Here are some more little stories, this time from the November weekly Write-in sessions. As a reminder, in write-ins the host gives random prompts and timers (between 3 and 10 minutes in our case), and participants write whatever they can think of to match the prompt in that time. I like to write a story from start to end during the session, because it’s a fun extra challenge.
You can find stories 1 and 2 in the previous Write-in post – in your inbox or on the site. Stories 3, 4, 5 and 6 are right here.
November 1st – Story 3
I was in a pretty dark headspace on this day. I’d found out my job was at risk and my competitive interview was the following day, and if not for the Write-In I would not have gotten any writing done at all. It took a while to get into the right mindset, but I persevered. Really thankful for this group’s existence.
1. Image prompt: two hands clutching at a stone ball as water falls around them. 3 mins.
"Don't let go," Vien grunted, as the ball slipped another hair under her fingertips. "Don't... let... go."
Water flowed over her shoulders, spattering past her arm and onto Sua's face.
2. Text prompt: “she is eyeless”. 5 mins.
The blindfold soaked quickly, marking dark shining pits in Sua's eye sockets, and the excess ran down her cheeks like tears. She smiled. "I'm sorry, Vien."
And then she opened her hand: a single, quick motion, flicking five neat droplets into the void. The smile never left her face as she fell, and if she'd had eyes then they would have been closed.
3. Text prompt: “unravelling”. 10 mins.
The ball unravelled like it was made of yarn instead of cold, weathered green copper. Strands of golden orange spun around her hand, up her arm to her chest, but she ignored it, staring at the point where Sua had disappeared into the darkness.
Vien was Araadi now, a warrior, but she didn't feel like it. As the cool metal pooled on her skin, something hardened inside of her as well. They were supposed to make it together. They'd promised.
Sua had promised.
Now, here was Vien, alone again. For the first time, she understood why the Araadi had this name, which in the old tongue meant Heartless. Her heart, her everything, was gone.
4. Text prompt: “where are you now?” 3 mins.
Vien saw her in her dreams, stumbling in the dark as copper threads tangled her legs. She called out her name until it became meaningless, garbled, Sua, Sua, Suua, Suuha, Sauh, Souha, until she fell to her knees and cried herself awake, wondering: where are you now?
5. Image prompt: an angry boy looking up at the viewer. 5 mins.
The boy looked up at her, a defiant scowl on his brow despite his parents' blood spreading across the floor between them. He didn't smile, but his eyes were dark and wide, like pools of water shining through the fabric of a blindfold. He looked nothing like Sua, and yet...
"What, you want to go next, is it?" she snapped. "You wanna try your strength against this?" She held up her metal arm as if to strike him, but he didn't flinch.
"Make me strong," he said.
"What?"
"Make me strong, so I can kill you."
6. Text prompt: “we need a god who bleeds now”. 10 mins.
Vien took him to the temple of warriors. What other choice did she have? She was heartless, yes, but she did have... something. A remnant of something. It drove her on, perhaps out of kindness, or out of a hope that little Dafyn really would grow strong enough to kill her one day.
"What's it made of?" he asked, walking boldly beside her as they climbed the endless stone steps. His eyes had barely left her arm all week.
"Copper," she said.
The answer made him frown again. "Copper? Copper's not very strong. My da went at you with steel and it bounced right off."
She gritted her teeth. "It's magic copper."
He would have to go through it himself if he wanted to know the truth: that she wore the blood of Arain on her skin. The blood of the golden sun.
"Oh," Dafyn said, "that makes sense."
Vien fixed her gaze on the distant temple walls, bathed in Arain's warm glow, and longed for the days when she'd thought the same, when it had all made sense.
I regressed on my attempt to give proper endings to these stories, but giving myself grace on that. Perhaps Dafyn will grow up to kill her, that would be cool. Or he’ll learn that true strength doesn’t come from revenge, but from understanding, ooh.
