3 things to inspire 1 story written in 20 minutes. #story320
words/phrase provided by @ninajo47
In a cave, high atop a mountain there lived a woman. This woman would pick flowers, growing on the slopes above and below her cave. She would hunt for small game, rabbits, badgers, squirrels. Using giant leaves, she would form them into funnels and collect water from the rain and dew. The water would then be stored in the containers she’d fashioned from her hunted game.
All this she did not to eat, though she did consume the meat of the animals and the fruit of each plant, but to paint. Something she could not explain directed her movements and thoughts, always in the direction of creation. Not controlled but inspired.
Her first creation was a small red circle she had lazily sketched onto the cave wall by her head. She was waiting for her rabbit to cook over the fire and was hanging the skin to dry. Her hands red with blood.
She took her finger, pressed it to the wall and smeared the red around bringing it back to the point she had first placed her finger. This pushed her experience of life onto another plane.
The woman stared at the circle for days, comparing it to objects around her. Her navel was that shape, the eyes of the animals were that shape.
The woman considered the pleasant feeling of discovery she had felt when completing the circle. After her next hunt she drew more circles, covering one wall with the blood of rabbits and doves. She noticed that one of her circles was more jagged, and so she formed a triangle. She considered it then walked out of her cave and looked at the trees in the valley, coming to a point and similar in shape to her triangle.
To separate the triangle from the circle, she drew four straight connecting lines around it.
She stepped back and realized that was a shape more unfamiliar than the others. She had discovered it, created it out of a need to place a distinguishing boundary around something significant.
Her whole mind exploded with ideas. All around her were shapes, the essence of these crude shapes on her wall. Circles stretched into ovals, pulled into spheres, widened and elongated into the trunks of trees.
She stepped outside in wonder, excited to explore her new-found freedom of thought but her foot fell into a foot print much bigger than her own.
The sun became blocked and before her stood a new shape, larger, similar to her own and casting her into its shadow.
Whilst making a living... 