This is an experiment I like to run on my website; speed writing prompts. I’m going to give myself an hour and noodle on a prompt I like (I’d say random prompt but I reject far too many for that to be true). I want to put an emphasis this time on description. Be warned, these are rough drafts.
Prompt: What happens if the adult in a portal fantasy is actually genre-savvy?
This wasn’t the right place, Kathy was sure of it. The bus driver moved on, eyes glazed and unfocused and yet the bus swung unerringly out from the curb and disappeared around a corner. No other cars broached the curtain of emerald leaves in either direction. No one puts a bus stop at a curb so entirely invisible to bus drivers approaching. She looked to the side where her teenage daughter and nephew were sitting at the bench, earbuds in and waiting. They’d been so close to getting off the bus without her; she’d only just managed to throw things hurriedly into her bag and dart down the stairs before the doors closed. This felt extremely suspicious.
Kathy looked around. Everything looked supremely normal except. The tree branches, willow and oak and aspen, barely drifted in the breeze, the sidewalk beside the road gave way to a path of cobbles that led into the trees, just wide enough for a car to pass if it had good off-road tires, the clouds drifted innocently overhead, the sound of a stream trickled its silver notes through the foliage. If she were a teenager, recently gotten off the bus and expecting “house in the country,” then sure, she’d have accepted this as the right way to go, especially without an adult to point out the lack of road signs, the absence of a mailbox, and did she mention the fact that bus drivers need to see if anyone’s at the stop?
Still though. Maybe this was all chalked up to a miserable city planner. “Rory, Michael, let’s go!” Michael got up and slung his backpack over his shoulder but Rory still sat. Kathy walked up to her until her shadow fell over Rory’s phone. Rory looked up at her, squinting past the ginger hair falling across her face, and took her earbud out. “Let’s go, come on, Grandma Nora’s waiting on us.”
“I was ready to go when we got off the bus,” Rory grumbled. “Maybe you should’ve stopped staring around like a lost cat.” She put her face in a wide-eyed grimace and stared around the open patch by the road with her head thrust forward.
“Thank you, that’s probably about enough flattering impressions of me for the day,” Kathy said. “Grab your bag, stay close, come on.”
“Why do we need to stay close? You think we’re going to get lost on the metropolis of streets Grandma lives on? Why did she even move out here anyway? She’s so old she’s gonna fall apart if she sneezes, she doesn’t need a new house to make it worse.” But she shrugged her own backpack on and followed Kathy and Michael into the forest.
The cool shade of the trees fell over them and the sound of the stream grew louder. Kathy felt her feet adjusting from their normal diet of city pavement to the much more uneven surface of the cobbles beneath her feet. She would’ve thought the skill would have come easily to her, as it was something she was accustomed to in her own teenage years and the pavement on their block back home wasn’t exactly kept in the best repair, but her feet still shifted and twisted unexpectedly on occasion. She glanced back at Michael and Rory, city kids from the day they were born, and they were coping with it fine– although she noted Rory’s phone was actually in her pocket and not her hands. Good. She– wait.
Kathy sniffed. Yep, there was definitely a scent from further up the road. Not the smell of old leaves or new growth either; something… savory and delicious. Her brow furrowed further.
Michael and Rory noticed too. “Oh my heck that smells so good,” Rory moaned. Michael nodded, silent as usual, setting his waves of dark hair bobbing. “Do you think Grandma’s got something cooking for us?”
“Maybe…” Kathy responded. Her mind was playing wild scenarios in her head. It was ridiculous though and she was just being–not even paranoid, this probably qualified as full on crazy. But this still felt too much like a Miyazaki movie and she was not going to turn into a pig if she could help it.
The next bend in the road brought the tantalizing smell closer than ever and also revealed a bridge. It was old-fashioned in the extreme, the kind of old stone bridge you’d expect to see a troll living under. In a story, of course. Half-green with moss and lichen, arched over the stream, and worn smooth with the passing of hundreds of years and thousands of feet and wheels. Kathy stopped short.
Rory almost bumped into her, and Michael did stumble and brush across her shoulder. “What’s the hold-up, Mom?” Rory asked. “Come on, I’m hungry and tired and I do not have time for a photo or whatever. The bridge will still be here tomorrow.”
“Right,” Kathy said. “Yeah, I just was surprised.”
“By a bridge? Did it sneak up on you? Was its approach concealed by the sound of running water?” Rory asked, her face the dictionary definition of teenage scorn. Rory opened her arms wide. “After all, it’s not like streams and rivers are their natural habitat or anything. Can we go now?”
“Coming,” Kathy said. But she was surprised. This seems like exactly the sort of thing her mom would have mentioned in her letters. But little of this was matching what Kathy remembered of her mom’s descriptions of her new cottage. In fact, if she’d heard it was so far removed from the road, Kathy would’ve pushed back even harder against her mom moving out here. …maybe that was all, maybe her mom had wanted her to come and see and fall in love with it before she scared her with its isolation. The bus driver wouldn’t have made such a bad mistake anyway… right?