November 8th – Story 4
aka The day I decided to write contemporary fiction, and then promptly gave up and added a magical element.
1. Text prompt: “oh, my mom?” 3 mins.
"What does yours do?" the red-shoe'd boy asked, sitting down next to Arra as she cradled her phone in her lap. The school hall was too busy for her.
"Dunno," she said, swiping through photos of her sand boa, Kevin. "Eats mice, digs in the floor and stuff."
"Huh?"
The boy's shocked tone made her look up. Parents' evening. "Oh, you mean my mum."
2. Text prompt: “insatiable; hunger”. 5 mins.
Arra poked the tongs over the sand, thawed mouse dangling off the end. She couldn't see where Kevin was hiding, but knew he was watching from somewhere under the surface, same as she was, same as Dan was. Three sets of eyes, watching the tongs bob.
"Maybe he escaped," Dan said, pressing his hands and his nose right up to the glass.
"No," Arra said. She was up on a stool, hanging her arm in the enclosure. "Just wait."
Then she saw movement, one of the sand piles shifting, and two sweet, focussed eyes slowly rose, mesmerised by the dancing mouse.
"There we go."
Reading this after writing that post about over-mentioning eyes feels bad. xD
3. Text prompt: “always”. 10 mins.
Once Dan had gone home, disappointed that he wasn't allowed to hold the snake while it was digesting, Arra went back to the enclosure and tapped on the glass.
Tap tap, pause, tap, tap-tap-tap.
Kevin lifted his head out of the sand again. "I'm some fuckin' show to you now, kid? Huh? Gonna take me out on a parade, feed the fuckin' alien, see how it curls up around its prey! A show, that what I am to you now, huh?"
She wished she'd never taught him to swear. She herself was too young to do it, mum said. Had to wait until she turned 13 in two more years, but then the snake had claimed to be two hundred and four years old so it'd seemed safe at the time.
"Fuck," he said, wiggling out of the sand and flicking it off his black and yellow scales. "Shitting fuck."
"That was my friend Dan," she told him. "From school."
"Hey, you said that I'm your fuckin' friend. Now you got other friends? What's that about?"
"I can have loads of friends. Don't you have others?" she asked.
He looked around the tank and back up at her, without speaking.
"I mean, out there. Wherever. You had friends. They're still out there, right?"
"We don't do that shit where I'm from, kid." He slid over to the basking rock and slithered against it. "Ahhh yeah, that's the spot. Fuckin' sand, gets everywhere. How long's this friendship thing last, then? Like, as standard. Your lifespan's fifty to a hundred, yeah? So shall we say ten?"
"No." Arra frowned. "Friendship's for always."
He stared at her.
"Fuck."
(Aaaand we have another talking reptilian sidekick, folks! I do not apologise. As someone who now owns a non-talking reptilian sidekick, they are super rad and I will write about them forever. I don’t think my girl would swear if she could talk though, she is very polite.)
4. Image prompt: dog plushie sitting on a railway track. 3m.
Arra set down Mr Doggy Blue carefully on the railway track. She knew there wasn't a train due for two more minutes, and they were more often late than early, but anxiety prickled over her back as she balanced him in place. She was relieved to stand back again and click on the push-to-talk in her earpiece. "What now?" she whispered, looking up the empty track.
"Now we fuckin' wait," Kevin replied.
5. Text prompt: “that which you cannot outgrow”. 5 mins.
"It was for the best, kid." Kevin's voice crackled over the radio, barely audible over the clattering, juddering, whooshing, whirring train.
Arra watched as puffs of Mr Doggy Blue's innards sprayed across the gravel. A blue scrap landed next to her foot, which she realised with horror was his tail.
"That which you cannot outgrow," Kevin continued, as the train passed, leaving her with an unfillable silence, "must be fuckin' destroyed, ok?"
She licked her dry lip, still staring at the fluffy pieces of her childhood toy. "I... I think I probably could have outgrown him."
