Morning all. I woke up and had a fight with my contacts. They won so I’m in glasses today. It always makes the world seem oddly rounded for the first few hours so I sort of feel like I’m in a fishbowl. Kind of an odd way to start the morning. But such is life. And fishbowl or not it is time for the morning prompt. Are you ready? Good. Then let’s go.
I think this sort of fits with a story I’ve been working on. Or at least I can use the map and sea monster as a part of a story I’ve been working on. Maybe. I’ll have to look at it later. Either way, not a bad morning after all.
Tuesday, May 18th: It was by pure accident that he discovered the key.
It was by pure accident that he discovered the key. The map stood in the hallway for as long as he could remember. In fact it stood there as long as his father or grandfather could remember. It was placed there by his great grandfather when the house was built and full decorated. There was a family story about his great grandmother’s attempt to get rid of it and replace it with something more picturesque and company appropriate, but her efforts were doomed to failure.
The story was told sometimes to illustrate the stubbornness of the Galvant Family in general and sometimes to illustrate their somewhat strange tastes.
The map wasn’t a typical décor item. It was pressed behind protective glass that despite daily cleanings had yellowed from decades of pipe smoke. The yellowed glass dulled some of the images on the map and made it tamer. People now had to look to see that instead of mermaids along the borders dancing skeletons were woven. To Daniel they always looked like drowned sailors more than anything else, a belief encouraged by the partially wrecked ship seen in the far left corner.
Daniel was fairly certain that when his mother did spray and wipe down the glass covering the map, she skimmed over the part holding the sea monster swimming through the uncharted waters between land masses. He couldn’t blame her. Curious he took out a stool and studied it. Where other artists contented themselves with acceptable sea monsters, the artist here was almost lurid with his detail. For Its teeth looks sharp and were tinged with blood, the claws could just be seen dancing on the surface of the waves. The artist had skill and the monster fairly swam off of the page. The sight of it had given him nightmares for weeks as a child and still in the depths of night when monsters surfaced in his dreams, that fellow always led the pack. Zombies and vampires couldn’t hold a candle to him.
Oddly it was this monster that helped him fins the key. In the weeks after his grandfather died, there were certain bequests made. His grandmother couldn’t live in the house alone and in fact looked eager to escape it. He was told to go search through the rooms looking for things he’d like to take with him. Most of the antique furniture his parents aunts and uncles were discussing held no interest for him and he went into the upper floors to escape the sharp, if still polite comments in the discussion. As he climbed the stairs he realized that he had not been to the upper levels of the house since he was a child. His grandparents moved to a room on the first floor, converting the former servants areas into livable space right off the kitchen so they didn’t have to climb as many stairs. The guest rooms were all on the floor above. It left An entire floor plus the attic closed off in the day to day world.
‘Not to mention the servant’s quarters and stairwells,’ he reminded himself. He remembered the place seeming like a rabbit warren when he was younger. Deciding to give the others space to work out who was taking what, he climbed into the attic and began looking around. There were trunks with labels plastered to them reminiscent of ocean going voyages. There was luggage from several eras in fact from leather cases to modern cases with wheels and handles.
Ten til Midnight 