Meghan: Write

My pencil lead snapped as I pressed it against the page. Again I clicked out the lead and pressed the point to the paper, waiting for inspiration to strike. A cool breeze riffled through my hair, practically shuffling through the ideas in my brain for me, but none were willing to flow out onto the paper. I had come to this place for a very specific reason. My goal was a difficult one to achieve, but achieve it I would with the aid of my sunny surroundings.
I tapped my pencil against my mouth and stared around me for something interesting. A cheerful spring gurgled near my toes and some bright fish frolicked in its waters. My eye twitched, but I smoothed the muscle down with a free hand. I would achieve my goal, I would. My knee bounced against the soft green grass and I fought to still it. As a lamb skipped past me over the water I just couldn’t take it anymore.
“ENOUGH!!” I screamed at the bright blue sky, “I JUST CAN’T DO IT!!”
But the weather remained glad and warm against my skin, unwilling to bend against my temper.
“Didn’t you hear me!?” I shouted louder. But the cheerful surroundings seemed to want me to admit defeat.
I sighed and bowed my head, “I just can’t write a happy story.”
Iron chains curled up from beneath the grass and wrapped around my legs and arms. They forced me into a contemplative position, with my head bent over my pencil and paper. It seemed that I would have to write this happy scene whether I wanted to or not. Perhaps this was how delightful children’s novels were written, with the author fettered to such objects of bright inspiration as I was? How else could they keep their thoughts fastened on such happy things?
With what seemed like a herculean effort I raised my pencil to paper and began to write. I didn’t lack inspiration now. But what flowed from my pen weren’t sunshine and daisies, but goblins and horrors. The meadows around me shrieked in agony as they melted into shadowy stones and crabbed plants. The chains crawled on my skin greedily, changing into wings, claws, horns; whatever my mind landed on. I walked up the hills to where a castle was now jutting out. This is where I preferred to be.




-M