6. Text prompt: “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand.” 10 mins.
"I don't feel very grown up or well adjusted," Arra said, scowling at the lipstick crosses she'd painted over her eyes and down her cheeks. "I kind of just feel sad."
"Fuck sake," Kevin said from his enclosure. "I don't get it, kid. You wanna be friends forever or some bullshit, and I'm trying my best here, literally never tried harder at anything in my whole fuckin' life, you know?"
"I know," she replied. He'd been helping her a lot, with all the things mum had told her good friends did. He'd helped her grow, and defeat her enemies in hand to hand combat, and adorn herself with the ultimate marks of An-Avahu. Some of those had been his own suggestions, admittedly, but they were all supposed to help her become her Best Self.
She felt worse than ever. She'd been suspended from school for defeating Dan in hand to hand combat, she'd lost Mr Doggy Blue, and stolen two thousand pounds on mum's credit card for spaceship parts. Things were just objectively not great right now.
"Are you sure we were doing all this for me?" she asked. "It feels kind of like we did some of it for you."
Kevin paused in the act of scratching himself on the basking rock. "Shit," he said, tilting his head to the side. "Sorry, might have misunderstood the assignment."
7. Image prompt: moon viewed through prison bars. 7 mins.
Night dew made Arra's already shaky hands slick as she put together the last piece of the fuse box, under Kevin's careful and sweary guidance.
"Yeah, good fuckin' work kid, that's a solid-ass piece of kit right there. Now just clip those two wires together, and-"
The spaceship powered up with a bwoooooo and the blueish white light pooled on the lawn around Arra's wet knees. She glanced up at the house, but it was quiet. Mum was still sleeping. The moon hung over them, waiting.
"Good fuckin' thing ya told me we're not going together," Kevin said, slithering over the grass to the door ramp. "Would've taken forever to build a human sized one, shit! For always, my ass."
Arra was glad it was almost over, but in a way she was glad it had all happened, too. She smiled at Kevin for the first time this week. "We'll always be friends," she said, although she shoved the ramp shut as she said it, just in case. "We can be long distance friends, that's all." She stepped back, gave him one last look, then picked up the fuse box and flicked the switch. "Very, very long distance friends..."
This turned from my least favourite to my favourite write-in story so far. Really concerned there after the first couple of prompts, and then sweary Kevin came out of nowhere. Love that guy, and his beautiful almost-friendship with Arra. I quite like the descriptions I wrote of Mr Doggy Blue and the train, especially considering the rushed nature of write-ins, and Arra’s line “I think I probably could have outgrown him.” Brutal.
November 15th – Story 5
I spent this session over-aware of my bad fanfic-writing habits, as the post about unlearning said habits had just gone out… But timed sessions where you share your first brain-fart draft are not the place to tackle that issue.
I did stretch myself a bit by using first person present-tense, which I have very little experience of writing.
1. Text prompt: “birthday”. 3 mins.
I'm not one for birthdays. Not other people's, and certainly not my own. Doesn't feel special. Guess that's part of the gift of being a twin. It's not really a day for me. Or for anyone. The best bit's the cake, and once you grow up, you realise you can have it any damn day you like.
Today will be special though. Today is just for me. My birthday alone, because today I am going to kill my twin.
2. Text prompt: “bet it all”. 5 mins.
It all comes down to this moment. Twenty five years of planning - from the moment I took my first breath - I've been waiting for this. It all comes down to one set of cards, and most importantly of all, the last card in Master Evans' deck. The death card.
If you were to ask my sister, she'd say it's got my name written on it. I say the same about her. You're on a timer, Em. Enjoy your last year as captain of the hockey team. Enjoy your last term top of the class in maths.
But we hold hands under Master Evans' heavy oak desk as he slides the card over its smooth, weathered surface. We draw matching breaths as he turns it in his knobbly fingers and lowers it back down.
