HOORAY! WordCrafters is finally here! Read on to see the first chapter of WordCrafters #1, and some notes at the bottom of this post. (I also included a picture I took for an illustration for my chapter. Feel free to do that for your part too!)
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Alalia huffed and puffed up the mountain slope, trying to keep the backpack straps on her thin shoulders. Well, no strangers so far. She supposed that hiking wasn’t too bad of a pastime, although it could never compare with reading.
Alalia Marie Celinette was shy – painfully shy, so instead of playing outside or having sleepovers with her friends, she could almost always be found in her cozy reading nook, devouring a delicious book.
Until last night…
“Alalia! Time for supper!” the voice of Alalia’s mom wafted through the kitchen doorway where she was cooking up some vegetable stew for supper. Alalia closed Alice in Wonderland with a sigh. She wished she could go through the looking glass and explore the world beyond.
At dinner that night, Alalia’s dad put down his fork and began a little speech for Alalia.
“Alalia, we know how much you love reading, and reading itself is a good thing, but you have been doing entirely too much reading and not enough other activities lately.” Alalia sighed. They had had this conversation before. “We were thinking of some activities you could do to get outside and play with your friends more often, and here are some things we came up with.” Alalia’s mom brought a rumpled list out of her pocket and began reading: “You could go hiking, horseback riding, sign up for a club or sports…”
Alalia plunked her head on the table. “But I don’t want to do any of those things. I just want to read!”
Her parents gave each other an exasperated glance. “Honey, we just talked about this! How about you just choose one of those activities and try it out for a little while. You won’t have to do them every day – maybe once or twice a week, depending on the activity. Then, if you still really don’t like it, we’ll think about it again.”
So Alalia had thought it over for a while, and then decided to try hiking, because hiking was probably the best of those choices for avoiding strangers. Now here she was, dragging herself up Mount Minley – and she hadn’t met any strangers so far!
Soon, Alalia came to a sharp turn in the path, and was faced with a decision. Right, left, or take the shortcut? Hmm… I think the shortcut. The shortcut passed close to the edge of the mountain, which gave Alalia the jitters, but she stopped and took in the view anyway.
She had decided to bring her camera along, in case walking got boring. Just then a beautiful brown spotted butterfly flew past Alalia. Alalia whipped out her camera and followed the butterfly’s path with her lens. Finally, she saw it come to rest on a pretty green vine below the path where she was standing. Then Alalia saw something else – there were dozens of little sky blue butterflies also flitting around the vine. Alalia just had to get a picture of them!
She stumbled down from the path and approached the vine. It was dark green with red berries, kind of like holly, and it trailed down over several large boulders. As she watched the butterflies, the breeze blew the vines away from the boulder, and revealed a dark hole – it looked like an unexplored cave!
Although Alalia had never been the adventurous sort, she loved caves, and as she was prepared with a flashlight, food, and water, she decided to at least peek into the cave. Who knew but that she would discover a beautiful cavern – that would be worth writing her own story about!
She cautiously stepped inside and beamed her light around the cave. It was pretty tiny – Alalia had to stoop to fit inside – but it looked like it opened up ahead. Alalia tromped on further into the cave until she reached a dead end. But Alalia could see a little ray of light peeking in from behind the wall. She touched the wall, which felt surprisingly like vines, and to her astonishment, it gave way! Alalia pushed the vines out of the way, and stepped out into a brilliant green light.
She blinked and looked around. This place was not Mount Minley. This place wasn’t even her city. This place was an entirely different world!
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Gaaaah! I want to write more, but I must leave a cliffhanger for the next person to finish! It’s probably a good idea for each person to end their chapter with a cliffhanger so that the other person has a good place to start. According to the list, it is Misty’s turn to write the next part! Here is the whole randomized list. (Well, I randomized it with all of the writers in the list and then realized that I would have to rearrange it a little bit so that I would start and Josie would end like we had planned.)
- Allison
- Misty
- CutePolarBear
- Nicole
- Addy
- Clara
- Suzy
- Loren
- Hayley
- Rebekah
- Megan
- Chaespeedreader
- AG Dolls and Fun
- Mallory
- Anonymous A.
- Josie
So there you have it! You can also see the list on my WordCrafters page, where I will also update the story as new parts are added to it. I can’t wait to read the finished story – thanks for entering, everyone!
***Allison***
Allison Marie 