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| The Turquoise Pendant | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Wednesday, 3. November 2010, 01:22 (123 Views) | |
| Josheh | Wednesday, 3. November 2010, 01:22 Post #1 |
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Gaming Addict
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I figured I would post something before I leave. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter One September 2, 1996 In a small, remote town, far away from the smog, bustle, and cable television of the big city, there lived a small girl named Celeste. Although she was four years old, she was fairly smart for her age. She could read at a fairly basic first grade level, and she knew how to add and subtract to a certain extent as well. She had a mother, a father, and an older brother named Ben. They all lived together in a small three-bedroom ranch house with a large, empty pasture in the back. Her father owned the grain mill in the little town of about three hundred people, and her mother taught for the single-room schoolhouse that held the preschool through the high school. Celeste’s grandmother lived on the corner of Third and Main, in one of the largest houses in the town. It had a beautiful garden, with lovely flowers, tall green trees, and a white picket fence. Celeste loved visiting her grandmother for many reasons, such as her delicious cookies, but one of the main reasons was the small black box that resided on the mantelpiece. Celeste was always drawn to the box for reasons she didn’t know, but her grandmother told her that she could never ever touch the box, or even go near it. Since Celeste had been raised to always listen to her elders, she never touched it. However, the draw overtook her small, innocent mind, and one day while her grandmother was watering the garden, she pulled up a small chair so that she could be made level with the box, just to get a better look at it. The box was glossy so that the light from the candles her grandmother lit reflected off of it with a strange rainbow of dark colors. It had mysterious carvings of vines that wrapped around it; with thorns so realistic that Celeste didn’t dare touch it for fear that they would actually tick her finger. You could say that the box was beautiful, in a dark, captivating way. Along the lid of the box there were words that Celeste couldn’t read, partially because they were written in a very odd sort of cursive. Suddenly, she was drawn more than ever to open the box. She felt herself reaching for it, but she didn’t want to. She shut her eyes and shook her head to stop it. She heard the slam of the back door, amidst all of the confusion going on in her mind. Her grandmother was coming in! She quickly hopped off of the chair, shoved it back in place, and sat down to her cookie. “Well, Celeste, I believe it is time for you to go home! Your mother is probably cooking supper,” her grandmother said sweetly. Celeste said nothing as she grabbed the cookie. As they walked out the door to the old, clunky slug bug, she turned around one last time to look at the box. It sat there waiting for something, but she knew not what. On the way home, she finally decided to simply ask her grandmother about the box. “Grandma?” she asked in a small voice. “Yes dear?” They were very close to home, because they only had a mile or so to travel. “What is that box on top of the mantle for?” Her grandmother paused for a moment, and then sighed. “One day Celeste, I will tell you. But not today.” “ . . .Okay Grandma.” She let out a small, hidden sigh. That night, as her grandmother sat alone in her house, she walked up to the mantle and stared at the box. She slowly reached for it, opened it up and pulled out a small necklace, with a lone turquoise pendant on it. It glimmered in the firelight with a brilliance that would hypnotize anyone else, but Celeste’s grandmother was used to it. She clasped the necklace to her with the fine silver clasps, and closed her eyes. “Greed gave me the opportunity to leave the darkness. I take it now, with no turning back.” She uttered for the first time in almost forty years. Suddenly, the house filled with a bright turquoise light. A voice began uttering words in a language only the lone elderly lady knew, but hardly remembered. Once the voice ceased, a flash of pure white light was emitted from the necklace, and Celeste’s grandmother was gone. ~ ~ ~ Present Day The halls of P.S. 427 were filled with students walking to class. Celeste was one of them. She had grown up considerably within the past 11 years, as anyone would. She had lost her childishness long ago, like any other teenager would. She was more rebellious, just like any other generic teenager. But unlike most