The exercise:
Write about: crossing over.
I've been writing short (started out as just over a page, then closer to two full pages, and now the last few have been three full pages...) stories for the boys that I read to them on Sunday night. I pushed last night's to tonight because of Father's Day distractions, but I'm pretty pleased that it took until week nine for me to miss the scheduled night.
Anyway. I wrote a Harry Potter story for this week, with a little Lord of the Rings reference slipped in. Thus, your prompt.
2 comments:
Aha! So my guess about you writing stories about the devious detectives Maxx and Mylzz wasn't so far from the truth! I hope the Harry Potter and the Mines of Moria went better than I would have written it (Shelob would definitely not have died, and would certainly have eaten half of a Hogwarts house) :)
You get plenty of crossovers from me anyway so rather than try and compete with you, I'm returning to my fairy tale. I'm taking your prompt to show how Danya crosses over from being a child to a young adult; at least, I hope that's how it comes across!
Crossing over
Danya's days turned into weeks as she learned more about the Tower that she was living in under the guidance of Father. She learned how the doors and lights detected her presence and started to understand the basic principles behind how they did that. She learned that things she had assumed were silently intelligent were actually quietly dumb but very good at doing the one job they were set to, and never deviated from what they were told. She learned to avoid the lifts, even though Father thought that they might be repairable, as they were too dangerous for Father to trust her riding in them. That didn't stop her at first, but then Father somehow turned them off and she was left, after a tantrum, to walk up and down the stairs instead. Walking became running though, and soon she could run ten stories worth of stairs before she was out of breath and needing to slow down to a walk again.
The books and texts and screens that had shown her things and taught her previously took on new meanings as Father answered questions she had and then asked her to answer questions based on what she'd learned. She thought she'd been curious before; now she learned what real curiosity was and how much could be extracted from it. Including sleepless nights, tossing and turning and fretting over a question that was so easy to state that the answer seemed as though it should be just as easy, and sometimes the pure fury of seeing an experiment demonstrate that an answer that had to be correct simply wasn't.
Slowly but surely she started to view the Tower around her as something she controlled rather than somewhere she lived. She started to consider when things stopped working and looked at them to find out why. Then she started fixing them. At which point Father guided her to new doors on the corridors of the Tower that were hidden in the walls and opened only to a handprint, or a retina-scan, and discovered store-cupboards full of materials, cleaning supplies, and quiet machines that waited for orders to turn on.
"They're not needed yet," said Father when she asked it about them. "When there are more people in the Tower, then they'll be needed. They used to come out when it was dark and quiet and clean the place so that it was ready for the people again in the morning."
Father also told her other things that gradually got more worrying as she learned enough to understand them. He told her about the chemical analysis of the atmosphere, and that particulate levels were high enough to increase the Earth's albedo and cool it substantially. When she looked up at the ceiling, to where she imagined Father's voice to be coming from one day, and said, "You mean the winters are still getting colder and harsher, don't you?" she thought she detected a note of pride in the mechanical voice that replied, "Yes."
Although she didn't know it, she was fifteen exactly on the day that she went down into the maintenance tunnels and repaired the cables that connected Reactor A to Generators 3 and 4.
Greg - yes, well, know your audience and all that...
Funnily enough, I finally finished the Harry Potter tale this evening. I'd had no intention of spreading it over five installments but the boys were enjoying it and the tale didn't want to be resolved any sooner.
And now Max is reading the first book of the actual series, which we borrowed from the library yesterday, and he's already about halfway through it.
This movement forward in time and understanding is wonderfully done and, I think, much needed for the story to continue to progress. I am delighted with how far she comes in this bit alone.
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