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This Show Case features four pieces submitted in response to our fiftieth Writing Prompt: Xanadu. You can see responses to each prompt in the drop down menu for the Show Case page. Try an item. They are all delicious. We hope they stimulate your mind, spirit, and urge to write. Maybe they will motivate you to submit a piece for our next prompt, which you can find on the Show Case home page.
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Featured Image: Xanadu by SL Randall
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Modern Day Fable
by SL Randall
Featured Image: Xanadu by SL RandaA Modern Day Fableby SL Randall
Inspired by members of The Writer’s Co-op and our wonderful conversations!
The names of my characters came from my text to speech voices in my Dabble Writer program.
Imani (female voice) means Belief or Faith (It’s also the name of one of my daughter’s best friends
Elimu (male voice) means education, knowledge. I liked the names and found they fit the tale well.
Alassane means handsome. All looks and no substance fit that character.
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Shimmering heat, laden with tiny insects, buzzed above the tall grasses lining the shore of the deep blue lake. Imani strolled, her arms outstretched, allowing the grasses to tickle her palms. Sunlight sparkled off the water, creating twinkling motes in which she imagined nymphs and sprites and fairies flitted over the surface tending to their magical errands.
Near the lake, on a slight rise, a stand of acacia trees offered shade from the brilliant noon sun. Imani often sat under the trees, resting from the heat, and indulged in her daydreams. She would speak aloud to the trees, telling them stories of the magical meadow folk.
Today, as she approached the stand, she found a boy resting in her usual spot. For a moment, she studied him. He sat cross-legged, his hands folded in his lap and his eyes closed. Curious, she stood before him. “What are you doing?”
His eyes opened wide. “Imani! You shouldn’t sneak like that!”
Smiling, she sat next to the boy. “You found my quiet place, Elimu.”
Elimu grinned, spreading his arms wide. “This place belongs to everyone and no one.”
Imani nodded thoughtfully, “true, but I often come here and only see birds and beasts.”
“I have seen no beasts.”
“How could you with your eyes closed? Were you napping?”
“While it’s true, I could have fallen asleep in this tranquil place, I was actually looking for something.”
Imani laughed, “With your eyes closed? How do you look when you cannot see?”
“It depends on what you seek,” explained Elimu. “What I am looking for exists within rather than out here.”
Intrigued, Imani leaned in. “What do you seek?”
Elimu folded his hands in his lap and straightened his back. “I seek Xanadu.”
Imani sighed. “Xanadu is in China. It is the birthplace of Tibetan Buddhism.”
“No,” disagreed Elimu. “Alassane says…”
Imani snorted. “Alassane is a handsome idiot. He cares more about his image in the mirror than educating the lump between his ears!”
Elimu crossed his arms. “And how would you know?”
“I read, Elimu. This isn’t my only quiet place. I spend time in the library, learning about the world! One day I will travel beyond our village and see these places I read about!”
Deflated, Elimu sighed. “I really wanted to find Xanadu.”
Imani patted his arm. “Come to the library with me. I will show you the world.”
Moral of the story: Reading expands your world.
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A Tic-lish Situation
by Mimi Speike
Long about seven — a late start, but he’d tossed and turned, unable to settle into a decent snooze — John Dee stormed into the kitchen. His wife was in the midst of kneading dough for the week’s bread.
“Madame!” he spat, “Where is that young man as turned up on our doorstep yester-eve?”
“Nigh to Four Corners by now, I should think.” Jane Dee smiles, certain her husband is pleased to hear it.
He is not pleased. “What are you telling me, woman? You let the boy escape? Without consulting me?”
“I followed the instruction in your note — See to it the lad is gone by sun-up.”
Her husband growls, “I left you no note.”
“And what, pray tell, is this? I found it set out on my table when I began my day.”
Dee inspects it. His left eye is twitching. A tic animates the left side of his face when he’s upset. He moans, “Get Rowland in here, now! He must catch up to the brat …”
“Nay, sir! The lad is no brat. He was quite mannerly at dinner, and full of entertaining conversation. And he praised my vegetable potage. Praised it! Instead of making a face, as do our imps.”
“Rowland must overtake him and fetch him back.”
“Rowland is with him, conducting him, by any one of several routes, through the wood.”
“When did they depart?”
“Sit. Eat your breakfast. Row will be back shortly, and you will interrogate him. Here is the reason for Jack Daw’s visit. Inspect this, addressed Mr. Mage, Mortlake. Mage. Who would that be but yourself? He would have been directed to our infamous establishment by anyone in the district, or even in the county.
Dee scans the text for a crucial clue. “From Sanderson. I will deal with this presently. What transpired after I set out for Barn Elms?”
We ate our meal. Rowland and Jack Daw holed up in your study for a good while. I prepared a bed for the boy in the library, and we all turned in.
