Category: Fiction Friday

The Girl Who Followed the Birds

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday2 Comments

For Fiction Friday this week, I have another story-within-a-story from my NaNoWriMo novel.  Within the novel, this story reveals quite a bit about how my lead character is currently feeling about her life and especially her love interest.  Outside of the novel, it is, I hope 🙂 an entertaining Brothers Grimm-esque fairy tale.

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The Girl Who Followed the Birds

This is a story about once upon a time in a mountain village.  It was a small village where there lived simple people.  They knew their mountains, they knew their business of goatherding and farming, and they knew each other.  They knew very little else.  In this village there lived a girl, who all her life had known how the rest of her life was likely to be.  Her parents raised goats and a few crops like everyone else, and she did her part to help.  Someday she would marry the boy who lived next door, and they would have their own cottage and their own goats and plot of farmland, and so would their children after them.  It wasn’t that she had to marry the boy next door, but they had lived and played and grown together all their lives; she had always expected she would marry him one day, in an abstract sort of way.  One spring morning when they were both sixteen, he offered her a cluster of blue mountain flowers and she looked into his blue eyes and the abstract became the very real and she knew that she didn’t only expect to marry him, she very much wanted to—someday.

It was a fall day when her sweetheart asked her to marry him, and he would have said that it was a perfect and beautiful day.  It was also a day when the birds were in the village. Continue reading “The Girl Who Followed the Birds” →

The Lazy Girl and the Enchantress

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday1 Comment

As you know if you were reading this blog during November, I wrote a retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” for National Novel Writing Month.  My narrator, Lyra, was a storyteller, so within the novel I wrote several short stories for her to tell.  I want to share one with you today–you may recognize the beginning, as I put up an excerpt in November.  But today I’m posting the whole story.  🙂

Writing stories for Lyra was particularly interesting, because I had to think about the kind of stories she would tell.  For one thing, she has a more poetic style than I do (if that makes any sense!)  She also lives inside of a Brothers Grimm story, and has been reading that type of story her whole life.  So when I wrote stories for her, I wanted to create something that was very Brothers Grimm-influenced, but hopefully makes a bit more sense to a modern audience!

This story isn’t based on any particular fairy tale, but throws some traditional elements together–with twists.

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Once upon a time, there was a shopkeeper’s daughter who was very beautiful.  It was a sad fact that because she was beautiful, people’s automatic inclination was to do things for her.  That might not have been so bad in itself, but she had realized this tendency early on and loved to take advantage of it.

When her mother asked her to clean the house or to help with the laundry, she’d make endless excuses to get out of it, preferring to spend the time combing her hair or trying on different dresses.  When her mother did insist on her working, she was so slow about it that the good woman would eventually give up in exasperation and do the job herself.

When her father asked her to mind the shop, she would avoid helping customers if at all possible, and when she couldn’t avoid it she was as slow as you could imagine.  She asked the customers to pack up their own purchases and couldn’t be bothered even to do the counting to hand out change.  You may expect that service was slow and the customers ended up waiting around, whenever she was minding the shop.  The men, however, so enjoyed looking at her that they didn’t often complain.  Her father still knew that he was losing business because not everyone was willing to wait—and he wasn’t winning customers to his shop from the women in town.

One day the prince of that country passed through the town and his party stopped at the shop to buy fresh supplies for their journey.  It happened to be a day when the girl was (in theory) helping in the shop.  The prince saw her, and was sure that he had never seen anyone so beautiful, which may have been true.  He had been reading too many stories, and become convinced that such a beautiful face could only indicate a kind nature, a worthy spirit, and a personality that would match his own—in other words, that her beauty proved she was his soul mate, which it didn’t at all.

He proposed to her at once.  She was lazy but she wasn’t stupid, and she was quite sure that the wife of a handsome prince would have all the dresses she could ever want, and no work to do at all.  She accepted, and off they went to the royal castle. Continue reading “The Lazy Girl and the Enchantress” →

A Conversation Before Dinner

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday1 Comment

In the writing class I took a couple months ago, we spent one class focused on dialogue.  I love dialogue.  In fact, I have a bad habit of having too much dialogue, and not enough of anything else.  So I enjoyed an excuse to write a story that was almost entirely dialogue.  I hope you’ll enjoy reading it!

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A Conversation Before Dinner

He was late to dinner again.  She sat at the table, tapping one high-heeled shoe against the carpet, smiling tightly and shaking her head when the waiter asked if she’d like a refill on her water.

Finally he rushed in, dropped a kiss on her cheek, and dropped into the opposite chair.  “Sorry, I’m sorry.  Caught at the office again, you know how it is.”

“Yes,” she said.  “I know exactly how it is.” Continue reading “A Conversation Before Dinner” →

That Dog

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday1 Comment

I’m in a writing class at the moment, a weekend thing, and we had an interesting prompt in a recent class.  We were supposed to choose from a pile of pictures cut out from magazines, and write a story about meeting the person in the picture.  I seized on the one picture of a woman with a dog, and swiftly decided that I was more interested in the dog than in her.  And who would be more interested in meeting a dog than a cat?

So I scribbled away a bit, and here’s the resulting short…

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I sprawled out on my front steps, and surveyed the neighborhood.  All was well in my domain.  Those annoying squirrels were being quiet for once, instead of chattering at me (you should hear the language squirrels use when they’re upset), and the birds were flocking way off in the distance, at least two blocks away, where someone had spilled some crackers.  Birds get excited about the silliest things.

Then a new presence entered the scene, and I tensed.  It was That Dog.  He was trotting jauntily down the street, tongue flopping in the breeze, at the end of a leash held by a woman I didn’t know.

But I knew That Dog.  He lived in the yard behind mine.  He didn’t usually walk onto my street, but we had met over the fence.  We had not met amicably.

That Dog is a black and white brute who fancies himself quite the hunter.  He’s also the smelliest, stupidest, creature in the neighborhood, barring possibly a particularly mangy pigeon who drifts through occasionally.

He spotted me as he and his owner (dogs have owners; cats do not) came down the street.  The ears went back, the head went up, and the peaceful quiet of the afternoon was shattered by rude and uncouth barking.  He bared his teeth and lunged at me.

I twitched the very tip of my tail, and gave one paw a lazy lick.  You see, cats are observers.  And I had observed how leashes work.

Sure enough, That Dog snapped to the end of his leash long before he got near me, and strained frantically against it, rearing onto his hind legs, barks taking on a strangled note.

“Bingo, behave yourself,” the woman said, tugging back on the leash.  “You know you shouldn’t chase the nice cat.”

I smirked at Bingo.  Nice cat, that was me.  And that name—he told me his name was Spike.  I wasn’t going to forget that one in a hurry, and neither would he.

That Dog was dragged off down the street, still yapping his fool head off, and eventually the neighborhood returned to its former peace.  If I was lucky, I could get a good nap in before the birds got tired of those crackers.

Visiting Cats

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction FridayLeave a comment

I don’t usually write about things I know.  I have never, for instance, met a fairy or a pirate.  I believe in knowing what you write–get your facts and your details straight–but drawing from my own life?  It’s rare.  So today you get a rare piece of creative nonfiction.

This is a fairly quiet piece about walking around a neighborhood–written with cat-lovers in mind.  🙂

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I like to take the same walk through my neighborhood most days.  Six blocks up, left for one block, left again to go six blocks home.  It doesn’t take long to learn the landmarks—favorite houses, funny lawn ornaments, beautiful trees, fascinating gates.  And, of course, the cats. Continue reading “Visiting Cats” →