Random Word Inspiration 6

[Kitti]

Thoughts can be fickle things. Sometimes all it takes are a few words to spark an idea and those same words can have a different effect on everyone.

What do these words inspire in you?
Write whatever comes to mind, be it poem or prose. It doesn't even have to include the words if you don't feel like it!

Nocturnal

Balance

Sketch​

 

[Kitti]

She was beautiful in the moonlight. The hem of her dress rippled around her legs with the faint breeze which teasing the skirt to and fro with the blades of grass that danced around her knees. The low sounds of nocturnal creatures emerging for the evening broke the silence between us as I struggled to find words. She was standing now, halfway up the hill and looking down at me with characteristic laughter in her eyes and when she realized she had caught me gaping at her, it bubbled from her lips as well.

"Don't do that, you're making me blush" she scolded lightly, reaching out for me. The pale porcelain fingers glowed in the pale light, fastening around my own hand and pulling me toward her. The basket with the sandwiches that I had packed was resting beneath the tree at the top of the hill, in the crook of one of the roots, and it was here that she was pulling me by my free hand while I followed along like a lovesick puppy. I smiled to myself at the simile, thinking that I might as well just admit that the word did me more justice than metaphor.

Lovesick.

"Are you laughing at me? Did I do something?" She had noticed my smile, a blush creeping into her cheeks as she glanced down at herself to check for the cause of my mirth. I shook my head at her, pulling back on her hand to draw her to me instead of the other way around. She was easily captured as I pressed her against my chest, awkwardly holding the canvas in my hand away from her. She did not seem to mind, pressing her cheek into me as she gazed up with those doe-like eyes. My breath caught in my throat and I wondered wildly why I had imagined I would be able to do justice to her with my drawings. I did not think that Michelangelo could capture how beautiful she looked at this moment, let alone me, with my trembling hands.

"Do you want me to stand in front of the tree so you can sketch me?" she asked finally, drawing me out of my thoughts. She looked expectant and I let go of her, balancing the canvas in one arm while I fumbled around in my bag for the pencils that I had brought with me. She had begun to move already beneath the branches, her slender form dwarfed by the gnarled wood. It did not match, they did not suit one another. I frowned.

"Can you stand on the hill instead? I like the light there."​

 

[noodle]

The ink from my pen,
Flows down into lines,
Even as my candle,
Flickers and dies.

I light yet another,
So the darkness,
Even as it takes over,
Won't disturb my peace.

 

[PoetLore]

Most people would imagine that sketching and art was a profession of the daylight hours, but my muse sleeps during the day it seems. I have taken to the life of a nocturnal owl, making my way and living during the darkest of the night hours in silence. Some day I may learn to balance my life in such a way that will allow me to enjoy the fruits of my labor, maybe. Or better perhaps would be for me to find a fellow owl, who might fly the night life with me and rest while the sun shines. Oh to dream, perhaps my muse is stretching its wings tonight for more, the canvas shall tell.

 

[Doctor Jax]

"...and I've been trying to work with her, but it's so difficult," Lun Mei grumbled to her father, the middle-aged woman tracing the edge of her teacup while her father busied himself with dinner. It was late at night - the only time she could ever get a moment with him, as it turned out. The elder Mei was practically a nocturnal creature, taking pleasure in nightly trips to the convenience store for some smoking tobacco and making small talk with the women there.

Lao Mei contemplated his daughter's grumbling, humming as he did so, while he oversaw the steaming dumplings on his stove.

"Your friend - does she know what is right and what is wrong?" Lao asked, the spry man rubbing a small mustache in thought.

"Yeah, she's a functioning adult, holds down a job, but she's all the time talking about how life is so hard for her, and I keep trying to tell her -"

"You have spoken of this friend before, Lun," Lao stated patiently as he leaned against his chipped cabinets, crossing his arms across his wiry chest.

Lun frowned and cast a disapproving expression to her father.

"She... has some problems.Her kid and Lacey's play a lot, and I try to be there for her," Lun conceded.

Lao shook his head at her as he fished out the shumai dumplings from the steamer using a pair of chopsticks. Serenely, he seemed to float over and sit down with the whole plate, and he handed his daughter a pair of chopsticks.

"You have a fundamental problem, Little Duck," Lao intoned as he pointed his pair of chopsticks at her placidly. "You want to save everyone. You make it your business to."

"I mean, I don't try to save people..." Lun said around a mouthful, and Lao gave her a disbelieving look with raised eyebrows.

"Ever since you were a little girl, you wanted the best for people, but you also thought you knew what was best for people too. It got you into many fights," Lao said with a chuckle at the recollection. "You would tell them what they should do, and you would find someone you thought needed your guidance and help. You would tell me 'oh, she is not so bad - she is just troubled' or 'he is becoming such a good person, Baba.' And then you would complain because your friends were not so nice later."

"Okay? And?" Lun asked a bit defensively, feeling the familiar sting of truth. Her father was always a very astute judge of character, though she hated to admit that he was rarely wrong of the people she brought home.

"You cannot change other people for their own good, Little Duck," Lao said, taking another dumpling. "You can only be a signpost. You cannot be the road."