Category Archives: Modern

Spark of Creation – Part Three

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*Listen to the Audio* | Read Part One, Part Two

The old man gave me the biggest grin I’d ever seen. It made me question if he really was an actor or if he was a hologram. His smile didn’t quite look human it was so large and toothy.

“That’s good child. Because now there’s an Arrgorak out there we need to deal with. How do you propose we handle it?”

“Me?” I squeaked. My throat must have been dry. “I don’t know anything about it! Or how to use this thing to beat it!”

“You are the creator!” He said with a snort, “You have the Spark! You must create things and use the Spark to bring them to life to do your bidding! To defeat the monster! Come now, you must know how all the good stories go! They all have their dragons that need defeating.”

“Yeah, but how?”

“Do you have something to create with?”

It took me a minute to remember my small pack and the paper and crayons that were inside. This must have been what they were for! I pulled them out. “Okay, now what?”

He shrugged, “Draw something.”

“Like what?” Continue reading →

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Spark of Creation – Part Two

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*Listen to the Audio* | Read Part One

I shouted a battle cry. Sure, to the untrained ear it might have sounded like a squeal of fear but believe you me, I was devoted to this adventure now. So it was a battle cry.

I tried to channel my inner ninja but only succeeded in tripping over my own feet and falling, hauling the person who had grabbed me down to the ground too. I added ninja (right underneath woodsman) to my list of things I would not grow up to be. I finally managed to disentangle myself from the other person, who it turned out, was a rather hairy man. He was a waifish fellow with a white beard nearly down to his knees but as he got up I suspected it only looked long because he was bowed over with age.

He grumped and complained about ‘youngsters these days’, which made me feel a little guilty for knocking such an old guy to the ground.

“Well?” I said, a bit defensively, “You shouldn’t just grab random people in the woods!” Continue reading →

Spark of Creation – Part One

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*Listen to the Audio & Watch the Illustration*

I got lost.

I mean, not so lost that I’d never make it back to civilization before I starved to death. Just lost enough that I could pretend I didn’t live in suburbia in 2020 for a few hours.

Renaissance, I thought to myself. Knights and lords and ladies. A simpler time where your enemies were known and you knew exactly how to deal with them; with a sword to be precise. These woods could be the King’s Forest – protected for the King’s pleasure. Perhaps I was a servant gathering deadwood for winter. Or maybe I was a woodsman, tasked with keeping trespassers out. Maybe I was tracking down a poacher!

Liking that idea, I knelt and examined the ground. Normally, if there were people around I would just casually look. But there was no one to see me – ‘lost’ as I was. Which was the point. A right-brainer like myself needs to jump start the creativity now and again and this little “create your own adventure” ad I saw in the classifieds on the local news site sounded like fun. So far, it had been.

We met at the park, were given some packs and then ushered onto a bus for a two hour drive to the closest National Park. On the way there we had opened our packs to discover some water, granola bars, paper, crayons (crayons? seriously? who puts crayons in an adult’s pack?), a pocket knife, a flashlight, and some rope. Upon arrival at a Park Ranger station we were given a few hiker safety instructions then told to simply wander and go have an adventure. This was an exercise meant to help jumpstart our creativity. Continue reading →