Writer Wednesday: Short Story + Updates

 

Welcome to our new Writer Wednesday! We have steadily been fine-tuning our Writer's Shelf blog and are excited to have a few changes that we'll share more about later. We recently discovered an amazing website called Storyaday that has a lot of great resources and prompts that all fall under the mission of getting writers to write. This week we decided to give it a go and check out Wednesday's prompt. 

Short Story:

Dionne's focus ebbs and flows like the water surrounding her. She's aware of someone's hand in hers. It moors her to reality, just a little. If she thinks too hard about her body, her thoughts dissolve and float away. So she turns her attention outward. The light above is fading. Bubbles trail out with every breath and flutter to the surface. She and her companion are descending. Companion. The word doesn't feel quite right. Dionne rolls it around in her mouth until a light below catches her eye. She blinks slowly, purposefully. Curiosity rises inside her. There shouldn't be light down here. She doesn't know how she knows this, but the knowledge is undeniable, the most solid thing in her mind. "I don't understand," she says. The words seemed to be lost in the drift of the tides over her head. A flashing light beckons her onward, an outstretched hand guiding her forward. The seaweed bristled against her skin as she brushed over the top of it. Though she could feel herself moving, the water made her feel like she was floating.

Flying, almost. On a whim, Dionne closes her free hand around the seaweed. It tickles her palm. Her companion squeezes her hand gently. They mustn't delay. Dionne understands this intrinsically. She releases the seaweed, and they float on. The water was warmer than Dionne expected, as if wrapping her in an embrace to say it's okay to let go. Dionne knew that she was leaving a shell of herself behind on the surface. Leaving behind her friends. And here, under the water, it was the feeling deep inside that won. Dionne went deeper still until an opaque barrier blocks her way.

Her companion, Tien, carefully places a hand upon the barrier, and it shimmers to life. A promise that Dionne would be welcome with its open arms into a world far different than that on the surface. Dionne gasps. The knowledge she shouldn't be able to breathe at all flickers to life but is quickly drowned. She reaches for the shimmering city that suddenly seems so close.

The water shifted with her. Together they moved as one through the barrier which sent a sizzle along her skin, and through her whole being. Her eyes could see the glimmering of the city. A single breath escapes her, and she realizes the whole way down she had forgotten to breathe. It was as if she didn't feel the need for breathing anymore. It felt as if the water was doing it for her. It was a oneness she had never felt before in her life but one she felt drawn to fulfill. She looks at her companion and sees her clearly as she had on the beach. The siren wears a knowing smile. Dionne is distantly afraid of what all this might mean. Something has changed in her. She is no longer the woman she was when she came to the deserted city above. She should feel afraid. She isn't.

Schedule:

We are currently working on our new Writer's Shelf schedule and exercises, but we will tease you with a few things that we have planned. 

Monthly Prompts: 
We will post these on the first of every month and we recently shared our first-ever monthly prompt Aril 1 which you can find here. 

Writer Wednesdays:
Our plan is to post exercises, worksheets, and more that will help with character building, world-building, and our unique activities every Wednesday 

Other columns for the blog we hope to include: Pantser on Fire; Trivia Tuesday; Photo Fridays; Quote Saturdays.

Our Little Writers have moved to our LM Stories blog. 

Our goal is to turn our blogs into a writing community that has exercises, prompts, book club, reviews, recommendations, and more. We celebrate all forms of storytelling from comics to art to mysteries to TV. We are steadily dabbling our way into a variety of genres and hope to reveal more soon.

Happy writing!