Today my story was much shorter than yesterday’s: only 2561 words. I had a bunch of prompts from the Facebook Story Prompt Group of which I’m a member.
This god of dying takes the form of an adult man. He is inhumanly tall and has a masculine build. He has no hair, but instead his head is covered in spines. His eyes are gateways into the underworld. His skin is covered in a toxic substance. He is usually portrayed as wearing an unconventional costume, which incorporates coffin designs. He carries a cube. He has multiple shadows.
A well-kept road leads through the neglected human town to a modest castle of yellow brick on the crest of a hill. This holding, which belongs to a crafty lady, abounds in game animals. The most notable feature is the dozen spires of glittering crystal.
This energetic girl has slitted black eyes that are like two pieces of obsidian. Her silky, wavy, scarlet hair is worn in a style that reminds you of a pair of wings. She is very short and has a muscular build. Her skin is ruddy. She has a wide forehead and knobby ears. Her wardrobe is strange.
Then I added another prompt for the story itself: A nauseating brigand is opposed by an ill-fated ruler who uses a cloak during a fist fight in a hermit’s cave.
I used the god of dying–he’s the PoV character for the story. The castle is only vaguely mentioned in the story; maybe in rewrites it will get a bit more description. The girl is the ill-fated ruler. For the last prompt, I managed to get in everything but the fist fight.
Here’s an excerpt:
Ebrima Bah hated manifesting in the hermit’s cave. Since he was twelve feet tall, and the cave’s highest reach was barely six, he either ended up from his navel to the top of his spiky head inside the gritty stone of the hillside, or he had to bend double, which was not dignified. This time, he arranged himself in sitting position, cross-legged, arms folded across his chest, before he manifested.
Ebrima hoped, every time he visited the cave, that it was Musa Darbo, the hermit himself, he had been summoned to attend. He relished the thought of escorting Musa to the Next Lands. He would make the trip slow and agonizing, as a very small payment for the number of times Musa had saved someone who was taking his–or her–last breath. It irked Ebrima no end to travel all the way to the land of the living for nothing.
This time though, when Ebrima arrived (very dignified in his breastplate of tiny coffin-shaped beads, and his green trousers embroidered with golden human skulls) in Musa’s cave, he was certain that his journey was not in vain. The man lying on the pallet in Musa’s sick room had clearly been mauled by a wild beast, and was about to take his last gasp.