1) Accept 15,000 words rather than 50,000 words as a goal. I'm a first-year teacher; I have other stressful ways to ambitiously spend my time.
2) Shamelessly steal from popular fiction, so as to avoid the worst of writer's block.
3) Copy/paste from a Word file so as to have double copies of this...
4) Procrastinate on doing this as an incentive to improve lesson plans.
And now, to posting!
A long time ago, in a land far, far away, there was an evil Empire of great power, pride, and prejudice. The ancient and decrepit Emperor Paparazzi had overwhelmed the Free Kingdoms of the Gallici with sorceries most dark and deep, and at the time our story begins was finally dissolving the ancient Council of Kings to claim absolute authority over the life and death of every being in the known world.
The Gallici still remembered the days of their freedom, from before the Dark Times, and brave rebels arose to fight the Emperor almost before his ascent to power. Striking from a hidden base deep in the Nivay Mountains, the rebels managed to smuggle plans for the Emperor’s secret Star Fortress of Death to a brave princess fleeing the Council of Kings to aid her father in the Rebellion.
Our story opens on the Princess’s doomed ship as it engages in a futile attempt to battle the Emperor’s agents…
“We’re doomed.”
The Raccoon spared a sidelong glance at the speaker. Threep, a particularly temperamental Parrot, had no business being on a Rebel ship. He seemed to take naturally to the role of pampered, obsequious slave, which was wonderful if the Princess needed furniture to keep up the appearance of being a quiet, quiescent sort of royalty. The Raccoon was usually content to hang out with the Parrot, who was occasionally willing to jabber in Raccoon (and Shiny knew there were few enough beings physiologically able to jabber in Raccoon around these parts), but Threep’s histrionics could get wearing.
“Look! They’ve taken out the mainsail!” Threep continued.
Privately, the Raccoon thought, No, duh, but kept the thoughts unvoiced. If Threep failed to remember that the Raccoon knew more about sailing and maintaining ships than anyone else on board – that the Raccoon’s entire job was to be aware of the slightest problem on board and fix it as rapidly as possible – then Threep was not worth answering.
“This is madness!” No, the Raccoon thought, this is desperation.
“There’ll be no escape for the Princess this time,” Threep concluded.
The Raccoon’s eyes widened at the approach of an ominously familiar dragon. he chittered at Threep.
“Honestly, Art, I don’t know why you insist on dragging me this way, it’s very undignif-“ and the Raccoon, whom we shall have to call Art for lack of Raccoonish letters with which to spell his real name, closed his small hand desperately over the Parrot’s beak as he dragged him behind the door.
Four dragons had dragged the Princess’s small ship to the large Imperial vessel, allowing the Imperial navy to board. Art had barely caught a glimpse of that last, dreaded dragon landing before he was whisked away by a pair of Human hands. The Princess was very lucky that Art knew her scent, that was all he could think.
No comments:
Post a Comment