We're betting it all on this moment, to become me, but until paper hits wood, we're still us.
3. Text prompt: “driveway”. 10 mins.
"I don't understand," I say between gasps as Em drags me, legs burning, out the front door and onto the neat driveway of Master Evans' house. It's unassuming from the outside, just a neat white terraced house in a long row, all with flower-bordered lawns and identical grey brick drives.
I should be pleased, relieved. Outside is public. It's safe. The order wouldn't try anything here, but I'm not pleased, and I'm not safe. I'll never be safe again until I die.
A car drives past, just a normal blue-ish silver citroen, and the driver barely glances our way, but I yank my arm out of Em's grip. "I don't understand," I repeat. She's too busy throwing the bins up against the door, as if that'll achieve anything. "It was my name. It's me, Em. Why are you-?"
"Why?" She throws my rucksack at me, and I catch it in numb hands as she stomps past, onto the pavement. "Why would I try to save my sibling's life? Gee, I dunno, let me think about that one!"
"But..." I close my mouth, conscious of my anger, and how stupid it is.
All our lives, she's been the better twin. Faster, smarter, stronger, taller - by 1cm, but still. I've known it all along, but I thought I was at least kinder. Better inside, somehow.
But I was ready to kill her, and she never intended to do the same. Then it hits my, why she's doing this. She doesn't need to kill me in order to be the better twin, so she's keeping me around. That has to be it. She's keeping me alive so she always has someone to beat.
4. Image prompt: tunnel leading to sunrise over the sea. 3 mins.
The dawn's rich light bounces off the tunnel's metal walls, onto the object in Em's hand. "Go on then," she says, and her voice echoes: go on then, go on then. Gulls laugh on the beach, adding to the taunt. "We'll swap. You take my soul, I take yours. We trade places."
She thinks I won't. She's trying to prove a point, that I'm better than I think I am. But I'm not.
I snatch the cool stone out of her hand.
5. Text prompt: “hello, blank page”. 5 mins.
It's done.
With Em's soul stone in my jacket pocket, thrumming in what I think must be outrage, I'm free. I'm her now, and she's...
I sit in the corner of Master Evans' office, flipping through the deck of cards. Ace, two, three, four... Fifty-five cards. My heart squeezes as I reach the King of Clubs, but I flick past it, to the last card. There's no name on it now. No duplicate to cull. It's just me, and the blank card.
6. Image prompt: Kermit the frog drunk on a park bench. 10 mins.
This park bench meant nothing to me when I sat on it the last time. Meeting Em here, grabbing ice creams together every day through the summer, meant nothing then. She was just a duplicate, an extra. I was waiting for her to die.
Now I look at it with tears and nostalgia and regret. Am I finally ashamed, finally a better person? No. I laugh at the idea, swaying on the spot. It's just the vodka. I take another swig and sit down.
The bench squeaks. It feels rough under my fingers, worn slats no one's varnished in years, sat on rusted legs and a crumbling, broken platform in the grass. This is my throne.
Part of me expects her to show up, still. Like in some cheesy film: alive all along, and now she needs my help. But the boots that approach me aren't hers.
"Em," Master Evans says, making me look up. It's been my name for years now, but it still catches me off guard, guilty. "I have a job for you."
I lean back, let my head drop over the back of the bench. Dark tree branches claw at the sky above me.
Evans thumps down onto the bench. "Another runaway dupe situation."
I don't look over. He leaves a thick cream file on the seat when he goes.
(nooo so much looking, so much over-choreographing!!)
7. Image prompt: smoking crater on a remote hillside. 5 mins.
I see the smoke from three miles down the track and take my time following it. There's nowhere for them to go, the triplets. Two dupes - I wonder if that feels worse. Losing two would be hard, but losing with someone feels kind of nice. I wish Em could have had that.
