My way to the lighthouse - 250 words

The burning feeling in my feet made me want to stop, but I did not. I had to go on until I could not breathe anymore. I wanted to be exhausted so that I could stop thinking. The waves reached my shoes every now and then. You could see a layer of sand where the shoes had got sticky because of the salty water. The crunching noise of the sand felt pleasant and it marked the rhythm of my steps.

Blue foamy waves greeted me every time I turned my head right. I liked running south: right the sea, left the town, below the sand and up the sky, which was bright blue or dark grey depending on the weather. The sunset was the best part of my running routine. I did not have a specific time for going running, it would vary according to the sunset time, which was very accurately predicted in some  meteorology website. I always made sure to run thirty minutes to the lighthouse and then make my way back when the sunset started.

If there was nice weather, there would also be windsurfers all around the coast with their colorful windsurfing boards. They contrasted beautifully with the colors that the sun reflected on the sea. The rocks near the lighthouse seemed dangerous and pointy but sometimes I would dare to climb them. Then I would stop and enjoy that moment when beauty and fatigue converged, when peace replaced my thoughts. That moment was my reward.

An old friend's visit

I was laying on my bed when I felt a sticky tongue on my face leaving drool all over my blanket. I had not felt that for a long time. Then I remembered Charlie and I could not be happier to see him. I got up my bed and hugged him like you hug a friend you have missed. I did not understand why he was there, but I did not think about it either.

First I looked right into his eyes.Being looked by him felt like sitting by the fireplace in winter. I touched his head and ears, soft as always. I hugged him again and kissed his forehead. You could tell he liked that.

Charlie was a golden retriever. It is hard to use this word for a dog, but he was kind. He had this urge to please everyone. He was also small and we always made fun of that. Golden Retrievers are supposed to be big, but Charlie never grew up as much as he should have. That was just fine, we lived in an apartment.

I get up wanting to do as many things as possible with my old best friend. I take the leash and he comes waving his tail and jumping. I hugged him again and he looked back at me as if smiling. We go out and I decide to take him for a ride. He loved taking his head out of the window, but not too much. He never liked being too far away from me.

I stopped at a park we used to go to when he was a puppy. He used to run around one tree while I chased him. He seemed happy to be back, although he did not run like before. He smelled some plants and then sat down near me. The smell of the grass brought back many memories of my childhood and of him being a puppy.

Then I remembered I had always felt guilty because we never took him to the beach and we used to live near one. After deciding to finally take him there, I said:  “come on Charlie, you’re gonna love this”. He looked at me and raised his paw, like he did when he wanted to let me know he was paying attention. Then I felt bad. I had this bitter feeling of knowing that someone you love has to leave soon.

The sunlight makes its way through the curtains of my bedroom and I move under the blankets. I have a smile on my face but I cannot tell why. Then I think of Charlie and excited, I look for him next to my bed. He is not there. Of course he isn’t. He has not been there for three years. It felt so real. Disappointed, I try to remember as much as I can about the dream. It was good to see him one more time.

The blue eggshell - Chapter 1 first part - Draft

I am less proud than others of my specie, but I like the dangerous look of my paws.The strength of my peak and claws intimidate many. My race doesn’t use them lightly. Violence is not encouraged where I come from, but it is used if we feel endangered.

There is only one specie that makes us use violence as our only escape: the makkis. They invaded the mountains and ate our eggs, many of us flew to the north, others stayed and fought. For many years we have been trying to come back, but we are fought with cruelty. We want to come back. There is nothing like the mountains, they say. I have never been there.

My mother still lives. She isn’t as strong as she used to and she walks better than she flies. She says she can fly, but in my entire life, I have only seen her flying once. There is something wrong with her left wing, and for the first few years of my life I thought she was born like that, but then, she told me the story of how it happened.

She told me the day I saw an infant Makki getting near us and I told her how harmless they looked like, how I wouldn’t mind playing with them. I will never forget the look in her eyes when I said that: first I saw fierce, then concern and finally sorrow. But then she looked at my face and everything went away, you could tell she was happy to see me there. For some reason, I thought all those feelings were connected with me and the Makkis, but I did not dare to ask.

It all started with their First Great Invasion. We, the folk of the Raffirs  used to live in the lower part of the mountain , near the river and would hardly ever go up, unless the summer was really warm and the snow had melted. We do not like snow, it makes our paws wet and cold. There are many of our kind, but my clan is described as “half raven, half panther monsters” by the Makkis. I don’t see anything monstrous in the way we look, I rather like it.

I dont remember much of our escape, only coming out of the eggshell and looking around. There were two other eggs next to me and before I could give my first steps, I felt my mother’s claws hold me tight and take me somewhere. I was put under a tree near the valley and left alone for about a minute until she came back bleeding and smelling like burnt feathers, looking defeated and desperate. Her claws were empty this time.

We never saw the other two eggs again. They were of different colors. She said mine was blue with grey spots and the other ones had different shades of green and red. I avoided talking about this with her. She only told me that one of the eggs, the green one, was stolen by the makkis before we could fly away. She managed to hide the other one before leaving, but she did not find it when we came back to the cave the next night.

For some time I had been wondering the things that could have happened to my brothers, had they ever been born.These thoughts were secret, not even with the infant makkie I would share them.

He said we were friends, but he was a makkie after all. I couldn’t trust him entirely. I couldn’t trust anyone but my mother. I had learned to hide before I could learn to fly. They thought no one had survived in the mountains after the invasions. We weren't supposed to exist, nor was whoever could have been born of those eggs. But I couldn't help to imagine how life would have been like having brothers or sisters.

Mr. Burman - draft

Life would be much easier if there was a manual you could follow step by step. If it was so, Germans would probably be masters of life’s art because of their sense of rightousness and obsession with the rules. But there isn’t one and sadly for those who like structure, human beings are forced to spend most of their lives trying to figure out the steps they are supposed to follow.

Some of them don’t have these concerns and seem to enjoy life with no guidance. Sometimes that brings them joy, sometimes only worries. But for some people this is a matter of high importance. That was the case of Mr. Burman who used to be a man of great success according to his fellows but whose obsession with time management lead to the most obscure passages of mankind.

Mr Burman was what I would call dark-spirited. The kind of person whose expression would not be softened by the most tender things. He was not always like that. Mr Burman had once had a family that had disappeared under unknown circumstances. Everyone who knew him well would avoid any conversation including this topic. You would think that Allan, for that was his name, was a terrible person. But if you were sensitive enough you could realize that somewhere in his face there had been joy, hidden by the weight of many years of sorrow.  

Children who met him on the street would not hide their fear. He did not look monstruous in any way, but children could see beyond his proper looks and perfectly clean and ironed outfits. Burman was a stranger everywhere he went to. No one knew what may have caused this alienation from human kind. He was always in a hurry, ready for another appointment, his hurried steps that often turned into running made his old leather briefcase swing. You could tell it had been used for much longer than it was supposed to.