Writing Prompt: This could be a good thing.

Good Morning one and all. I am running a bit late, but for once it is not due to me hitting the snooze button. No it is actually due to the lack of rain in the night. we expected rain, we did not get rain and so I had to water this morning when I hadn’t planned. I am actually going to have to get up a little earlier each morning so i can take care of the watering before the sun turns up. We’ve been lucky with rain thus far, but I think the spring rains are tapering off. And so morning watering needs to be planned. Which means that as I get into the schedule next week may have a few late starts as well. I may have to disable the snooze button. But here we are at the final prompt of the week so let’s dive in.

I think that this could be an interesting tale. I am nit sure if it is the tale of Frank or one of Gavin because I actually started to see a story for each of them as I was writing. Perhaps I will intertwine the two. There may be notes later today actually..

Friday, May 12^th: This could be a good thing.

“This could be a good thing,” he said.  Frank tried a tentative smile. 

Gavin looked up.  His face was a study in misery. Everything about him seemed to sag in disappointment.  “Why would…how could this be a good thing?” he asked.  His voice was hollow washed out of all of the emotion, the passion, the energy it usually held.  It caused a pain in Frank’s heart to see it, but he kept his face set in pleasant sympathetic lines.

Frank sat down next to Gavin so the younger man would not have to crane his neck to look up to him.  He was still well over a head taller than the young man but it would be less of an angle.

“Look,” Frank began.  “For as long as I have known you, you have had one goal and one goal only.  You were going to get into that program at the Stephen’s Academy.”

“And now they’ve rejected me,” Gavin said. The words dropped out of his mouth as deflated as the young man himself.

“They did,” Frank said.  He added a solidly firm tone to his words instead of the sympathetic ones he used earlier and saw Gavin’s spine stiffen.  Frank cheered to see a spark of energy returning but kept his joy inside.

“Are you going to tell me it’s for the best too?” he said.  “That I should have known my place?”

Frank snorted and allowed his derision to show.  “I am not,” he said, voice hard and flat.  “And if you believe that for a moment, either from me or from them then you are the dirt brained low life they call you.”

Anger sparked in Gavin’s eyes now.  “So then what?

Frank allowed himself a smile.  “You worked hard and studied.  You learned and you passed every test they threw at you.”

“And yet they still rejected me because of my family?”

“They did.  Which is why it is time for you to take your blinders off.”

“Blinders?” Gavin asked.

“The Stephen’s academy isn’t the only academy in the world.  It is simply the only one you can see from here.  You’ve passed all the tests they can throw at you.  And they made them deliberately harder than they man their good family students exams because they were affronted that you actually requested to take them.”

“So?”

“So what about the other schools that are just as good as The Stephen’s Academy but who either don’t Know about your family not being up to standards or simply don’t care.  There might be places that care more about what is in your head rather than where that head came from.  Find them, succeed and then show the Stephen’s Academy you don’t need their approval to make your future what you want.”

Frank took a deep breath.  It was a long speech for him.  He was more accustomed to letting only a few words slip past his lips at a time.  This steady stream was more than he said in the last month, all strung together at one time. He was pleased to see it was worth it. 

Gavin’s anger faded back into something more thoughtful.  The lines of his body perked up, like air being slowly blown back into a sagging tyre.  Frank could see Gavin’s self return as he began to see a way out, a way forward, a way other than the Stephen’s Academy to escape the fate those in town seemed destined to create for him.

“Other places…” Gavin said.