***You and a friend have decided to try and follow a rainbow to see if the end holds a pot of gold. But when you finally reach the end, you find something much more valuable than a pot of gold–and it changes your life. Write this scene.
school – table – crow – spider – forgiveness
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It was a ribbon of light, gracing the air with its song, swirling around both of their heads as they chased it to find its end. This school of thought that luck and gold were married to rainbows excited them to no end, no end, but the rainbow’s end. This vibrant strip of colors that pierced the sky led them down the road they’d only today dared to follow. It was the first day of summer and they felt armored with that vibe of another grade behind them. Like a table that’d been polished to look stronger than it was, they raced down the forbidden dead-end road into an alleyway of shadows. These proud children took no notice of the shadows, for the strange rainbow still carried light and hope, a spider’s web leading its prey. They reached the end, a dark corner with a shining pot.
“Gold!” one child squealed.
“Luck!” panted the other.
They both tackled the pot at once, feeling the inside for all their hopes and dreams.
A voice creaked out of the corner like an angry crow as the children’s hands touched the empty bottom.
“Innocence.” The shadows frowned.
The children didn’t hear the voice, for they were still too focused on the pot that surely couldn’t be empty!
The colorful rainbow shrunk into death as the shadows grew around the children. It was the note of a silver wind that overshadowed their screams as the shadows swallowed them. Rampage and desperation. Fear and hysteria. The children dissolved in the shadows until they reemerged to the air as prisms of a thousand colors. Streaks through the sky, ribbons in the wind, tied down to one shining pot. They floated through the air crying to everyone that saw them (and only children could see them), begging them to help them, to save them.
But cycles are only doomed to repeat themselves.
The shadows stared at the pretty ribbon of light. Another in a long line. Beauty is survival, but survival always leads to death. A thousand children’s faces had reflected off that shining pot in the shadows. Hopeful for futures, for love and life. When the shadows looked at the pot, their reflection only carried starvation and death.
“Forgiveness,” the shadows cried, hungry and weak. “Forgiveness.”
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***This was a reponse to a prompt given by the Kansas Writers Association. I was thinking about going to their meeting this month, but things came up and I couldn’t make it. However, I already had this response written up, so I wanted to post it somewhere. I, lol, sorta didn’t follow the prompt to a T, buuuut it was still a lot of fun to work on!
The rules were to write a response to the prompt, and if you wanted, you could also try to include each of the given words in the story. ~Challenge accepted~
N. K. Valek: Author 