Meme: Writing Sample!

[bigbadgunn.livejournal.com]

It's Monday. I'm mourning my loss of Worf and I need distractions from the monotonous work task I have in front of me today.

So let's see some of those writing samples you put together for your newer characters, shall we?

Comments

[isntabitpretty.livejournal.com]

I asked Twitter for a suggestion for what it should rain during a fire drill for this writing sample, and boho_to_be's suggestion of maple syrup was too perfect for me not to use it.

And I continue my trend of using my own characters for my writing samples.

***

Sara had been warned about this when she first arrived: this, and a host of other strange events that by all accounts happened in Fandom with regularity but still seemed to test the limits of even her capacity for imagination. The alarm had gone off in the middle of the night, leaving all the students in the dorms to rush out onto the front lawn in their sleeping clothes . . . and into a downpour of maple syrup.

Sighing and holding her head up with as much dignity as one could be expected to muster when one was rapidly getting drenched in sticky-sweet syrup, Sara tried to make her way through the throng of grumbling youths – past one boy muttering something about how this wouldn't be so bad if only he had some bacon to dip in the rain – toward the relative shelter of a nearby tree.

“Syrup,” a girl was complaining vigorously, with a poisonous look out into the rain. “Freaking syrup. How come the weather always has to suck whenever they haul us out of bed at insane o'clock for these things? Freaking syrup!”

“I know a story about maple syrup,” Sara volunteered; just because some people had to have a poor attitude about the situation did not mean she would follow suit.

“And that's going to make it better how, exactly?”

Sara ignored the acidic query and went on in a haughty tone, “Back in the days just after the world had been created, maple syrup flowed freely from the trees all year long. A young trickster named Glooskap happened to return to his village one day to find the fields unplowed, the animals untended, and all the houses strangely silent, because all his people were lying beneath the trees simply letting the syrup flow into their mouths. Well, Glooskap thought there was something wrong with this, and since he had special powers --”

The girl snorted. “Oh, great. Powers again. Rub it in, why don't ya.”

Sara fixed her with an indignant glare. “Do you want to hear the rest of the story, or not?”

After a moment the girl relented, diffidently, and shrugged. “Why the hell not? It'll kill the time.”

Really, she was lucky Sara was gracious enough to overlook her language, though not without a scornful look that seemed to cow her momentarily. “He took great bucketfuls of water and flew up over the trees, pouring the water into them and making the syrup thin and runny. He told them from now on they would have to tend the fields and houses, and during the spring, the only time the syrup would run, they would have to work to earn it. He taught them how to tap the syrup and boil it, and though it was hard work they were eventually rewarded.”

“And now we're reaping the benefits of their hard work by what, getting soaked in it?” muttered the clearly ungrateful if somewhat mollified girl. “Well, that was an educational five minutes, actually. Thanks.”

“As long as you got something out of it, I suppose,” Sara conceded.

“Sure. See what you come up with next time, when it rains like licorice drops or something.”

Right then and there, Sara made up her mind to take a trip to the library in the morning, smiling at the challenge. “Oh, you just see if I won't.”