teenagers, she used some common sense. On the way to her third period English class, a large guy with a nose ring tried to trip her. She casually avoided him and walked on without saying a word. She had decided the moment she walked inside the school that she would remain invisible. In her old school back home, she would have yelled at the boy, who would have most likely been Jerry, the only rude person in the entire school. But she knew that logically there were only three positions she could hold in the eyes of her classmates: Noticed and popular, noticed and unpopular, and invisible. Popularity didn’t seem too pleasing, and neither did unpopularity. So invisibility was really the only option. She took a seat in the back of the class, being one of the first students in the room at the time. With a sigh she thought, “How did I end up here?” She pulled out a black notebook and opened it up. Inside, there was a picture of her and her classmates from when she was in third grade. Her mother stood in the background with a large smile. In front of her mother, Celeste stood with her long dark hair and short bangs. She had the most hideous dress on, but back then she wouldn’t have noticed. Her brother Ben stood next to his mother with an equally large smile. He was a senior that year, she remembered. As the class began, she started daydreaming about the past--something she found herself doing a lot lately. She saw her father and brother working hard at the mill the day she went to work with them. They monitored the old, clunky machines that made the grain into flour. It was a very important job because Mayville’s only real export was flour. Every day, trucks would come and carry it off to stores around the area to be sold. Then she came to the part of the memory she didn’t like. A man came running up to her father in the daydream. “Sir!” he yelled. “The broiler is gaining too much pressure!” Alarms all around the mill began going off. Celeste’s father didn’t do as much as blink, and neither did Ben. They both knew what needed to be done. Ben got on the intercom and ordered everyone to get out. “Go Celeste! It isn’t safe here! You need to get out!” he said to her. “But what about Daddy?” she asked. “And you?” “He’ll be fine Celeste, and so will I! It may be nothing more than a false alarm! Now go with Joe!” Joe was a funny fellow who Celeste had been a friend with for years. He had babysat her a few times. “Come on Celeste!” Joe said cheerfully, despite the danger. “Let’s go!” Celeste and Joe ran out together, along with the rest of the workers, until they were about five hundred feet away from the mill. Meanwhile, Celeste’s father and one of the floor managers ran towards the boiler room. Ben began to follow, but stopped when his father said, “Go back Ben! Go back with your sister!” Ben looked around and suddenly noticed one of the pipes running along the wall start to steam. “It’s going to explode!” He yelled. “Dad! No! Come back!” But it was too late. Over the roar of the alarms, his father couldn’t hear. Inside the boiler room, the alarms were still blaring. The floor manager read the pressure gauge and said, “It’s too high! We can’t save it!” “Yes we can!” Celeste’s father yelled. “Sir! It’s going to explode!” he said as one of the pipes burst. “We need to get out!” “I can save it!” “Sir!” Suddenly, Celeste’s father slammed his fist on a button, and the alarms stopped. There was a deep silence in the mill. Celeste’s father smiled and said, “See, I told you things would be alright.” The assistant manager smiled back and looked at the pressure gauge. “Well, that was--“ The pressure gauge was still rising. “Dad!” Ben yelled as he burst through the door. “Come on!” The three of them ran out of the boiler room and through the mill. As they ran, a loud hiss filled the air. “We aren’t going to make it!” Ben yelled over the roar. “Yes we are!” his dad said. The assistant manager, whose name was Jim, was fortunate that he joined track back in high school. He made it out. Ben and his father, however . . . “BOOOM!” the mill exploded with a ferocious roar that shook the ground. Jim was about three hundred feet away by then, and Ben and his father were just at the door. Celeste remembered the last she saw of her father and Ben. Her father was holding him and running at the same time. He yelled something to him, and they both turned to Celeste. At that moment, the door caved in on them and they were gone. “DADDY! BEN!” “Oh Celeste . . . “ Joe said as he hugged her. “Miss Carter, if you wouldn’t mind, I would like it if you paid attention!” Celeste’s head jerked up at the sound of her last name. A single tear was on her cheek. “Uh, yes ma’am.” The class snickered. Nobody said “Sir” or “Ma’am” in the big city. “What is the