Dragon

I'm loving your series here solo, it's sort of Quantum Leap meets Momento. What a horrible feeling it would be to not be sure of your own self though.

ZeroMerc

Title: Strawberry Summer: A MeetCute

(175 w/o the title)

They called her my “strawberry fever”. Her name is Maralyn. I will start at the beginning.

One day during my summers on my god-mothers farm I going to tinker around in town with my god-mothers dog nugget when I was passing by the local school yard. She was there, standing at the front of the one room school reciting the alphabet for the youngest of kids. I couldn’t take my eyes off her so I just stared holding a toothbrush I found until class was over.

That’s when I was noticed.

“Miss Maralyn, who’s the quirk?”

“Sharon be nice”

“Yeah Sharon dippy”

As she approached all I could say was, “Did she just call her Serendipity?”

“No” she giggled, “Sharon dippy. They tease.”

“Oh”

“Do you have a fever?”

“Um, no why?”

“You look very flush.”

By now the kids gathered and all I could utter was, “I like your hair.”

“OOooOO” the class said together.

“Its strawberry blonde.”

A few more words were exchanged. We held hands, and I never left my strawberry Maralyn.

-------------------------------------------

This is my first try to please be gentle

solosater

I figure I can't take the torch this week anyway so why not have some fun & see what I can do. Time travel has always fascinated me so I'll explore it here.

solosater

I WON"T BE GENTLE!!!!

This is faboulous, perfect, fun to read. It just really works; love it!

Keep at it, I can't wait for more!

Dragon

That was cute, love the use of Serendipity. And I loved the kids going 'OOooOO' that was great.

midnightpoet

very, very cute, ZeroMerc

solosater

Have I mentioned I can't spell? Fabulous!

Qsilv

(oookaaayyy, I have nooooo time, I'm NOT really here, I am sooo not into time-travel stuff, and.... Solo! doggone you, your style's got me --delightfully-- hooked!)

solosater

Thanks Qsilv; I won't tell anyone.

midnightpoet

172 words, not including title

"My Rune"

She’s a red-head. In certain lights, her hair appears strawberry blonde, but when the sun hits it, it ignites, burning a fiery red-orange.

She has blue eyes that are so full of expression they tell volumes more than her moderately mispronounced words.

She can count to ten and sing the alphabet song. She knows her colors and memorizes stories.

She has a toothbrush she likes to use. It’s pink and sticks to the mirror. Her biggest quirk is how many times a day she likes to brush her teeth.

She doesn’t like chicken nuggets. Instead of eating, she likes to tinker with them, as though they were pieces of machinery.

She’s had a fever a few times. I was so scared. But it was never too bad. Even at the worst of it, she could still count to ten and sing the alphabet song.

She’s two and a half years old, and the light of my life.

I believe her birth was absolutely serendipity.

solosater

175 words excluding the title.

“Adjusting, Kinda‘”


“Captain Tinker says the Nugget will arrive in San Francisco tomorrow, I’ll have three days according to this journal.

“I’ll pack up my own things and the stuff in the room since for the time being it’s mine as I’m currently Serendipity Pennyroyal of the strawberry blond hair and according to The Captain also of a frail constitution (I’ve had several fevers while aboard; I’m guessing that’s a good way to hide out when you don‘t know who or what you know).

"I guess this will all be yours next, this is my first ‘jump’ so I’ll defer to the previous entries, there’s some good stuff. If you’ve been at it longer perhaps you can add more information, I’ll keep it up to date for you, SP."

She closed the journal and grabbed her toothbrush; she realized she was humming the alphabet again, it’s a quirk she picked up as a child to calm herself, still not really working…

The Captain probably saw it as proof that it wasn’t just frail physical health that ailed her.

solosater

Midnight, another about your little one? She sounds like fun.

solosater

http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=40810
175 words excluding the title.


“Getting There”


As she said goodbye to Captain Tinker and debarked the Gold Nugget she wondered where she should go; was she expected, did she have family here? Well of course she didn’t; did Serendipity?

She got her answer almost immediately, “Miss Pennyroyal? Over here!” she turned and saw a man she didn’t recognize but who obviously knew her waving feverishly at her.

It appeared he’d already gathered her baggage and loaded it onto a carriage.

She’d kept her personal bag with her toothbrush, meds, and both journals; call it a quirk but she wasn’t about to be separated from that bag.