I wish, in hindsight, that I'd stayed with her to see the end. I owed her that, but I was too scared she'd change her mind. Too selfish.
I'm relieved, then, when I get to the camp and find the three of them cold and stiff, holding hands and staring blankly up at the cloudy sky. Together.
Maybe that was the real solution all along. No one lives alone or dies alone. No one ends up like her, or like me.
November 22nd – Story 6
Perhaps inspired by my blog post about writing in Welsh, I attempted to do just that for this write-in session. Writing quickly really hammered home how crap my Welsh vocabulary is! I didn’t have time to look things up, and was flustered all the way through trying to build sentences out of the few blocks I had in my head.
Confession: I’ve run these paragraphs through Cysill Ar-Lein, a tool for checking spelling, grammar and mutations in Welsh, even though readability won’t matter for my predominantly English-speaking audience. xD I’ve included rough translations.
1. Text prompt: “small town”. 3 mins.
Tref fach oedd Aberefain, wrth ddau ochr yr afon. Tref hir a thref o ddwy ran. I'r Gogledd oedd tai taclus gwyn a cwn ar dennyn gwyrdd. Daeth Tan o'r ochr De. Tai duon o fwg a charreg, a cadnoaid at y biniau pob nos. Plentyn o fwg a charreg oedd Tan; plentyn biniau'r nos.
English translation:
Aberefain was a small town, beside two sides of the river. A long town of two parts. To the North were the tidy white houses and dogs on green leashes. Tan came from the South. Black houses of smoke and stone, and foxes at the bins every night. A child of smoke and stone was Tan; a child of the night bins.
2. Image prompt: sandstone outcrops. 5 mins.
Y Chwarel Aur a galwodd hi wyneb y mynydd. Doedd na ddim aur i'w weld, dim yn y cerrig na'r dŵr a llifodd mewn i'r aber, ond ar ddyddiau heulog fel heddiw fe ddisgynnodd olau aur dros streipiau'r cerrig, fel menyn yn toddi.
Ciciodd Tan ddarn o'r menyn yma dros ochr y clogwyn, lawr ar bennau'r coed o dan. Tap, tap-tap. Pellter hir i gwympo.
English translation:
The Golden Quarry is what she called the face of the mountain. There was no gold to see, not in the rocks or the water that flowed into the harbour, but on sunny days like today a golden light fell over the striped stone, like butter melting.
Tan kicked a piece of this butter off the edge of the cliff, down over the tops of the trees below. Tap, tap-tap. A long way to fall.
3. Text prompt: “unsent letters”. 10 mins.
Roedd y blwch post yn llawn. Heb swyddog i gasglu'r llythyron, ond mater o amser oedd hi tan fod y bocs coch yn gorlifo.
Dim ond Tan a ysgrifennodd llythyron. Ambell i waith ysgrifennodd hi nhw gyda'i phoer ar ddeilen, neu fwd ar y llechi bu cwympo o'r hen doeau, neu feddyliad neu weddi ar bapur sgrap neu sbwriel a ddaeth dros yr afon bob hyn a hyn ar gefn y gwynt.
Mam. Dwi'n weld eisiau ti. Dwi ar goll, mam. Dwi ddim yn gallu croesi’r afon nol i ti.
Dwi'n oer, mam.
Roedd y blwch post yn llawn o dail ofnus, cerrig unig a sbwriel wêr. Na wnath cymdogion Tan roi dim byd trwyddo. Nathon nhw braidd dim, ond cerdded yn araf o le i le, yn syllu ar y pafin du gyda'i llygaid wag diluw.
Mam, ble wyt ti? Dwi ar goll.
English translation:
The postbox was full. Without an officer to collect the letters, it was only a matter of time before the red box overflowed.
Only Tan wrote letters. Sometimes she wrote them with spit on a leaf, or mud on the slates that fell from the old roofs, or a thought or a prayer on scrap paper or rubbish that came over the river from time to time on the back of the wind.
