Welcome to the first Monday of 2023. I see a bright new year stretching out before me. For the past few years I have posted and written one fifteen minute Writing prompt each week day. Personally I really love doing it. While at the end of the year it does give me a stockpile of story ideas, locations, characters and occasionally lines just too fantastic to be left to linger in the files, that is really a secondary benefit. For me the prime thing that these morning writing prompts do is get my brain into a writing mode. There are plenty of mornings where I just don’t feel like writing. I tell myself that all I have to do is the fifteen minute prompt. And then I can do whatever i want. So I set the timer and it never fails, by the time the timer dings, my brain ha shifted and i am in the mood to write. Whatever noise was in my head telling me that other things should take priority have settled down and I am simply ready to write.
For me that is the prime benefit. Admittedly, the extra story ideas I never anticipated are also a bit of a bonus. So lets see what the first prompt of the first week day of the new year brings. Ready, set, write.
Interesting. It took me a while to get into this and I still spun my wheels for a bit but I think I started to glimmer a pathway in the end. Not my favorite, but interesting.
Monday, January 2nd: The steps were worn from use.
The steps were worn from use. In the center, each of the stone steps had a dip showing where generations walked, the routine and ritual of use wearing away at the hard granite. There was a part of me that wanted to place my feet where theirs once walked. To step where they stepped. There was another part of me that wanted to step on the non-worn sections of the massive stone steps charting my own path and imprinting my path on the untouched stone.
I shook the thought away as silliness. I would no0t use these steps often enough to wear any sort of path in the stone. Still there was something about the stone. Those tips of wear while the rest still looked crisply cut. I found myself shifting to the edges as I climbed and avoiding the worn spots. I was the last in the line, and followed the others up the steep stone stair case. I watched them all sawy as they climbed, one right after the other in a long line. I saw their feet, each step placed directly in the center of the worn spot.
I felt a shiver run down my spine. I had the feeling before on several occasions. Shortly after the feeling something bad happened. I pulled to the side of the step I was on, drawing further onto the untouched stone and into the sharply chiseled sections. I continued to climb as climbing felt right, but I looked around, trying to find what brought about the sense of danger I felt. Nothing seemed amiss. There was just a group of people winding their way up the steep path to the top of the mountain. Once on top, there would be feasting and dancing.
Yet something felt wrong. I wondered if it was that I was an outsider. The stairs had an almost ritualistic feel to them as they wound around the mountain to reach the top. I tried telling myself it was just that this was not my ritual, not my familiar territory, but the feeling of unease increased the further up the mountain the path wound.
Along the way there were small basins of water. The others dipped their fingers in as they passed, lifting dripping fingers to their lips as they continued to climb. The path worn in the stone showed where these basins were located. The path of many generations of feet wore a bath from the center of the stair to the basin and then back to the center of the stair as well. I came across the first basin it was a bowl clutched in the hands of a carved creature. It had scales and claws with emeralds for eyes but resembled no creature I had ever seen. Perhaps it was the lights shifting over the gemstones, but I found myself shrinking from it and walking on the far side of the steps as I passed it by.
Each basin was held by carved creatures that looked like nature turned monstrous. One had emerald eyes, another pearls while a third held rubies. The creature with the obsidian eyes I found most chilling.
Ten til Midnight 