behind starless nights…

choose an ordinary object and turn it into a human being… what would the attributes of the object be like if it were a person?
pass the character sketch that you developed…
(teacher: folding those pieces of papers… me: watching anxiously…)
now, pick a piece and weave the character sketch of your classmate into a story…
(me: groan… sigh… )

glass? and we were given only half an hour to develop our flashfic… ugh… but i can’t think when i’m under pressure… sheesh… what was that again? the main character has to go on a journey? okayyy…

so there i was — racking my brains and forcing it to come up with at least something unique… cramming, cramming… but then, i was a bit delighted to find myself scribbling… so the protagonist takes a journey huh? the first thing that entered my mind was a particular area on a countryside… top of the hill, a quaint little barrio nestled just below it, twilight… nyahaha… the setting was perhaps too romantic… oh well… i just continued…

plot: the main character is an attractive young lady — looks spirited and daring but really has a pretentious streak… okay, she’s exactly the opposite of the person she portrays (as the character sketch says)… goes to her late grandfather’s hometown to look for stars — literally… wanted to show the old man that his advices were mere words and mere lies…

“see the sky at night? notice how the darkness seems to stretch endlessly into the horizon? so what? there will always be shimmering specks of light up there — as infinite as the black sky… those stars somehow tells us that even if we grapple into the darkest abyss, there will always be a glimmer of light… a spark of hope…”

that was always what the old man would say to the main character when he was still alive… (nyahaha… i really wanted to incorporate this but ma’am muttered something that sounds like “moral lesson should not be told… corny effect…”)

to cut the story short, after a series of events, it turned out that the main character’s grampy was right all along… the end… bow…

so that was basically it… question is, why did i come to write that sort of flash fiction? (pauses and thinks) well, perhaps it reflects my choice of readings… not that i’m really into cheesy, mushy, corny, sentimental things but uhm, well, one thing i’ve noticed about my works is that even before i developed this interest in writing, i would always prefer reading love stories? nyahaha… but hmp, i also based my plot on the character sketch… so it’s not really my choice at the first place (so defensive)… okayyy… truth is, i felt that it would be good if i turn the sketch into a love story — yeah, it might be so cliche but i had to present some sort of events that would make the protagonist realize that there would always be hope… so i made it look like this: she had this kind of sickness which made her so fragile — this is actually funny… nyahaha… i could not really think of a good reason on why the character pretends to be so carefree when she is just so weak… so i thought… and thought… and thought… then an idea struck me… why am i racking my brains at the first place when i should be resting and having a nap? you see, i was just so sick that day — had fever and joint aches… yeah! the character must be sick and due to past experiences wherein she was always left out and had no friends, she learned to live a life of deceit… nyahaha… my fever somehow managed to help…

since she was such a pessimist, she depended on her grandfather’s advices… but she soon realized — or so she thought, that the old man’s aphorisms on hope were not always true… blah blah blah… but when she met a young man (nyahaha… mushy stuff), she started to believe again… whew…

yeah… i’m a hopeless romantic writer (dili lagi sa gusto jud nako ang love stories… i can write horror and thrillers pud uy…) hai… how can i explain? well, you know the saying right? people always have this tendency of incorporating their tastes and opinions in their writing…

so that was how “fragile glasses and starless nights” came to be…