She approached the man and he bowed slightly, “Oh Miss, they are awaiting you quite eagerly,” he opened the door and handed her in.

After a short drive they came to a stop in front of an Italianate Victorian house; she saw a strawberry patch in the side yard and grinned.

Then she saw the sign, “The Alphabet School” and giggled quietly to herself.

This should be interesting, going from history professor to school teacher.

solosater

I think I’ll finish this (or at least continue it) in Think Write Open, I hope you’ll keep an eye out for it.

midnightpoet

I'm so excited that you've done a whole series...I will definitely look for it in the open thinkwrite!

solosater

I haven't added to it yet but I put it in your thread with a couple of pics to go with, thought that would keep me drawing too...

anotherronism

Girls by Ron

The small toga-clad group of children replied singing: “Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta…”

This nice start was followed disjointedly by pauses, “Zeta something?”, “Umm” and “Oh. Oh. Upsilon!”

This last response lit the teachers face with a smile. The student was his only girl – His little nugget of gold tossed by fate or serendipity into the coarse coal-blackened meanness and fever energy of his usual class of just-boys.

She was the only child of an important person. Even the boys respected her.

She had strawberry-blonde hair.

She could ride and sing and she new her letters. Well – some…

It was a funny quirk she had said “Upsilon”. The correct response was, of course, “Epsilon” and the teacher was amused by her innocent alliteration. He would mark a tablet and send it to her father. He would be pleased as well.

It was her way to tinker with her hair at the oddest moments. Such as now. She struggled with the comb.

No no my child. Do not tangle it with the comb’s tooth. Brush it instead.

solosater

Ron, are you going way , way back? Good job!

I'm time traveling; perhaps we'll meet;-)

anotherronism

Sanctuary by Ron

It’s crowded; so many US.

I’m sick “back there”. We’re never sick here so – here I am.

I approach the bar. It’s mostly near-me’s. We avoid immediate Befores and Afters but stay in our groups: Less ‘problems’.

Passing a teen-aged me, I remember being him, all excited with my nugget of philosophy - nihilism lost on Afters and the Befores oblivious.

I almost spoke to him. But why?

You’re confused.

It’s like this.

I have much serendipity; thus finding this place as a child.

Maybe it’s a quirk or maybe everyone does it.

“We’re always here” an After said when I first came. (Oh – I just realized he was my age now – I’ll have to watch out for THAT Before and repeat it.)

It’s that way; alphabet-perfection. C must follow B…

Don’t tinker with it: Unless you’re an After or a Before who has…

No toothbrush or shaving cream. Slip in whenever it’s necessary.

A strange place: Pick a wild strawberry just outside but you cannot travel into the mist.

There is no whipped-cream here.

anotherronism

A note of explantion on "Sanctuary".

This is inspired by the time-travel efforts in this interval of ThinkWrite but also by a story I read when I was a teen-ager which I've never been able to find again.

The idea was a place where a man goes throughtout his own lifetime (perhaps in his own mind) which is occupied entirely by different iterations of himself. Past, future and present.

The idea has always fascinated me. (There I go - staring at my navel again).

This wordlist and the submissions so far inspired me to write about this idea.

But WHAT a challenge.

My first-draft was over 800 words.

Distilling it down to 175 was hard. And I mean hard!

I think, no - I hope - I kept the essence.

But on re-reading something so axed and chopped you get to a point where all you can read back is what isn't there any more.

I may re-write this pice for "Open" one day but you all know how it is when you lose something you loved. It's gone and you grieve for it.

This idea - of a vacation spot for all the ME's that ever were or ever will be - and the strange rules that MUST come into play... You might think the "Afters" would be telling the "Befores" all about the stock market of the future. But, I hope, implicit in the story is the chaos that exchanging information can create.

Suppose an "After" tells a "Before" how to get rich. But the "After" wasn't a rich man so what happens - he simply dissapears.

Likewise - when my protaganist goes to the bar he will not sit with yesterday or tomorrow but instead hangs with last month and next month. Untold is that they never, ever talk about current events. Instead thel look at the boys and the old men and they reminisce or speculate.

And, of course, they drink.

I allowed alcohol but had to get a strawberry reference in there somehow.

And the idea is what is outside this sphere of ME in this strange place?

Mist - impenetrable mist.

So why there is no whipped-cream is truly up to the reader to decide.

Later,
Ron