“Ah! Row bethought him to work a puzzle, before I got to it. Well, he labored in vain. I keep the current key apart. My desk drawer holds obsolete grids, to be used in the course of his cipher-studies. The lunkhead! He should have known I’d want to interview the bearer of an encryption, not one of my usuals, an operative quite unknown to me. Damn poor judgement! Can he be that dense?” Dee scowls. “Apparently so.” His harshest judgements are reserved for his second son, whom he deems most likely of his brood to do him proud one day.
Jane defends her son, so eager to please a father who is near impossible to satisfy. “I must confess he insisted so, repeatedly. But your orders were perfectly clear. ‘See that Daw is gone by sun-up.’ You’ve lectured me enough on it; the comings and goings of our nocturnal-guests must not be noted, or your usefulness to Sir Francis is impacted.”
This is the number one rule of the house, to protect a small but steady income stream that has paid down many a past-due account. Dee has found it necessary to share this information with a handful of locals, a butcher, a green-grocer, and a dealer in wine and spirits, to maintain crucial lines of credit. His own family can (and does) go without. The clientele for his high-priced séance sessions? Never.
“Not my orders, damn you.” He studies the note again. “Whose deviltry is this?” He slams his fist on the table so that crockery clatters. He pushes his bowl of oatmeal aside. “You eat it. I’ve lost my appetite.” Grunting, he hoists himself out of his chair and bolts from the room in a fury, muttering, “How much aggravation can a sick old man like me take?”
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Dee bursts into the library. “This note. It’s you behind it. Admit it!” He wads the paper tight and hurls it at the cat.
Sly chuckles. “A decent job, don’t you think? Had you going there, didn’t I? Sure looks like your writing, doesn’t it?”
“Scoundrel! You told me last night, and I quote, Do as you will, as is your perfect right.”
“I said your perfect right. I didn’t say I’d allow it.”
“That was the impression you left me with.”
“Consider this a lesson learned. Shades of meaning, my specialty. It’s called diplomacy. You should be familiar with it. I’ve polished my mastery of the art over millennia, in multiple cultures, on major figures.”
“Indeed! Give me some names, if it’s not too much to ask.”
“Most of the names will mean nothing to you, but here’s one you’ll know. Get hold of yourself. Don’t foul your linen, my friend. You’ve certainly heard of Kublai Khan.” (For the last hour Sly has been immersed in a book on the Mongol Empire.) He cocks his head and grins.
For a long minute, Dee is mute. Then he whispers, “You remind me of Edward Kelley, a big, sunny smile on his face, spinning tales of such spellbinding lunacy that I asked myself, who could dream this up? It must be true. Slick talk was his specialty also.”
“I thought you believed in the turd.”
“I did. I do. I’ve never met a more talented facilitator. He had his unfortunate side. You take the good with the bad.”
“He used you for personal gain. I have your best interest at heart.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Count yourself lucky, Doctor. It takes an exceptional individual to interest me in his in-the-grand-scheme-of-things piddling woes. I’m going to save you from yourself, as I did Kub, who is hailed one of history’s wisest rulers, thanks in large part, yessir, to me. You have the answer to all your problems, personal and professional, sitting here in front of you.”
Dee’s tic had subsided. His eye is twitching again, double time.
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Nothing to Compare
by Perry Palin
(For the prompt Xanadu I’ve extracted two paragraphs from my short story “Old Dead Poets”. At this point in the story the narrator is fourteen years old.)
The country where we lived was second growth forest north of the Lake Superior shore, abandoned to the bears after the loggers took all the big pines, and it was small, profitless farms that hung onto narrow gravel roads. The streams ran for miles between the roads. I followed the paths to good fishing. The woods were aspens and hardwoods and balsams, with the rare pines on the hillsides and leaning white cedars in wide swamps. In the spring everything smelled sweet and fresh and green. Bloodroots carpeted the ground and marsh marigolds bloomed in quiet places. In the spring I heard geese calling overhead and grouse drumming in the woods. Redstarts and warblers chased mayflies over the water. I found moose tracks at the edges of the streams and I watched mink hunting along the banks, and there were otters in the water at times, and beavers in their deep ponds. In slow places a great blue heron would rise ponderously into the air and fly upstream.
Fishing was a relief from the ruins of a family and the tedium of school. There was nothing at home or in school to compare with laying on a high bank to watch the brook trout shift in the current over golden gravel to catch the drifting flies. There was nothing to compare with listening at night to the barred owls calling across the forest, or laying on my sleeping bag and watching through an opening in the treetops as the Milky Way turned a million stars in the sky. Nothing to compare with waking to the songs of the small birds in the trees, and pulling on dew-cold shoes, stirring my cooking fire, drinking boiled coffee and eating fried eggs and buttered bread, and walking down to the stream to fish in a summer dawn.
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A Miracle of Rare Device
by S.T. Ranscht
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