Morning all. We seem to be more or less back to normal. It is cold but it has warmed up enough that ice is no longer weighing down power lines and the internet is no longer taking random naps through out the day. Which does make things feel less like a race against time. So without scrambling to fit the prompt between power outages, let’s dive into the morning prompt. Fifteen minutes on the timer and off we go.
Not entirely certain what the project is but I like the dynamic I will need to think about the details of this, but I am a fan of these character types interacting. Just need to figure out the story before I push further in.
Thursday, January 29th: She smirked behind her father’s back.
She smirked behind her father’s back. I saw the smirk, recognized it. It was a smirk of victory. By the time her father turned around again, her face morphed into the sweet little innocent he always expected to see. I sighed as they left.
There was no point pushing the matter. I wouldn’t win.
Once Christine convinced her father she was innocent nothing would change his mind. Obviously this mess was my fault. I looked over my destroyed supplies. They were collected over months in preparation. Many of the elements were hard to find or only produced in small quantities. To gather everything I needed I had to put my name on waiting lists, order in advance and maneuver through customs.
I was now waiting for only a few small items and then I would be able to begin. In preparation I began moving the items out of storage so I could sort through them and get them arranged. Christine knew that. She spent much of the past year making fun of me for being so ‘picky’ when I was specific in my orders. As always she assumed that anything I was doing was something anyone could accomplish with any old thing.
The fact that I was so deliberate with the items I needed and planned to use for the project amused her. She likened it to a pig ordering a Dior handbag to carry slop. I bit my tongue at the repeated insults knowing that yelling back would only cause her to fake cry and get her father to demand justice for his tormented angel. I suffered through enough punishments because of it to know that outcome wouldn’t change.
I knew it was no surprise that Christine chose now to interfere with my supplies. Aside from mocking them when they came in, she ignored them. It made me complacent. I somehow thought she would continue to ignore them. I looked at the torn boxes, the delicate items that were crushed or ripped. In my head I heard Christine’s justification.
‘You’ve had the items so long I thought you were just doing a clear out to create space by getting rid of all this old junk.’
I took a deep breath and set it aside.
“Maybe it isn’t as bad as it looks,” I told myself. “Most of the damage seemed to be done to the items on top. There might be enough salvageable that I could continue with my project.”
I rolled up my sleeves and began my assessment. It took several hours and there was a heartbreaking amount that I had to dispose of. Yet all was not lost. There was enough that my project could go forward. I would need to replace a few items, but most of the items I needed to replace I could pick up easily. I got lucky as the harder to replace items seemed to escape relatively unscathed.
“But I can’t work here.”
That was a given. If Christine saw my project going ahead then she would be certain to do something else and I was not going to let that happen. I needed a place to work that she couldn’t access. It didn’t take too much thought to come up with the perfect place, a place I knew Christine would never think to check.
Ten til Midnight 