Creativity Brewing

"Bride at a wedding ceremony"   by  Scott Webb  is licensed under  CC0 1.0  Wires and tubes protruded from his body as he remained unconscious on the hospital bed. And incessant beeping drove insane his already terror-stricken bride-to-be. It held a steady rhythm. And with each tone it was a reminder that they were both alive. The man in front of her as well as her father. She suppressed her demons and inched closer to the bed. Beep. Beep. Beep. Reaching down, she clasped her fingers around his paw of a hand. No bullet could take him out. He was strong. A brute. Her brute. Nonetheless, his vulnerability shone in the drab light of the ICU. She held her breath to feel the pulse in his hand. Gauze bulged in his hospital gown around his side. He was lucky, the doctors had told her. An inch this way or that and they would have been having a different discussion. Had they brought him into the hospital a minute longer he would have lost too much blood....

100 Day Writing Challenge Day #11 Prompt : “The garden shrank at night.” There was a once man in a land of famine who had pleased the king by his plentiful crops and saved the kingdom. The man was granted a single wish from the Oracle. Upon deep consideration and with a cunning wit inherited from his parents, the man decided to wish for his garden to shrink during the evening and spring back to life during the day. Thus, he carried his shrinking garden in his hat during the night as he traveled from one kingdom to another, presenting the yields of his garden to the kings and queens thereof, acquiring a bundle of wishes to be redeemed as he saw fit. With wishes for riches in possessions and land, he became the wealthiest and most influential farmer in all the lands because of the garden that shrank at night. -(c) Kevin Barrick 

100 Day Writing Challenge Day # 10 Prompt: “The kingdom was like a quilt…” Amani crept down to the river, holding her breath as she passed her parents’ quarters. She dared not wake her father. Not only would he be enraged over losing precious sleep when he had to wake up early to tend the farm, but he’d be unhinged knowing where she was sneaking off to. The frogs croaked out their evening sonatas in the fields around her house. She hopped over the fence and weaved her way through a grove, flailing her arms about her as she crossed through an invisible swarm of gnats. The river below babbled loudly, and she climbed up a tree that stretched out above it. The river fed water into the farmlands, snaking from the Great Sea. Her village benefited the most as the water swelled to about half a kilometer wide through much of region until it began narrowing to a few meters wide throughout the rest of the kingdom. Her fingers and toes were nimble as she scaled the mighty oak feeli...

100 Day Writing Challenge Day #9 Prompt: “The Third Terra was going the way of the First…” Humanity has encountered extinction twice before. Once a couple millennia ago on the planet Earth, and again circa 500 years ago on the planet Horus. Both times humanity drove its home planet into an inhabitable, unsustainable land stripped of all its resources. No one likes to take responsibility, but I personally blame the obvious offenders: Overpopulation, greed, power-mongering, radical religions, and narcissism. It’s rather easy to burn at the stake the big companies for polluting the water supplies, corrupting the media, or sucking the planets dry of all their life-blood. Notwithstanding, it is individuals who enterprise those vile corporations. Individuals over-breed their populations out of carelessness, ideologies, or criminal pursuits of passion and power. Corporations only sell what individuals will consume and only fabricate what the listeners will accept as truth. The...

100 Day Writing Challenge Day # 8 Prompt: “We were going to have to find a locksmith…” The rhythm of the seductive slow dance pulled the strings as we swayed there in lockstep in the middle of the room. The entire wedding party danced in a circle around us as I held my newly-wed wife close. Her head rested against my shoulder, her fragrant aroma wafted around my face. We had just met three months ago, but I knew from the moment my eyes caught a glimpse of the life behind her own. There was a mystery about her, but I loved mystery. Her smile was like a bolt of electricity to my heart, knocking it off rhythm. Her strength of spirit commandeered my soul and took it captive in her near-whimsical nature. She took her passions by the horns and followed wherever they may take her, even if she might not know the destination. The slow dance ended abruptly to the upbeat rhythms of dub-step. My wife’s train-less wedding dress was her advantage as she sprung away from me up in a sty...

100 Day Writing Challenge Day # 7 Prompt: There were 48,000 gods in their mythology and not one…” -Daniel Conway  The Ancients viewed the world through the eyes of gods and goddesses, explaining the nature of science and mathematics through communicating the accounts of the different members of the pantheon. The sun rose and set on a predetermined timescale; this phenomenon became the birth of the sun god. The moon kept reign over the sky during the night when the sun god rested and thus a moon god emerged. Or perhaps the pantheon itself created the world and the various laws within in respect to their own personalities. The terrible might of the thunder god wreaked thunderous havoc upon Earth. The flamboyant nature god gave flight to the bee, dance to the vines, and joy of the flowers. And yet, despite there being 48,000 gods in the pantheon that devoted their lives to various scientific and social functions of the world, not one saw the meteor encroaching ...

100 Day Writing Challenge Day 6 Prompt: A moth-craft, ether, a plant that tells your fortune. The world was expansive to the jungle critters. More so was the enormity of the world to a species of elf-like creatures smaller than a ladybug, yet whose ambitions were as grand as the moon. It was under this moon that an Enkulal relaxed on a warm banana leaf. Marsi the Enkulal looked up at the moon blotting out the evening sky. His nerves were on edge. His heart beat an irregular rhythm. He breathed in the calming ambient air of the jungle. The floral snaking around the base of the banana tree wafted up to him. The next morning was the day he embarked on a journey to the great Nibiyu. Nibiyu was an enchanted plant with the ability to foresee the future of anyone who dared to venture through the dangerous chasm of invisible exploding dew. The trek was far from easy, and only a few could ever navigate their way to the plant of fortune. Marsi was the prince with this task being...