Some Tasty Tidbits

Over the years, I've written many random little pieces of what may have grown into a novel had I not given up on them.

Of course, not all of these were actually worth continuing, but hey.  

The first piece is from an attempt to rewrite "The Princess and the Pea".  Laurel is a princess bearing a magical golden pea to a safe place; she's attacked by highwaymen along the way.

Laurel clutched her golden box as the carriage lurched, then stopped.  Rain beat the mountainside into a swirling, muddy river, and thunder crashed.  She strained to hear the driver's voice over the deafening noise.  "Princess!  we're caught in a deep rut!  I must -" his yell was cut off by another boom of thunder that shook the ground.  The horses neighed in terror.  Laurel leaned to look out of the window, anxiety clutching at her heart.  They must not stop for long.  She had no time to linger.
An ugly face appeared in front of her.  She screamed.  Highwaymen now surrounded the carriage, climbing all over it and stripping it of its valuables.  A few of them burst inside, and one tried to snatch her golden box.  "No!" Laurel shrieked, throwing herself to the side - right into the arms of another man.  He wrenched the box from her shaking hands.  "What's this?" he sneered.  Suddenly there were screams from outside, and the carriage began to tip.  The men blanched and scrambled frantically out, ignoring Laurel.  The carriage rolled to one side, and she was thrown onto one wall.  Her face hit the window, and she screamed as a sheer cliff rushed past her.

It's amazing how that took up two pages in my notebook.  I skip lines and had, at the time of writing this, big handwriting.

This second excerpt was a story I was writing based on a dream I had where I was a Persian princess married off to a random rich sultan.  

"Turn around, miss, please," Dara, Nafeera's personal maid, murmured.  Nafeera turned to let Dara braid her hair.  She felt numb with anger.  Today she was to be presented to the Sultan of Agrasha.  No, she thought bitterly, not "presented".  She was being sold.  Sold to the Sultan by her own father in exchange for six hundred soldiers, three cities, and five hundred gold pieces.  "Five hundred gold pieces," she muttered.  "Father loves gold more than me."  Dara clucked sympathetically.  "I shall miss you, my lady," she ventured.
Nafeera left the Palace of Amirshahn with great fanfare, but she was insensitive to all of it.  She snapped at the servants and refused their help in getting onto her camel.  She scowled back at the bright city, hung with flowers and banners.  A tear ran down her cheek.  I will never see this place again, she thought, glancing with hatred at her father riding next to her.  He regarded her with cold eyes, and she met his gaze with an equally cold stare.
By camel, it was a fortnight's traveling time to Sultan Amjhad's palace.  The first night, servants set up tents near an oasis, taking care that Nafeera and her father's quarters were directly next to the water.  
Nafeera sat alone on her mat, staring straight ahead.  Her initial anger had subsided, leaving only a lead weight that had anchored itself in her heart.  Suddenly she felt suffocated.  Pulling on slippers, she fled the tent and walked around the pool of water to the other side, away from the camp.  Stars twinkled and winked at her.  She hated them for their mirth.

I actually want to continue that one someday, but literally that is the only thing I ever wrote for it.  Directly underneath those last words in my notebook, it says "To be continued when I have more inspiration."

My third piece is from The Crescent Mark, which, if you read the section about it in "My Works", is about a girl named Scarlett who, obviously, has a mark shaped like a crescent on her palm.

Scarlett sat up abruptly, wincing.  The crescent shaped scar on her palm was burning so much that it glowed faintly red in the darkness of the bedroom.  She rubbed it as the sleepy fog that clouded her mind slowly faded away.  As soon as she'd regained her thoughts, she remembered the reason her scar burned.  It had never been so painful or so bright before, and it meant one of her family was hurt.

                                                                       .....
 To not waste a lot of words, because the part after that is rather boring: she checked her parents and found they were fine.  Having no other family members, she remembered that walking away from the hurting person always alleviates the pain, so she gets out of bed.

Walking to the opposite end of the house did not relieve the pain.  Climbing the ladder into the loft alleviated it, but only a little, so that the change was hardly noticeable.
At last she pulled on a hood and stole out of the house into the storm.  Normally she would have grabbed a lantern, but her scar was shining brightly enough to see a little ways in front of her.  
Despite the help of her crescent mark, the rain was heavy and Scarlett was soon utterly disoriented.  A quick flash of lightning revealed the road nearly right in front of her and...something else.  She strained to identify the huge lump in the road.  
Suddenly the mark felt like it exploded, sending her to her knees.  The excruciating pain lasted only a few seconds; it soon dulled back to what it had been before.
Another flash of lightning showed her a terrible sight.  A wagon lay broken and smashed in the mud - trapping an old man under its wreckage.  There were no horses in sight.
Scarlett gasped and scrambled to her feet.  Running to the wreck, she knelt by the injured man and shouted above the noise of the storm, "My lord?" She had to strain to hear herself.  He didn't respond.  Heart pounding, she checked his wrist for a pulse.  He was alive and breathing.

That's all! Bwahahahaha.

Please, everyone, stay alive.  Tomorrow I will post a LONGER thing that takes up 4 pages in my notebook.  Unless everyone wants something from Hitchhiker again.  What do you guys think?

May you not be dead from my cruelty,
-Ashley