And then the picnic came into view.
Nope, this was severely not right. It looked like someone had set up a perfect photo shoot on a swathe of emerald green lawn that had opened up beside the road. There was a rack of ribs, glistening in the dappled sunlight that played through the steam rising from it. There was a plate of corn on the cob, each with a pat of butter melting gently on top of it. A basket of rolls, fresh baked and set out in a wicker basket with a red gingham cloth inside it and another just falling off, exposing their golden tops to view. Red apples and a cluster of plump purple grapes sat to one side. A pitcher of lemonade, pale and shining, condensation beading on its curved glass surface. And off to the side, a hamper with plates and silverware and a stack of glass cups.
“Oh mannn can you believe this?” Rory said, sinking to the ground and shedding her backpack. She even pulled out her earbuds and draped them around her neck. “Grandma’s the best for making this for us.”
Michael sat down too, leaning back and staring at the sky, head pillowed on his backpack. He nodded gently.
No, no she couldn’t believe it. “Rory, wait.”
Rory, a plate already in her hands and fork threatening the rack of ribs, stared at her. “Um, what?”
“Don’t eat that.”
The look of scorn from Rory’s green eyes could’ve bowled a horse over. “Excuse me?” It was the tone she’d stolen from Kathy when she was just coming into her teens. The follow-up statement bore a sass all her own. “Why not? Where else do you think this came from, fairies or something?”
Kathy took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to say yes to that. “I just don’t think it’s ours. No one has invited us to eat it, and I don’t think your grandma, who may I remind you is as you say ‘ancient,’ went through the effort of not only making all this but bringing it here, who knows how far from her house, setting it out on the ground where I’m sure she’s super comfortable eating these days, and then just… left it? Look at the steam from, well, nearly everything. It can’t have been here long and I’m sure whoever set it out will be back soon.”
“Sure, whatever you say,” Rory mumbled. Through a full mouth. Kathy looked at her, aghast. She had a roll in her hand and had taken a big bite.
“Rory!” Kathy shouted, frozen in shock. Michael sat up with surprising speed and slapped her hand, sending the roll sailing out of it and across the clearing, tumbling to a stop next to a small tree.
Rory stopped chewing, staring at Michael’s stern gaze suddenly right next to her own. He pointed to his mouth and then the ground. “Spit it out,” Michael said. Then he leaned back, laced his fingers behind his head, and closed his eyes again.
Rory looked back and forth between Michael and her mother, then hesitantly spit the roll into her hand, chucked it a little ways away, and wiped her hand off on her shirt. “What’s got you two in a twist?”
“Ah-ha!” came a small voice from the ground. “The orange one has eaten our food! She must now serve us for a year and a day!”
Kathy was surprised at how unsurprised she felt right now. Just an uncomfortable stomach clench of I knew it which frankly should have been absurd. Rory was staring at the picnic spread, eyes bugged out farther than Kathy had ever seen before. Michael was up on his elbow now, too. Kathy slowly dragged her eyes to follow their gaze.
A small…man? stood on the picnic spread. He was so short that his feet, spread in a defiant stance, didn’t overflow the woven checker square below him. His skin was green, his blue-green hair like a thatch of mossy lichen, his ears long, pointed, and drooping towards the ground. He wore clothes that looked like they were made of aspen bark, curling at the seams, though they moved with him like fabric.
“Hello, sir,” Kathy said, bending close. “What should I call you?” She had to think through the best wording for her sentences. “You can call us Kathy, Michael, and Rory.”
“I am called Sprigwort!” the small man declared. “Now the orange one must serve us!”
“Rory, did you eat any of their food?” Kathy asked, not turning to look at her.
“I… um, just the bite you made me spit out,” she responded. This was the least sarcastic she’d sounded all day.
“There you are, Sprigwort. No one’s eaten your food. And in apology for trespassing unbidden on your land, I give you…” she slung her own backpack onto the grass and rummaged in the side pocket, “this gift of food.” She pulled out a granola bar. “This external part is not edible, it is like… a banana peel.” She looked at him for a moment but he seemed to understand bananas so she moved on. “When you want to eat the contents, take this crinkling part off. If you’re careful with it, the wrapper can be used to make waterproof materials.” She put the granola bar on the ground.
Sprigwort looked up at her, beady black eyes squinting. “This is unusual, usually the humans take our food and do not give it.”
“Well, humans do have to eat regularly,” Kathy said. “Our bodies demand it.”
Sprigwort looked confused. “You must? How often?”
“Several times a day,” Kathy said, straightening.
Sprigwort’s face paled. “Several? Every time the sun is up?”
“Yes,” Kathy said with a nod. “That’s why food lures work so well.”
“We did not realize this was such a human weakness!” Sprigwort said.
Ok the timer has gone off and I need to stop. Also because children are getting up and I’ll be interrupted anyway. I may return later to the adventures of Kathy and co.
And if anyone’s wondering, I got this prompt from, yes, watching Spirited Away yesterday.
Intellectual Property of Elizabeth Doman
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