You Can’t Go Home Again

This six-sentence story using the word “Shelter” is proof that you can be inspired by one thing, and write something entirely different. I was thinking shelter from the storm, listening to Castle on a Cloud, thinking about pour Cosette, when I wrote a story of a girl who wakes up somewhere with no clear memory of how she got there, and the overwhelming temptation of food.

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When she awoke it was like she was laying on a cloud, she had never felt something so soft and hadn’t been so warm since summer. She would have stayed there forever had it not been for the smell of warm bread, and she was so hungry when she hopped down, she didn’t notice the strange texture of the walls, like the bark of a tree, or that the ground beneath her feet was actually a thick moss; she didn’t even notice the strange gown she was was wearing, light as feather, soft as silk, and terribly warm.

She found the bread, along with fresh cream, fruit, more food than she had even seen before really, and she barely resisted the urge to cram her mouth full of it. Something about this seemed so familiar to her, and yet it was hovering at the edge of her memory, just out of reach.

She blinked as she tried to clear her head, remember how she got here, but all she could recall was running into the forest, snow like knives against her bare feet, desperate for shelter from the cold of winter, knowing if she returned to town she would lose a hand for the theft of a meat pie a week prior, and if she stayed outside she would die.

Her last clear memory was of finding food, a circle of mushrooms, she had whirled around in the center of it at her good fortune, and, and, the smell of bread overwhelmed her thoughts, she was half way through the load when she realized what she had done, but by then it was too late, she could never go home again.