Dice (late)

Exercise for October 30: Dice

The dice clattered and clacked over the tabletop, anxious to get away from the hand that had thrown them. Bobbie looked at them, amazed. He hadn't expected the trick to work, not twice in one day. The dice rolled some more, clicking as if annoyed with him, before finally settling in front of the red cup. It was the cup he had labelled "markers", and that actually contained his pet frog, Seymour. So the source of all his problems, evidently, was Seymour. The last time he'd tried asking the dice for the answer to a question like this, thye'd managed to give him the correct answers for half his math homework. So apparently there was something up with his frog.
Bobbie tapped the cup. "Seymour?" he asked. "Are you really a frog?"
Seymour just stared at him and croaked. At the sound of the croak, the dice jumped up again and started clacking at the cup. Seymour appeared totally unaffected by the actions of the dice. That was odd, Seymour was usually pretty jumpy; he'd put some plastic wrap (with holes in it) over the cup to make sure he couldn't get out. (The last time he put a frog of his in a plastic cup, he'd forgotten to put holes in the plastic wrap, and he'd forgotten about it and he'd found it the next day, because of the smell.) Bobbie tapped the cup again. Seymour rolled an eyeball to look at him, looking very disapproving. Then he looked through the cup to the dice, croaked again -- this time louder and deeper -- and the dice studdenly sopped their clacking.

270 words, probably 5 minutes. For some reason my computer was running very slowly... It's kind of distracting to have the words appear onscreen several seconds after you type them.

Alone (late)

Exercise for Oct 29: Alone

After several rounds of introductions and tours and explanations, he was finally left alone in a small, sparsely furnished room. He took the time to sit down and breathe easily for a while, after the exertion of climbing all the stairs. He was alone now. There were others all around him, but he was alone for the first time in his life. He could no longer sense the gentle brush of minds that he was used to, the warmth and sense of belonging that came from being with his family. They were all gone. The monks had been kind enough to take him in, but they could not replace what was lost. He got up from the chair and lay on the bed, sprawling out. The bed, at least, was reasonably large, or at least, it was larger than the space he'd had to share with his cousins. The thought of his cousins nearly sent him to tears again; they'd all been younger than him, and they shouldn't have died, except for the crippling diseas that swept through the village and ravaged the populace. Gone, all gone, and only him alive because his mind-sense had been too weak for him to really be affected. He'd gotten headaches, but that was all. Not the splitting migraines his mother had experienced. Not the dizziness and seizures of his father. He'd survived because he was the most mediocre, the least capable, of the entire village. That seemed unfair.

And now he'd been taken in by the Aventine monks, who knew nothing of his heritage and would have quickly thrown him out if they had. To be able to read minds was to tresspass on the realm of God, for it was only to Him that the innermost thoughts of a man should be revealed. "Well, you have nothing to worry about from me," he said to the room. "I can't even tell what any of you are feeling." He sighed, and started unpacking his belongings.

333 words, 5 minutes.