Mum. I miss you. I'm lost, mum. I can't cross the river back to you.
I'm cold, mum.
The postbox was full of scared leaves, lonely stones and cold litter. Tan's neighbours didn't put anything inside. They did almost nothing, except walk slowly from place to place, staring at the black pavement with their colourless eyes.
Mum, where are you? I'm lost.
4. Text prompt: “the architect”. 7 mins.
(Of which I spent 2 trying to remember the Welsh word for ‘architect’.)
Un bore, tra oedd yr haul a'r gwynt y ddau yn cuddio tu nol i niwl y môr, fe ddaeth dyn newydd i De Aberefain. Dyn tal a thenau oedd, gydag wyneb o benglog a chroen glaslwyd heb gnawd na chyhyrau rhyngddynt. Dyn gyda gwen llydan, gwyn.
"Y pensaer ydw i," meddai ef, er bod neb wedi gofyn. "Pensaer De'r afon."
Cerddodd y dyn, coesau hir yn swishian fel hwyliau melyn wynt, cyn stopio o flaen Tan. "Dwi'n edrych am brentis." Roedd ganddo lygaid du. O ochr i ochr, yn hollol du. "Beth amdanat ti?"
English translation:
One morning, when the sun and the wint both hid behind the sea mist, a new man came to South Aberefain. He was a tall and thin man, with a face of skull and grey-blue skin without flesh or muscle between them. A man with a wide, white smile.
"I am the architect," he said, though nobody had asked. "The Architect South of the river."
The man walked, long legs swishing like windmill sails, before stopping in front of Tan. "I'm looking for an apprentice." He had black eyes. From side to side, totally black. "What about you?"
5. Image prompt: holding hands. 9 mins.
"Gall prentisiai mynd nôl dros yr afon?" gofynnodd Tan. "Mae mam yn fownd o fod yn becso."
"All neb croesi'r afon."
"O ble dest ti te?" Roedd llais Tan yn dawel a fach i gymharu â llais y pensaer, a chliriodd hi ei gwddf cyn siarad eto, yn uchelach. "Dest ti o rywle."
Nodiodd y dyn: symudiad araf, drwm. "O rywle."
"Oes 'na ffordd gartre o fanna te?"
"Nacoes," atebodd ef. "Does 'na ddim ffordd am nôl nawr. Ond ymlaen gallet ti fynd." Edrychodd e o gwmpas, ar y bobl diluw yn llusgo'i thraed dros y pafin. "Neu aros fan hyn."
Dilynodd Tan ei llygaid, a chymerodd hi i mewn y tai du o fwg a charreg, a'r ysbrydion llwydion, wedyn nol i'r dyn sgerbwd. "Beth sydd angen i fi neud?"
Tynnodd ef ei llaw mas o'i got du, llaw wen fel hufen ia a miniog fel bôn rhosyn. "Ond rhaid dala fy llaw."
English translation:
"Can apprentices go back over the river?" Tan asked. "My mum is bound to worry."
"Nobody can cross the river."
"Where did you come from then?" Tan's voice was quiet and small compared to the voice of the architect, and she cleared her throat before speaking again, louder. "You came from somewhere."
The man nodded: a slow, heavy movement. "From somewhere."
"Is there a way home from there then?"
"There is not," he answered. "There is no way back now. You can only go forwards." He looked around, at the colourless people dragging their feet over the pavement. "Or stay here."
Tan followed his eyes, and took in the black houses of smoke and stone, and the grey spirits, and then back to the skeleton man. "What do I need to do?"
The man pulled his hand out of his black coat, a white hand like ice cream and sharp like a rose stem. "You need only hold my hand."
I actually really like this story. I played with the descriptions a lot more than I tend to do in English, so perhaps the limited vocabulary was good for me, and forced me to show creativity in other ways.
Hopefully you enjoyed some of those! See ya next week!
Non Hughes 
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