This week’s story will be posted soon. This is the anniversary post for Storyfeather’s seventh year!
The Year of Prompts is done! That was the theme for Storyfeather Year Seven. Take a writing prompt and write a short story from it.
Thank you to everyone who read even a single story. Thank to you everyone who liked or commented. Thank you for your time and interest, and for being a part of Storyfeather, especially Year Seven.
A lot happens in the seventh year stories. An inventor builds a time machine out of a jukebox. Three friends do their science project on a forgotten novelty invention, a self-peeling banana. A small team of marine explorers search for a mythical jewel that fell from the heavens. A family is haunted by a demon that is not satisfied with collecting the fallen teeth of their children. And a young drummer commits the crime of “creativity without a license.”
I’ve written over 350 stories now. And I posted my 150th podcast episode (I’ll soon be wrapping up Season Three, in which I’m narrating stories from Storyfeather Year Three). Year Seven was a worthy challenge, but I’m glad to be moving on. Sometimes I “cheated” and deviated by just writing a story based on a dream or a notion (and reverse-engineering some kind of prompt from that). It’s easy to find writing prompts. There are free apps and sites. But what I found challenging was to find a prompt with the proper level of specificity.
Storytelling is still my true love, still my destiny, still my path. And this year in particular, storytelling has been and still is my haven. And my hope.
Year Eight is on the horizon. Here’s to seeing what stories I’ll be spinning up (that’s a dorky clue to the theme). I hope you’ll come along.
I have stories to tell you.
Nila
At the center of my memory is the image of a horse, a horse the color of orange cream, rearing up, and glancing at me, with an oceanic glint in her eye. She has wings. She has fins. She is fast. I remember. She was fast. Slicing through the water like a ray of sunlight.
Rinidra’s ears went flat and her tail went stiff. The mottled blur moving toward her was fast, too fast. If she had heard it a fraction of a heartbeat later, she wouldn’t have even seen it.
The Reptilian Vaudevillians arrived every ninth full moon, and their performances were so mesmerizing that beasts and creatures of every ilk would come and gather by the swampy stage to watch, to be awed, to laugh, and buzz, and hiss, and rattle.
Again, residents are warned to stay indoors, keep your kids and pets indoors, and if you’ve got loved ones coming home from work, just be vigilant when you’re making that trek from your vehicle to your front door. Bob? Anything to add?
As the elephant king lay dying, struck silent by his pain, able only to breathe shattered breaths, his mind thought its last thoughts.
The swallow was a happy bird, but also somewhat superior. Nothing brought her joy the way flying did. Slicing through the clouds and flicking the air with the perfect points of her tail. She believed that birds were the supreme creatures of the world. Because they could fly. Some insects could fly as well, of course. But birds could fly higher, faster, and farther than any insect. 
