The Frayed Quill

The clouds appeared ghostly as they hung in the night sky. They were clearly retreating as the winds scattered them. The moon illuminated the clouds like a bright pearl lying inside an oyster. Satya would gaze at it; for minutes, for hours, until the moon would shy itself away from him and pull the clouds over like a coverlet.  “Satya?” Ishrat called out. He turned back and saw the latter approach him hurriedly.  “Does she carry anything?” He asked. “She gave Umbriel only one thing.” He said and opened his palm. It was a dart with a metal tip and red feathers, all caked with dried blood. Satya raised an eyebrow. “That's all we retrieved.”  Satya frowned and took the dart and looked at it from all sides.  “Firstly she hesitated to give it, but when she did, she requested to return it back to her. Surprisingly, she almost teared up while requesting.” He handed the dart back. “Wash it.” He removed a handkerchief and wiped his fingers.  “Does she belong to Tryambak'...

It took one excerpt from Little Women for me to open MS Word in my desktop computer and start typing a strange, whimsical piece in Vivaldi font. The excerpt described how Jo March managed to publish her short story The Rival Painters and then read it aloud to her sisters. The idea of reading one's own words, weaving a full narrative and forming an image right before the listener's eyes carried an appeal which made me tickle. With a handful of newfound motivation, I began typing a tale of four siblings who enter a fantasy land via some porthole, if I remember it correctly. Looking back, all I can do is ask C. S. Lewis for forgiveness as my young mind had foolishly tried cosplaying him. The story ended up stillborn as I introduced no conflict and hit a dead end. It had filled only two pages. My attempts at writing though, met no dead end. A sudden surge of interest in constellations made me conceive another plotline. It was nothing more than a concoction of characters like the Ge...