. You're a lazy cunt with no ambition to be anything."

"Fuck you. You don't know anything about me."

Adrian sighed. "I have seen enough. Most students I have had prior to you have been able to do this within a week of starting their education. But then they have been excited about their newly awakened talent, rather than just coasting long."

Adrianna waved her arms, sending a small spray of blood over the dirt. "I can't understand what you want me to do. It's all too mind fucking for me."

"Then believe in yourself and do it."

Adrianna looked at Adrian, trying to bore two holes in him with her eyesight alone. She winced when she squeezed her thumb. She plastered her eyelids with a fresh coat of her blood. Lazy cunt, huh? I don't care if you can hear me, prick. "Water of Life; make the rose tinted lens; show me the Life; within all I can see." She knew it would work this time. She wanted nothing more than to show her all knowing teacher that he was wrong about her.

She felt something within her belly. A lurch like when an elevator dropped suddenly. She opened her eyes in fright over the feeling, only to be confronted by the scariest sight in her life. He master stood before her, but he was overlaid with what looked like shimmering, psychedelic lights. They shifted and changed with his facial expressions. Most were a shade of red, with some orange and yellows mixed in. Her hand was shaking as it came into view. It too was covered in the same kind of light, though there was some lime green drifting about within it.

"You are fighting off a cold. That is what that shade of green tells you. And that dark brown line on the bone in your arm, that is a healing hairline fracture you got the day we met."

"How..." Adrianna's jaw hung loose as she looked at the different colours on her body, Adrian's body and everything around them. The plants all showed similar auras showing their state of health.

"Experience will give you the ability to read the colours of the aura. How you managed it finally? A simple thing. I knew what buttons to push to get you thinking the right way. You needed to believe in yourself, deeply believe. The only way I could do that was getting you angry with me. Pride, in the proper dosages, is a good thing."

Adrian placed both hands on either side of her head. "Close your eyes." When she had, he ran his thumbs over her eyelids, removed all traces of her blood from her skin.

As he did that, Adrianna felt something within her go, and she felt strangely normal again. "What happened?" Her eyes darted around, confirming her suspicions that her sight was normal once again.

"I ended the effect." He took up her hand with the still bleeding thumb. "Very soon, you will use the knowledge gained by that sight to be able to do things like this." The flow of the blood from her thumb stopped. She looked on in awe as the blood stains on her hand faded until they were gone. "Don't panic. Your body took back the blood."

Adrian sat on the ground, gesturing Adrianna to do the same. "I also brought you here for another reason. What you will be going through for the remainder of your life will be like the land here. It will be harsh, testing and full of nastiness the likes you would not see normally back home. However, like those that survive here, you will be stronger, resilient and more hardy than those found elsewhere. Plus, you will be more alive and more glorious in your time too.

"When the rains come here, the plants flower with such colour and fill the air with a perfume that almost breaks a person's heart. That same magnificence is in you, Apprentice. You have felt the edges of it today. You have felt the shallowest edge of the power that you have been gifted. You now believe in yourself and that power. Even now, you are more powerful than ninety-nine percent of the population. As you education continues, you will be able to do more and more." He rolled onto his knees, which placed him right in front of Adrianna. He enveloped her in a warm hug. "Now, let me show you what I can do with that rightly named leather I got for us to eat. These talents of ours do have their uses."