She looked at me with earnest, curious eyes.

“Where did you get them, Grandmother?”

“Oh, they came from all over. From different times and places, different moments and feelings. I carved them from tears and laughter, joy and worry, time and remembering. Each is as precious to me as the last because they show I have lived. A map of days cannot be drawn without lines.”

She traced delicate fingers over the valleys of my life and breathed a question full of wary longing.

“Will I get to draw my own map of days?”

“You won’t get to decide which lines are drawn or where they go, but you will always have the power to see them as beautiful.”

***

“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.