All was in darkness and silence. Only the feeble glow of the lamp provided any relief. It was in the cone fo that yellow light that I observed him: the little daemon at the foot of my bed.

He perched there, unmoving except for the slow blink of his black eyes, and regarded me with a curious tilt of his head.

“You are afraid of the wrong things.”

His voice scraped through my mind like the rustle of old paper in a silent room: disturbing and comforting all at once.

“Do not worry; I will watch and you will be safe.”

I nodded and drifted into sleep for the first time in weeks.

***

“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.