On the verge of death, a penultimate god leaves behind a terrible enemy and an unexpected legacy.
Music: “Mystical Town” by Chris Logsdon
[Video Description: “Silent Serpent Under Sea” Trailer. Duration, 37 seconds. Music, “Mystical Town” by Chris Logsdon. Digital drawing. A sea serpent, facing forward, floating in water. At right, near bottom, the head is directed downward. A crown of spiny fins extend from the back of the head and around the face. The serpent’s body extends up and then arcs down and loops to the left. The end of the tail is directed up to upper left corner and ends in spiny fins. Fins also arc along the top third of the serpent’s back, and one set closer to the tail. Some of the scales bear glowing marks that appear like characters or letters of an unreadable language. Title card with the words “Short Story” and “Genre: Mythology,” is displayed at top. Tagline is displayed at bottom. It reads: “On the verge of death, a penultimate god leaves behind a terrible enemy and an unexpected legacy.” Title card and tagline fade. A watermark of the word “storyfeather” appears over the image. Lines from the story appear in sequence: ‘If the tunnels aren’t dangerous, why would anyone close them on purpose?’ ‘I didn’t say they weren’t dangerous.’ I nodded. Of course. Knowledge was dangerous. And knowledge was what we would find at the end of this tunnel.” Animation of twinkles appear around the serpent’s head between seconds 3 and 6. Animation of faint characters streaming down from top to bottom appear at second 12 and continue till the last few seconds. Site URL appears at bottom center throughout and fades at end. As the last line disappears, the image blurs, the story title appears at center, and a text card appears at top that reads “Available to Read Now storyfeather.com.”]
Welcome to Year 9 of Storyfeather
Every year’s short stories (mostly) follow a theme. This year, I will turn the Wheel of Fiction to help me decide what to write. There are thirteen spokes on this wheel. Eight are occupied by the eight themes from the previous years of stories. One is a prompt to turn the wheel again. One is a wildcard (hmm…curious). And three are covered only in question marks. I suppose I’ll find out what’s beneath those questions as we go along.
Welcome to the WHEEL OF FICTION
The Wheel of Fiction landed on Creatures. I’ve done many stories on Creatures at this point in the year. It’s one theme I enjoy, but I wanted to write something different from what I’ve done before, at least what I’ve done before this year. Typically, the creature in question ends up being fearsome, haunting, or at least creepy. So I applied one of the most easy-to-use tools in the old writing brainstorm toolkit…what if I “reversed the polarity?” What if instead of being feared, the creature in this story was beloved, or maybe even ridiculed and ignored? This made me think of mythologies with gods that have different aspects—a fearsome aspect and a glorious aspect. What if the creature in this story had both of those, but also a third? And what if everyone else wanted the other two aspects, but the creature favored the third aspect?
But…I didn’t like the idea of the creature being ridiculed, not in this story at least. And if they were ignored, I didn’t know that there would be a story there. What if the creature was shy or scared?
[Video Description: Duration, 8 seconds. Choice wheel made on the Spin the Wheel application. Thirteen spokes or slices in various colors, labeled as follows, clockwise from the top: Objects of Power (the “of Power” is not visible), Prompts, Definitions, Turn Again, Elements, Creatures, S.T.E.A.M., Wildcard, Revisitation, Music, Challenge, Draw!!!, Traveler. The title at top reads “The Wheel of Fiction V4” and below that the words “Spin the wheel.” Below that is the date of the spin, 6/4/2022. At top left corner is a flag icon labeled with the letter “F.” This represents a function of the application which interferes with true randomness by reducing the probability of receiving the same choice twice in a row. The wheel turns and lands on Turn Again, turns again and lands on CREATURES. At 1 second, in front of the wheel’s bottom half, an animated serpent rises from the bottom center, loops around until the head faces forward and opens its jaws wide.]
Genre: Mythology
Tags: DEATH, FEAR, GOD, GRANDFATHER, HISTORY, KNOWLEDGE, LIBRARY, TUNNEL, WAR
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