A Witch’s Path

The Challenge:

250-350 words featuring a character with one concrete want (a table, a moose, a toothbrush, anything physical is fine!) and one weakness. Set up the story where every other sentence is a rising action. To help you come up with rising actions, use one word from the following list of twelve words in each sentence that has a rising action. In other words: Write your first sentence introducing your character. Make the next sentence a rising action using one of the following twelve words. Write your third sentence, which may introduce the weakness, then write your fourth sentence with a rising action that includes one of the remaining eleven words you haven’t used. And so on. • trick • memory • aboard • tiger • pretend • carrot • appliance • cage • rings • crow • filthy • explode You must use at least 6 of the 12 words, but you are encouraged to challenge yourself to use as many of the words as possible while still meeting the word count.

The Story:

Once upon a time, there was a novice witch attempting to master the art of calling lycanthropes to her aid or service. To do so she wanted to find the Great Wolf Fenrir as he was one of the great shifters, but as she walked, she came upon a forked road and found her memory of the familiar path was gone.

This was not good as night would eventually fall and she was completely blind during this time, so as any good witch was prone to do, she expanded her energy and followed the path whose energy she most associated with wolves.

As she followed the path she came across a tiger, sleepily looking at her. Following the same theory she had when dealing with mastering the Leopard, she reached into her satchel and prepared a small offering of meat and amethyst stones.

Continuing on her journey, out of the dry path and into the forest, the witch came across with no way to pass without disturbing the several fairy rings present. The girl called out in fairy tongue, summoning their emissary and proposed a deal. After she had fulfilled it, the novice tried to leave but the faeries pretended their deal had been a different one. Incensed with their disloyalty the with invoked an old ritual of truth and the winged beings were forced to release her.

When her feet once again hit the ground she felt the air around her explode, her ears ringing. Just how long had she been gone for the atmosphere to be affecting her so? She placed her hands on her hears and chanted until she was able to regain her wits.

She had not taken two steps when a crow landed on her head demanding she tell him where to find the temple of his mistress, Morrigan. The witch took a calming breath, and tired of all the events agreed in the condition that the crow would be her eyes in the nighttime during her quest to find Fenrir. And so Crow and Witch began their quest for the divine.

I know the story is not developed, and each paragraph’s idea would be enough for a chapter on their own, however, the challenge was 350 words (too little!) and I wrote 347. How do you think I did?

XOXO

Emme

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