In 300 words or less, write a passage (it can be an excerpt from your WIP, flash fiction, a poem, or any other writing) that shows (rather than tells) the following:
- you're scared and hungry
- it's dusk
- you think someone is following you
- and just for fun, see if you can involve all five senses AND include these random words: shimmer, saccadic, substance, and salt.
Here's my entry, clocking in at 297 words:
Most people believe that pixies can't die. It's a good belief, and it protects my people.It's wrong, though.We can die. We do die. Sometimes alone, and sometimes in a horde of thousands.However we die, though, it's always for the same reason.Someone kills us.-----Thorns dig deep into my legs as I rush through the field of prickberries. My tiny legs shimmer in and out of existence, but always the thorns pull them back into the present, preventing my escape. The scent of the prickberries causes my mouth to water, and I slow for a moment to check the prickberry seed pods. The pods collapse into an ashy white gel at my touch, devoid of nourishment. I taste one anyway, then quickly spit out the bitter substance. I moan, a deep primal sound that comes from the barren well of my stomach, before hazarding a glance behind me. Pixie salt bleeds from the wound above my left eye, clouding my vision, but my right eye still functions. I scan quickly over the field, my saccadic eye movements jumping from rock to bush to the occasional stunted tree. I see nothing, but the whispers flow toward me over the grass, and the click-click-clicks pulse upward from the earth, now making even the nearby bushes shake and shudder. I whimper, then turn and fling myself forward. The Mogondo Forest looms before me, only a league away, and the horizon is pregnant with reds and purples, the first few stars peering down at me from above. I might make it. No one else did, but I might. This thought sustains me as I huff and groan, my body expending the last of its energy in an attempt to pull me into the sanctuary of the forest.
