Fragments 3/10: Residence
I began a 10-day experiment on October 30th. For 10 days, I am:
- Setting a timer for 15 minutes
- Writing what I can during that time
- Stopping when the time is up
- Posting what is written without any final editing
For additional context, check out the first post in this series by clicking here.
START
The cupboard creaked open as a faint curtain of dust wafted down to the counter top. There were empty soup cans and the shriveled remnants of a fruit arrangement scattered across the wooden surface, marked with age-old lines where a hosts' carving knife nicked the boards amid preparations of long-ago family dinner.
There was little light to speak of in the kitchen. Broken beams of twilight fragmented through the leaves, the vines, and the crooked window shutters they held in place. All else was cloaked in the graying hue of a forgotten cabin.
Forgotten to most, that is. To the resident of this particular cupboard, it made little difference if anyone remembered the structure or not. Better if they didn't, in fact. All the more for this one to enjoy for himself. He wasn't selfish, really. But whether one is selfish or selfless can only be seen when one has another outside of themselves
STOP
It was hard to stop this time. It usually is but this one was hard because I was trying to redeem the last sentence which seems to be rambling in its unfinished state. I had a vague idea of what I wanted it to say and was just starting to find the words to do so.
Also, I was starting to introduce a character that I was going to enjoy. The character I had in mind was a mouse. Yesterday I had this image in my head of an mouse wearing a maroon vest and a modest-looking crown. Almost a cross between Reepicheep from C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia and a character from the movie The Secret of Nimh (originally a book by Robert C. O'Brien). This is born out of my great love for animal stories (Watership Down by Richard Adams is one of my favorite books of all time).
I thought this mouse would be a noble prince of sorts but he was turning out to be a Bilbo Baggins; a loner, comically meticulous about his material things and his privacy, and a disdain for wandering too far from home. I wasn't planning for that. What prompted the change was the description of the cabin as being 'forgotten' and its general state of decay. A princely mouse wouldn't live in a place like that. They would live in a place that is perhaps uninhabited by humans but well populated with fellow critters; an animal kingdom. What kind of creature would live in a place forgotten and abandoned by both man and animal? One that preferred peace and quiet.