LJ Idol // Week 17 // Open Topic 2
This entry is the prologue to a novel.
It is absolutely, 100% connected to last week's open topic video entry, here. You don't need to read/watch last week's entry to understand this one, but I just wanted to let you know the context of the story.
I do actually intend to write the whole novel, so hopefully if I remain in the competition it will pop up again for some of the other topics.
Actually I'm pretty sure it will pop up again anyway, regardless of my LJ Idol status ;)
The Flyaways; a novel.
Prologue
14 June 1994
I was woken last night, for the first time in many years, by the church tower striking four. I slipped out of bed and padded across the rug to the open window, where it seemed that, in that moment, I was looking out on the very same night that brought me here, almost seventy years ago. Orion hunted across the sky, his bow disguised in a lonely cloud; the scorpion was hiding well; and the world slept. Were it not for the sheep in the field beyond the garden wall, I could have sworn that I was leaning out of the dormitory window in Kensington. It is, however, a long time since I have been to Kensington, and whilst last night looked fleetingly similar to that other night, it was not the same. Beyond the field of sheep I could already see the lights of the cars, cruising at ninety along the M4; the early morning commute. In the bed behind me, Jack rolled over and stole the duvet. He knows almost nothing of where I came from, for I fear he would not understand. Please, don't ever tell him.
My life is a tale I swore by blood that I would never speak. I am not technically ‘speaking’, however, and this book may never be found. Either way, none of my companions are alive enough to protest, and I am afraid that the passage of time might erase our story forever. We deserve to be remembered.
I was born at night, and left on the front steps of the Frimington House Orphanage in Kensington, still covered in the slime of my birth. I do not know who gave me my name, but I have always liked to think that my mother would have named me something much more exotic than ‘Nancy’, if she could have done. The moment of my birth, however, is relatively insignificant, and I will tell you instead that my life began when Michael and John-boy crept into my dormitory at four o’clock in the morning with a box of matchsticks. The date was October 15th 1923, and I was eleven years old.
It is absolutely, 100% connected to last week's open topic video entry, here. You don't need to read/watch last week's entry to understand this one, but I just wanted to let you know the context of the story.
I do actually intend to write the whole novel, so hopefully if I remain in the competition it will pop up again for some of the other topics.
Actually I'm pretty sure it will pop up again anyway, regardless of my LJ Idol status ;)
The Flyaways; a novel.
Prologue
14 June 1994
I was woken last night, for the first time in many years, by the church tower striking four. I slipped out of bed and padded across the rug to the open window, where it seemed that, in that moment, I was looking out on the very same night that brought me here, almost seventy years ago. Orion hunted across the sky, his bow disguised in a lonely cloud; the scorpion was hiding well; and the world slept. Were it not for the sheep in the field beyond the garden wall, I could have sworn that I was leaning out of the dormitory window in Kensington. It is, however, a long time since I have been to Kensington, and whilst last night looked fleetingly similar to that other night, it was not the same. Beyond the field of sheep I could already see the lights of the cars, cruising at ninety along the M4; the early morning commute. In the bed behind me, Jack rolled over and stole the duvet. He knows almost nothing of where I came from, for I fear he would not understand. Please, don't ever tell him.
My life is a tale I swore by blood that I would never speak. I am not technically ‘speaking’, however, and this book may never be found. Either way, none of my companions are alive enough to protest, and I am afraid that the passage of time might erase our story forever. We deserve to be remembered.
I was born at night, and left on the front steps of the Frimington House Orphanage in Kensington, still covered in the slime of my birth. I do not know who gave me my name, but I have always liked to think that my mother would have named me something much more exotic than ‘Nancy’, if she could have done. The moment of my birth, however, is relatively insignificant, and I will tell you instead that my life began when Michael and John-boy crept into my dormitory at four o’clock in the morning with a box of matchsticks. The date was October 15th 1923, and I was eleven years old.