Empires rose and fell but still the wall stood strong. When the most advanced technologies of Earth stuttered and failed, the wall remained, standing sentry over a land that retreated back under the cover of nature. Unseen, she stood with it.

Hair of golden grasses streaked with green, skin of warm brown earth, eyes the blue of a summer sky flecked with white: she moved with grace and the whisper of the wind. For a millennium she had watched the built world grow, poisoning the earth before its fall. She had felt its polluted venom turn the pulse in her veins to a sluggish crawl and had longed for its end. Even the fall of man had not brought reprise: it would take another millennium for the scars to fade.

But the machinery had finally ceased, the world lay still – free at last from the incessant vibrations of man – and she lay with it. Sunk against the base of that eternal wall, she pressed her earth-flesh to the sun-warmed stone and tilted her face to the sky: equilibrium would return.

“You’re a storyteller. Dream up something wild and improbable,” she pleaded. “Something beautiful and full of monsters.”

Strange The Dreamer by Laini Taylor

Inspired by Erin Morgenstern’s Flax-Golden Tales, I have decided to embark on my own creative writing blog series, “Wild & Improbable Tales”, as a way to write more freely and more frequently. At least once a week, I will choose a card at random from The School Of Life‘s ‘Small Pleasures’ box and use the image and/or writing on the back to inspire a short piece of creative writing. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.