**How can you care?** 'Because I choose to.' **You make it sound so simple.** 'That's because it is simple. Hard sometimes, but simple.'

Monday, May 16, 2005

2) Write a scene with one character, a setting and a change. No dialogue is allowed. Yes, you can

He was utterly lost.

He had accepted being kind of lost an hour ago. When he flashlight had flickered just before then, he had decided to walk and change the batteries at the same time, trusting that he knew exactly where he was going. When one of the batteries fell from his hand and rolled away, he didn't panic, he simply turned around and headed back the way he had come.

The old-timers had always talked about new tunnels appearing in the "haunted" cavern. He had dismissed them as nonsense made up to spare the families of whatever idiots had gotten lost. He had walked this cavern a hundred times since he was a boy and never had a problem being home in time for supper.

Now he was stumbling through stalagmites that seemed just a little off kilter, as well as completely unfamiliar. Now he was trying not to blubber like a baby for his mother. Now... now he was completely lost.

The stalagmites stopped abruptly, like a forest that had been cleared. He took cautious steps forward. He could tell from the echoes that he had entered a huge, open space. In all his exploring, he had never come across anything that felt even remotely as big as this. It was like being at the edge of a pro football stadium.

One slow step at a time, he edged out towards the middle. He felt the ground rise up beneath him. He paused, straining to see around him. There was a grating noise, metal on stone, and suddenly the room was filled with blinding light.

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