Second Campaign Challenge

It's time for the final challenge of Rachael Harrie's awesome campaign. There were a few new twists to this one. I chose to take the 5 prompts and incorporate them all into a flash fiction of 200 words. Hope you enjoy it!

"Rain"

Raina and Sanjay looked at each other. Their faces drained of color.

"You saw it?" Sanjay asked.

"It was coming at us! Is it gone?" Raina whispered, peering through the rain. But the apparition had vanished.

"Your leg!" Sanjay pointed.

Red liquid streamed from her thigh. Raina looked down. She didn't know why, but blood flowed from a deep gash above her knee. She hobbled to the pillar of rusting iron supporting the remains of the bridge and slumped down.

Sanjay sat beside her,his black hair dripped from the downpour.

"We never should have come! We're not supposed to be here in the rain," Sanjay sobbed.

Raina could see the skin under his eyes tighten with worry. But they had come. And what they saw...the golden aura of swiring light, the rain transforming and coalescing its droplets into distinct shapes suspended above them.

It couldn't have been real, could it? But it had hovered and realigned to form an ominous creature. Frozen with fear they had crouched in the junk heap and watched it approach.

"We'll be ok Sanjay."

"Isn't this the same bridge..."

"Yeah, it's where you last played football with father. Don't worry we'll find them."

***

Hope you liked it! I would love to get your honest critiques. Don't forget to check out all of the other great entries!

Kathy :)

A Pile of Pieces

Our pile of tank pieces!

Well Spring Break is almost over and we have had a great week.  The first day we spent as a library day. (We didn't actually go to the library, we just had a reading party in our living room.)   The next day was spent outside and working on individual projects.  We celebrated Wednesday by going out to lunch and going shopping.  I don't really like going to the mall, so we went to the craft store to pick up some fun projects for the kids. It was hard for them to choose, there were so many cool choices. But I gave them a budget that they had to stay within and that helped to narrow things down a bit.  It's funny how the three of them pick different kinds of projects.  Jessica always wants canvases or other painting supplies.  Alyssa likes more simple but colorful drawing and art projects. Ryan  picks engineering intensive works. Of course, being 6 means that when he picks a project it is also for me.  He chose two 3D wooden puzzles, one of penguins and the other a tank.  I thought they looked really cool, but not being an engineer myself I hoped that the directions would be thorough.  As soon as we got home he wanted to start on them.  Luckily we started with the simple penguin.  Ryan got all the pieces out and my heart sank when I read the directions:  "Look on the picture to familiarize yourself with where the pieces go."   UH OH!  I guess when you pay 5 bucks for something with 30 pieces you should figure it's too good to be true.  There was a diagram of all the pieces with numbers, but no numbers on the actual pieces.  It said to match the numbers to put them together.  Unfortunately, it didn't seem to make any sense to me!

Ryan finishing the tread.

Painting the penguin

It took a while but we finally got most of the penguin together.  My husband, an engineer, came home and Ryan asked him to help.  "These aren't directions!  This is silly!" He said in frustration.   Ryan actually figured out the problem and he finished it after dinner.  We still had the tank to build.  That was going to have to wait until morning.

Finished...just needs paint.

Thursday, Ryan and I spent most of the day building the tank from an imposing pile of pieces.  We made it through a number of frustrating moments.  At one point Ryan had built a whole section of tread only to find that we had used the wrong pieces together.  But we persevered and by nightfall we had accomplished our mission.  We were both extremely proud of what we built together.

Kathy

Box Full of Fun

Threading string through breastplate.

My son brought a book home from school about making home-made costumes.  I was naive enough to think that he just wanted to read it and look at all the pictures.  But he brought it home for a reason.  He had a particular costume in mind:  a knight in shining armour.  I was concerned when he pointed out how we were going to make all the pieces.  Not only is he a perfectionist, but when it comes to making crafty things, I'm about as far from Martha Stewart as a person can be.
Fortunately, I somehow made him realize that it couldn't all be made in one night.  We would have to take a couple days to make all the pieces.  The sword and shield were relatively simple once I found big enough cardboard boxes.  The hardest part was cutting through the cardboard with our dull scissors. (The directions said to use a craft knife, but I didn't think we had one and I was too lazy to look around for anything else.)  After the sword and shield were complete I thought he would be satisfied.  I should have known better.  He announced that the next item we had to make was the breastplate.

Breastplate and shoulder strap.

Here looks were deceiving!  We cut out the pieces and covered them with foil.  The next directions were to hole punch the sides so they could be strung together. Simple enough right?  Have you ever hole punched cardboard wrapped in foil?  It was like trying to punch a hole through concrete.  My hand couldn't squeeze hard enough!  I tried pressing it against the floor then Ryan put his little hands on mine and pushed with all his body weight on my hands.  OUCH! But it worked.....we only had 9 more holes to make.  With 2 remaining my palms could no longer take it.  I tried pressing with my foot but that didn't work much better.  Finally, I got the last 2 holes made. We threaded string through the sides lacing each half together and then fastened the shoulder straps.
The moment of truth came when he tried it on..... The breast plate looked good, but the shoulder straps were far too big for his tiny shoulders and the entire piece slipped right down to the floor.  It was getting late so I told him for now we should use string to hold the shoulders together.  "Mom did real knights use string in their armour?" He asked.  Yikes, I hoped this question wouldn't lead to random exclamations of "THIS WILL NEVER WORK.... WORST DAY EVER!" I knew I had to tread carefully.  I told him, "sometimes knights used leather to straps to hold pieces together and it was a lot like string."  That seemed to be good enough and we promised we would try to fix the design tomorrow.  After that, onto the helmet and gauntlets.  I never knew so much could be made from a simple cardboard box!
       

Luckily he doesn't seem to care that his shoulder strap is faulty.

Kathy