{"id":15268,"date":"2022-05-20T16:32:57","date_gmt":"2022-05-20T22:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=15268"},"modified":"2022-05-20T20:49:25","modified_gmt":"2022-05-21T02:49:25","slug":"spring-shorts-story-3-christopher-columbus-wildcatter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/spring-shorts-story-3-christopher-columbus-wildcatter\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring Shorts Story #3: Christopher Columbus, Wildcatter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Wow, has it really been almost three weeks since I finished another short story? I really need to get back into the game. Still, this was a fun one, and I&#8217;m really looking forward to turning it into something great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As with the two previous stories, I used the Mythulu cards to come up with this one. Here&#8217;s what I drew:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>STATISTIC: The face, pile, voice, or sacrifice that gives personal meaning to a problem previously encountered and ignored.<\/li><li>EXPLORER: Enchanted by novelty. Energized by challenge. Brave, joyful, and resilient. Worst thing that can happen is for life to become too predictable.<\/li><li>GHOST LIMB: When amputees receive nerve signals from non-existant limbs.<\/li><li>MINE: Gleaning useful or shiny resources from the earth. Runoff from mines causes ecologically devastating pollution.<\/li><li>DEBTOR: One who has received something they cannot yet repay. Leads to either accountability or slvaery. Not free to pursue their own heart until absolved.<\/li><li>WATER: Currency of life. Symbolizes connection. Breaks boundaries. Patient, responsive, nurturing.<\/li><li>VIBRATING: A gentle resonant sumble. Usually felt when some kind of energy is flowing freely, whether sound, electricity, or emotion.<\/li><li>RECOVERING: Half-healed from some kind of significant damage.<\/li><li>FUZZY: A soft, comforting layer associated with innocent living things.<\/li><li>ADORABLE: Too cute to be taken seriously. Cannot intimidate others, no matter how hard they try. Their boundaries are frequently ignored.<\/li><li>LOUD: Showy in a way that interrupts others. Uncomfortably irreverent, noisy, or insistent.<\/li><li>HUNGRY: Ravenous and\/or so desperately poor that they cannot afford food.<\/li><li>TEMPLE: Home of the gods. Point of access where higher powers can be found and petitioned.<\/li><li>MONK: Offers total forgiveness. Able to see through deception, especially self-deception. Invites, but never forces.<\/li><li>THRESHOLD: A Doorway that leads to a new life. Once you cross a threshold, you cannot return the same.<\/li><li>WIND: Represents connection to the unknown. Responsible for storms, pollinations, erosion. Influences evolution, spread of disease, and pollution dispersal.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>For most of these elements, I ignored the flavor text altogether. With &#8220;statistic,&#8221; for example, all I did was start the story off with a random statistic I heard somewhere. No idea if it&#8217;s actually true, but hey, it makes for a great story. And with &#8220;threshold,&#8221; I traded out the card I&#8217;d actually drawn with one that worked much better. Also, I&#8217;m not entirely sure how &#8220;wind&#8221; fits in with the rest of it, but it feels right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m going to keep going through with these Mythulu-inspired stories until I&#8217;ve used all of the cards. That definitely won&#8217;t happen until after Memorial Day, which I&#8217;ve marked as the end of this Spring Shorts challenge, but I&#8217;ll keep track of which cards I&#8217;ve already used and continue to write short stories on the side. With luck, I&#8217;ll be able to write at least one more story here, and I may keep it up for a while in the summer just until I&#8217;ve filled up the buffer in my publishing schedule. But more about that in a later post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wow, has it really been almost three weeks since I finished another short story? I really need to get back into the game. Still, this was a fun one, and I&#8217;m really looking forward to turning it into something great. As with the two previous stories, I used the Mythulu cards to come up with&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/spring-shorts-story-3-christopher-columbus-wildcatter\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Spring Shorts Story #3: Christopher Columbus, Wildcatter<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[170,1],"tags":[1338,1544],"class_list":["post-15268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-stories","category-uncategorized","tag-mythulu","tag-spring-shorts-2022","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-3Yg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15269,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15268\/revisions\/15269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}