Story Cubes — Tell Me a Story (Contest)
Let’s play!
I bought this little brainstorming tool years ago at a writers’ conference. “Story Cubes” is a brainstorming game. You roll the dice, and whatever pictures appear face-up are the ones you use to riff off a story.
You can try to include all the cubes in your “story” or choose a few. The story you tell doesn’t have to be long or even any good. They all count!
To make this fun, I’ll offer a prize—a $5 Amazon gift card—good for purchasing one or two stories…
Have fun with this! Don’t overthink! Here’s the roll…
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Eventually, as time rolled by, the people could no longer survive as the trees were all chopped and barren. The elder of the village, a woman named Alua, took the remnants of the last tree and made herself a cane. She didn't need it, but she wanted to have something to connect her to the last tree.
Alua watched as her people grew sickly and hungry, yet somehow she herself was healing. As she looked at her reflection in a nearby river, she also found that she was somehow getting... younger.
She startled back when after weeks of not looking she checked again and found herself looking in her prime.
"What is the meaning of this?" She asked no one, and yet everyone.
The wind picked up a if to answer her. It raged hard and strong as there was nothing strong enough close to her tribe to help mitigate it's flow.
As the wind blew, the river rippled in waves and made her seem like her original self again, but as she looked the water seemed to darken and shift in color. She peered closer, thinking the spirits must be trying to tell her something, but what?
Then, she saw it.
A single fish of bright orange that contrasted the entirety of the blue waters swam against the wind toward her and under the bridge she stood.
"There is still life. The creatures of the water still live." She brought herself to the other side of the bridge and watched as the fish swam into the horizon. The land around the river was bare. The grass yellow and brown from the summer heat with no trees to guard it within it's shade.
Then, the fish was gone. Merely a dot as the river lead to the rising oceans.
Alua sighed. "Are we to become fish now?"
That night, asleep in her tent, she dreamed just that. She dreamed she became a fish and escaped the dying land to live in the water that was full of life. Under water she saw colorful foliage thriving and growing to unimaginable sizes, stretching for miles as they dance with the currents.
Among the foliage she saw the orange fish again. It seemed to look at her knowingly. She swam closer and as she reached, the scent of smoke filled her lungs.
*Why is there fire in the water?* She wondered to herself.
Then a sense of heat overtook her, and she awoke to find her tent was suddenly ablaze. She quickly made her exact and grabbed her cane just in time before the fires took it.
Outside was chaos. The few who awoke were running around desperately trying to escape the flames, but it seemed to stretch for miles, and they were so dense and bright, no one could tell who was who and which direction they were going.
Alua felt a pulse rising from her grip on the cane. The cane seemed to be pulling her somewhere.
As she looked at her knuckles atop it, she noticed a blue shimmer traveling across it. That's when she understood.
"EVERYONE! IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, FOLLOW MY VOICE!" She yelled at the top of her lungs, seemingly unaffected by the smoke and flames.
"THIS WAY! FOLLOW ME!" She knew the river was a straight diagonal from her tent, but the cane seemed to be leading her as well.
"KEEP GOING! THIS WAY!" She reached the banks and turned back to the flames to get her people, those surviving, to safety. "GO! INTO THE WATER! GO NOW!"
"But elder, some of us can't swim." A young mother carrying her babe who just recently learned how to walk in her hands expressed her concern when she reached Alua.
"From this day onward, you will swim."
Before the mother could respond, Alua pushed her into the river as others jumped in around her. The flames illuminated the river in it's orange and yellow glow, making it appear as if it was lava.
"IF ANYONE ELSE IS OUT THERE, HEAD FOR THE RIVER!"
That was her final words as she jumped into the waters and joined her people. The water was deeper than she thought as she floated midway and never touched the riverbed. As she struggled to swim back to the surface, a voice stopped her.
"Stop. Let go."
A light surrounded her and those she could see within the water. It blinded them for a moment...
The cool of the waters began to warm against her skin, and Alua lost feeling in her legs. She took a deep breath forgetting where she was for a moment and realized that she could breath.
Her eyes opened in shock as she looked down and found a tail three times the length of her body below her where her feet used to be.
The cane she held tightly had also changed within her grasp. It grew long and thick, forming knots every so often. She hel it with both hands with a new sense of pride and hope as she looked at her people donning tails of their own. Some were shocked while others, the younger ones, embraced it happily and swam excitedly in circles.
*The earth still wants us to survive. We must now survive in the water.*
Her people seemed to turn to her then.
*Why are you all looking at me?*
Her head suddenly became awash with voices... the voices of... her people. They were speaking with their minds.
Alua couldn't help but laugh at herself then. *I guess now we should be careful what we think of, as now we can all hear each others thoughts.*
She swam ahead in the direction he knew led to open waters.
*Come my children. Our new life starts now.*