prepositional phrase in the sentence I just mentioned?” “Uh...C-c-could you repeat the sentence?” she said in a small voice. “Tomorrow, John and I will go to the movies.” “T-to the movies.” she stuttered. “Thank you Miss Carter. That is correct.” Celeste sighed and looked once more at the picture. ”I wish I could go back . . . “ Chapter Two Sometimes, things in life never really end up in the right place. This seemingly harmless item was no exception. It rested at one of the many museums in New York, encased in glass. Bright lights surrounded it, revealing its vines and thorns with detail. It didn’t reflect any sort of light, because only pure fire activated the dark rainbow that surrounds it. Watching, observing, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike, it rested in the case. Every day, hundreds of people walked by to observe it. There was no plaque for it yet, and for that matter, the curator of the museum didn’t even know to which exhibit it belonged. All he knew was that a nice old lady had come to the museum about a week earlier and asked him to put it on display. For some reason, he had sensed a weary parting between the elderly lady and the black box. No, weary wasn’t the word. He thought about it a moment one night when he was closing. The word for it would be . . . dark! Yes, very dark. Almost as if the lady was worried about giving it up, but relieved all the same. But what did he know? So there it rested, in the Fine Arts section, completely out of place in more ways than one. The curator sensed this too, somehow. He walked slowly over to the box and stopped in front of it. “Hm, whatever am I to do with you?” he asked the box. He knew it was strange to talk to inanimate objects, but for some reason, he almost felt the box listening. This man’s name was Mr. Brian Cobb, an ordinary man with an ordinary life. Although he didn’t suspect anything out of place that quiet evening, something out of his realm of ordinary was about to occur. ~ ~ ~ Earlier that day, the school bell at P.S. 427 rang, and the students began the mad dash home. Celeste was usually always in a hurry, always trying to get where she was going, but this time, she didn’t really feel like it. She began the mile-long walk home, and decided to stop by her grandmother’s house. She rang the bell and waited a moment. “I hope she isn’t sleeping,” she thought. The door slowly opened, and Celeste’s grandmother appeared. She seemed pale, and a little frailer than the last time Celeste had seen her. “Hi Grandma!” she said cheerfully. “Oh, hello Celeste,” she said in an almost forced way. Almost like she was really trying to sound happy, but failing miserably. “Come on in!” Celeste followed her grandmother inside. It was a small apartment, with some mild clutter lying around. Celeste found that a little odd as well, because her grandmother was a clean freak. “Would you like some hot chocolate, dear? I was just making some.” “Sure Grandma!” she said, trying to falsify her concern. Once they both had warm mugs of hot chocolate, they sat on the couch in front of the fireplace. Grandma’s house always had a fireplace, and it comforted Celeste to know that at least one thing in her life was consistent. With a little newfound bravery inside her, Celeste asked, “Grandma, you don’t look so well. Is something wrong?” Celeste’s grandmother sighed a long, tired sigh. After a short pause, she slowly said, “No dear . . . I suppose not.” Celeste placed her hot chocolate on the coaster that rested neatly on the end table. “Has us moving down here been a little tiring?” “No, not at all. It’s . . . “ her voice trailed off. “Grandma, what is it? You can tell me.” she reassured her. “My box. I gave it to the museum curator so that he could put it on display. Of course, I didn’t sell it--no I could never part with that dear box of mine even though it is a curse! Yes, a curse! Why I--“ “What are you talking about?” An eerie silence filled the room. Celeste hated silent pauses. It allowed for worries to creep in the corners of her mind. “I suppose it is time,” her grandmother said. “I knew this day would come eventually.” Her grandmother gently placed her hand on Celeste’s shoulder and began . . . “Years ago, before I met your grandfather and before I was even out of school, one of my uncles suddenly died. No one knew the cause, but I suppose now I could guess . . . anyway, he was enormously rich. I had met him only a few times in my life, and as I remember, he was a little eccentric.” She sipped some hot chocolate, and Celeste said “Go on.” “In his will, he left most of his money to all of my cousins, but he left one thing to me specifically. My parents got money, my brothers and sisters nothing, but me . . . I got that black box with the vines on it. There