Last week I mentioned The Storymatic, an insanely fun game that I purchased. Tonight I’m going to do writing practice, as I’ve done before, in the form of a character sketch using the game as a prompt. So you can play along at home, here are the cards that I drew: runaway (gold), person of a different size than most people (gold), engagement ring (copper).
She sat, anxious, on a hard bench in the train terminal. As she sat, she twisted a ring around her finger. The stress of the last several months had made her lose weight, and her already tiny fingers were now even smaller, forcing her to move the diamond from her ring finger to her middle finger so it wouldn’t fall off.
The jeans and hoodie she wore were incredibly comfortable, and her feet were hugged by well-worn trainers. Near her sat a small backpack and a duffel, neither of which held anything fancier than a sundress. In three days she was supposed to be getting married, in front of 450 of her family and friends, but the challenges of pulling off something so large had finally worn on her and she had snapped. Where most people would be a mess of guilt, or perhaps afraid of the repercussions, skipping out on this occasion finally felt like the right decision to her. A ponytail and her favorite necklace were the fanciest she liked to be, and the pressure to fulfill everyone else’s fantasy had been too much.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she turned to the man next to her. Like her, he wore comfortable clothing and traveled light. He met her eyes and smiled. “I’m glad we decided to elope,” she told her fiance.
“Me, too,” he replied. Before they could say anything else, the announcement for their train echoed through the station. They stood, picked up their gear, and linked their hands as they walked toward their adventure.
Butterflies and Dragons 