London’s Ashes

The flames destroyed the city, but Thomas saved the book, Jack tried to write something better, and Wes wanted to burn all of it. 

1666

Half of London was gone but at least he had the book in his quaking, victorious hands, slick with blood from ruptured blisters and streaked with soot and crime. And to him, it was worth everything. More than his little room that sits ­– sat, sat; it certainly couldn’t be there anymore –above the bakery where rats lurked beneath the floorboards and in the walls, more than his dank straw mattress that he shared the fleas. More than every every shirt he owned and every coin he’d ever made, which, admittedly, wasn’t very much. More than any morsel of food he’d ever eaten or any woman he’d ever had.

The city lay in charred chaos around him, gangly houses reduced to piles of smoking rubble, and he felt almost…giddy. His fingers trembled uncontrollably as a cool breeze blew across the barren plain of what used to be a narrow street. It took the last of the warm air – the smoke – with it.

“Henry? Henry!”

I Promise I’ll Take You, But I’ll Struggle With Me

Ace is a cloudy day who’s lost his taste for tea and everything else in life. Kristen works at Caffe Nero and maybe she’s a bit broody and sarcastic, but her eyes are as blue as ten clear skies. They share a history class, and maybe a bit more.

It’s strange because Ace has always been the happy one.

It’s strange because the world is strange and strange things happen in ways one never expects, and to people who never expect it. Ace never thought he’d have to reflect on something like this, but here he is.

His tea sits lukewarm and too watery between his hands in a cardboard cup, and it tastes a little bit like dirt. He wonders if tea always tasted this bad or if the British are just particularly good at fooling themselves.

I’ll See You There

Tomás is the guy that lives in Barcelona and never does anything exciting besides sell pastries and wish he could be something a bit more, and Rosie is the twist of fate that walks into his cafe and changes all of that.

It’s so cliché, how the whole thing begins.

The September weather is cool in Barcelona as Tomás makes his way down the city streets to work. He likes his job at the café, he really does, but on days like these,  when the sky is hanging low and gray overhead, he’d rather just stay in with his own special mug of coffee and a nice, long book. The thought is tantalizing, but his legs dutifully carry him to his work, a tiny café tucked away in the heart of the city. It’s not far from the Sagrada Familia, but tourists are rarely adventurous enough to find it. That, or Café Verde is simply not flashy enough.

Tomás would rather it stay that way, anyhow. They have enough customers already without the straggling foreigner that doesn’t knowpan from pasteles. As Tomás walks in, his eyes sweep over the few tables squeezed into the small place. They’ve got just one customer, a regular, Alvaro, whose wife died several years ago after five decades together, the last one especially blissful after all their children moved to southern Spain in pursuit of higher callings and left them to live out their elderly dreams. He nods briefly as Tomás makes the short distance to the counter, and Tomás smiles back, reaching for the apron he put on three years ago and hardly seemed to take off since.

My Summer Valentine

Harry sends Valentines in the summer. Rose reads them in restaurant parking lots.

Rose aspires to be the World’s Greatest Journalist.

So when she got accepted for an internship at Under the Blue, a marine biology magazine, she was pretty ecstatic. And when she went to Sea World for a little ‘welcome home from college’ trip with her friends, she thought it was a bit strange that most of the orca whales never seemed to live beyond a decade, at most.

When she walked into the Under the Blue offices the first day with that story on her mind, it was a bit of a reality check when all that they asked of her was to deliver coffee to meetings and photocopy print outs of that month’s issue. And when she did the same the next day, and the next, she realized that it was going to be tough to get herself noticed in this place.

So yeah, starting from the bottom isn’t exactly ideal, and serving coffee isn’t very exciting, but isn’t this how all the greats started?

Cost of a Flower

Jeffrey is a poor laborer on the Eiffel Tower, he works to feed his little sister, and the girl who sells flowers on the corner is pretty. 

It was winter of 1889 and the Eiffel Tower was to be complete by spring.

Jeffrey hung in the air, dangling a distance from the ground that had long ceased to frighten him. He’d lied, of course, to get the job, by telling them he wasn’t afraid of heights, but he’d needed the money more than anything and a fear could be beaten out of anyone, he’d learned.

He glanced out at the Paris that lay sprawled out before him, a magnificent sea of buildings and monuments and church towers that didn’t come close to the height he hung from.  He stared out above them all. Before coming to work on the tower, he’d never dreamed a view like this existed, a million shades of sprawling landscape.

Jeffrey turned his eyes away. Of course, he wasn’t being paid to enjoy the view. He had a job to finish. For Paris.

Izzy Heart, Potions Extraordinaire

So I’ve been reading Harry Potter and I was going to write a post about those books mean to me and my life, but instead I just wrote a story about some original characters of mine in the Harry Potter universe, from a prompt I saw on Tumblr. Heh.

As a disclaimer, Izzy, Patrick and the few extra random students are mine, all professors and potions and literally everything else are from the mind and books of J.K. Rowling. Additionally, the premise of this story comes from the mind of a Tumblr user I haven’t been able to find the original post for, but it’s their prompt idea. In all, this is just a story for fun :^)

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Izzy Heart, Potions Extraordinaire 

Izzy skidded before the stairway leading down the dungeons, torches lit along the dark walls. It was quite rainy outside, and the already dim hallway to the potions classroom had the appearance of nighttime, when it was hardly afternoon.

The cold, dreary rain had been the reason her bed had looked so very warm and appealing when she’d stopped in her dormitory after lunch, full and drowsy. She’d meant to grab her Advanced Potion Making book so she could finish the essay due in class today. She did not mean to fall asleep and wake up, groggy and confused, ten minutes after class had already started. Now she raced to class, essay unfinished and fifteen minutes late.