60 by 80 story challenge
What follows is the story that appeared from my fingertips in response to "Writing Within Limits", an exercise posted on Write On!
It was originally a 60 by 80 brick, but those are hard on the eyes, so I'm putting it in a more normal format. You can still see the original brick, if you want to.
The wind rushed past, cold even through her layers. She tugged her scarf over her nose again, fogging up her glasses with every breath. It was almost winter.
"Kid, you've got to watch yourself." Her scolding was muffled by the scarf. A quick glance at the kid earned her a withering look, as if he could handle cold.
She shook her head, and pushed her scarf higher. He did seem to be relatively impervious to the conditions. Always had been, as long as she'd known him. Not a long time, though; she remembered finding him, begging on the street, everyone turning away from the strange light in his eyes. People walked around him, even more than they normally did to beggars. She had watched him, and watched him do his best to make her notice him. He focussed on her, drawing her into his eyes.
Those eyes. She stopped shivering, unable to pull away. He had said he was a seer, an oracle, and he needed her to fulfill a prophecy. Who believed in silly things like prophecies these days? And yet, she was here - following him where?
He smiled, the edges of his eyes crinkling, then turned away silently, to keep going wherever he was leading her. The full force of the wind hit again, making her stagger. Odd, how he was so different - and still the corners of those eyes would wrinkle, just like a human's. He wasn't human, though. He was an oracle.
She was starting to believe him, now, after seeing him in action. Astounding.
They hurried through the storm - if he was correct, this was not just a storm, but THE storm, the one that would cause a disaster of biblical proportions. The television in a store window flickered, the signal disrupted by the clouds above them. Every television was tuned to the news, and the news on every channel was the storm. A voice drifted towards her, ripped to shreds by the wind. "Hurry."
He was almost a block ahead now, and still moving. She somehow ripped herself away from the horrible, beautiful, satellite picture of the planet's coming end.
She stamped her feet as she jogged, trying to restore circulation. Eventually the street passed a field, and the wind whipped in every direction, unimpeded by the buildings. She stopped anyhow, drinking in the view. The tower swayed, its tip moving visibly in the wind. They needed the highest point, he had told her.
The tower had been renovated and heightened, restoring it to its old status of highest tower, but the style wasn't changed from the original Eiffel tower. The oracle, or whatever he was, was running now, straight for the base of the tower.
"They won't let us up there!" she yelled, then pulled her scarf down and tried again. He kept running, despite her call, so she sighed and started to run too.
"They will, I've made sure of that." He slowed, to let her catch up. "We have no time for argument, so I made sure, the same way you arrived here this month." Those eyes grabbed her again, and the vicious wind faded into the background. A moment later, his eyes started doing their kaleidoscope dance, the thing they do that scared the people on the street - what they do when he is seeing things the humans can't see. "There's nobody on the tower," he said. "We can get up now."
"No kidding there's nobody on the tower," she said, and looked up at it. "You would be crazy to go up when it's swaying like that." She shook her head again.
He led her across the plaza underneath the tower to the nearest leg and pulled the door open quickly. She looked at the stairs and craned her neck back, up to the tower above. They started up the stairs. Even this low, she could feel the vibration humming through the metal as the tower flexed. They ran up the stairs to the lowest deck. Even that was closed to storm-watchers; the high winds made the stairs they were climbing up unsafe, despite the enclosure. They passed the first level, and continued. She slowed, and unzipped her jacket to cool off. A gust of wind stole her hat, and pinned it to the wire mesh wall, but they didn't stop. Past the second level, up the long haul to the old top level, the tower a dancing maniac under their feet. She held desperately to the handrail, and kept climbing. From the third level, onto the stairs leading up onto the new section and the relocated radio transmitter. He was out of sight now, going much faster than she could. At the door to the maintenance room, above the top tourist area and up narrow stairs he waited, gesturing for her to open the door and go ahead.
"You have to hook yourself up to the..." He stopped suddenly, and went inside.
The room was full of modern radio equipment, locked away in their shiny closed boxes with nothing for staff to use but a couple of keyboards and dark monitors.
He stared at her in dismay, and looked human for the first time. "It's gone."
