The Innocent

A one-page story for my last writing assignment this term. This assignment called for an anecdote, well-used sentence fragments, characterizing quotes, and imagery. One-page stories are HARD. I wrote five two-page stories before I found a concept that worked in one page. I had to sever half of the imagery, but I'm satisfied. I wasn't thrilled, but Sam was.

The Innocent
"Listen close now, boy," Old Nya croaked. "Some men go their whole lives thinking the world is theirs. Thinking they know the shape of it. Us Naeglish, we know different." Nya clasped her rheumy hands around her cane and laid her sagging chin upon them. Light still danced in her eyes as she fixed them on her grandson Jack. Jack smiled and stared back at her, listening intently.

"The world's full up with spirits. Every rock, every tree. These aren't the invisible gods of those Southrons, no. They hear your prayers and see your deeds, and they favor the innocent. When I was a girl, I could see them." Old Nya leaned closer, and Jack's tight-lipped smile spread into a gap-toothed grin. "I can't see them anymore. I'm an old woman, so they hide from me, but I know they're there. We all do."

From that day forward, Jack made it his goal to capture a spirit for Old Nya. Every day, he planted himself on the big smooth rock by the river, fixed his eyes on the widest tree, and waited. Jack prayed and watched until his eyelids drooped and the sun set. He knew it was only a matter of time until the spirit showed itself to him.

And eventually, it did. Jack leapt from the rock, quick as a spider, and brought a jar down around the writhing spirit, its mossy fists pounding on the glass in tinkling protest.

Jack ran back to Old Nya on springs, shouting and laughing all the way. When he reached her tent, he took one last look at the jar, but the spirit was gone. Vanished. Lost.