was a note tied to the box when I received it.” Celeste’s eyes wandered to see a crow sitting in the large picture window. She didn’t know why, but she felt almost as though the crow was listening. “When I opened the box, there was a necklace in there. It was so beautiful—“ Suddenly, the glass in the window shattered. Darkness filled the room, and Celeste could see nothing. All she heard was her grandmother scream, and then she was knocked out. ~ ~ ~ Mr. Cobb sighed and looked at his watch. He supposed that it was time for him to close up, but for some reason he couldn’t. He couldn’t get over that box. The sun began to set in the window to his right; the deep red fall sky lit up the museum. He knew that Jeremy, his neighbor, wanted him to help with his computer, and that he had to get home and feed his Great Dane, Boss. But none of that seemed to matter. The box was the only thing he could be concerned about. Suddenly, he felt a strange draw to the box. He felt himself unlock the case it was in, and reach for the box. However, he didn’t really want to reach for the box. It almost seemed as if habit was guiding him. His eyes lit up with joy as he reached for the box. As his fingertips got closer and closer, he felt as though everything around him faded. Just as he was about to touch the box . . . “Hey, uh, Mr. Cobb?” Mr. Cobb was suddenly broken out of his trance-like state. He turned to see his apprentice. “Yes Nathan?” he said, almost mad that he had interrupted him. “I can clean that display for you, and lock up and stuff, if you don’t mind.” A strange feeling came over Mr. Cobb. He almost felt at war with himself over the box. Finally, Nathan grew impatient. “Mr. Cobb? Is something wrong?” Mr. Cobb continued to remain silent for a moment, until he finally came to and said with hesitation: “Sure, if you don’t mind.” That night, after he had fixed the neighbor’s computer and fed his dog, Mr. Cobb got on his computer and ran a search. He typed “Black box vines thorns history” into Google. It came up with many things, some of which he regretted clicking on, but nothing about the strange box. After about two hours of searching, he finally went to bed. |
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| Warrior Poet | Wednesday, 3. November 2010, 23:56 Post #2 |
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If you lead me, I will go.
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So the idea of the box was pretty cool. Your writing style is very plot-driven - no nonsense and very few details, leaving most of it for our imagination. Celeste is very similar, so it worked pretty well for this story, but there are some times when you really should romanticize a little more - you started out telling me it took place in a small town (and didn't even say what state it was in, which is rather ironic). The first thing you say is pretty important, because it sets the tone for the entire first chapter. -You don't want to say things like "present day" if you expect everyone to be reading this in the future. It's a good habit to get into now, I guess. I know you mean 2010, but that won't be so in a few short years. My NaNo story actually starts in 1996 too - nice. Celeste is a good name. I remember there was an FFVI character with that name. She had a magic sword that could seal any magic attack for one turn. Sweet. More description is in order for more vivid memories - the death of her father and brother, and the curiosity about the box, is going to be more precise than sitting in class. I don't have time to write a long critique (I really wish I did). I have to get in my quota for A Forlorn Throne today. Good work, though
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| Harket | Thursday, 4. November 2010, 09:16 Post #3 |
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asian
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Since it says chapter one, i think/hope there'll be more! Yay! ![]() zomg i would luv to read that that
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| Birds don't like to fly, they have to fly. | |
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| Warrior Poet | Thursday, 4. November 2010, 22:18 Post #4 |
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If you lead me, I will go.
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You might in December haha |
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| Harket | Friday, 5. November 2010, 04:20 Post #5 |
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asian
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Till then... im waiting!
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| Birds don't like to fly, they have to fly. | |
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