Color My World Short Story #11

Staring at the scene before me didn't flash my memories back. It bludgeoned them into my face at 100 miles per hour. How vividly I recalled the day I came home from work to find plums lining the windowsills, kitchen counters, and the dining table. That was Dahlia's way of announcing her first pregnancy to me. It was also her apology. The pregnancy hadn't been planned, and she'd been having one of her exploration periods with another guy. She'd used all sorts of protection with him and none with me, so the likelihood was the child was mine, but Dahlia was hung up on the fact that the child had a minuscule chance of belonging to that other man. I said I found no fault in the situation─ she'd had my permission to be with the him and protection was never foolproof. However, the plums were Dahlia's way of needlessly appeasing me. Boy or girl, I'd wanted our first child to be named Plum. The fruits were her agreeing to give me that wish without any challenge. The daughter that came that was indeed mine then became a big sister to the twin girls that followed. She cooed over them the way Gilly and Dianthus, twins, gushed over their singular little brother.

     "I want to hold him. Can I hold him?" Gilly glanced back to us, eyes shining.
   "You cannot. It's time for you and your sister to go help your Mama Lia clean her living room. That's your apology for making that huge mess the other day, remember?" Amaranth said.
     "But it was mostly Apple who did it!" Gilly whined.
     "Saying 'mostly' just means you did still have a part in it," I pointed out.

Gilly stuck her tongue out at my smirk.

     "The faster we clean, the faster we can come back," Dianthus reasoned. She bounced on her heels excitedly when looking at her brother, as if she might suddenly jump high into the sky.
     "That's true," Gilly accepted.
     "Get going then. Look both ways before you go across the street," Amaranth instructed.
     "We know!" Dianthus replied proudly.

Gen Three- Chapter Thirty Three

I blinked hard and let several good, long seconds pass in order to give the figure before me a chance to disappear. Me just imagining the whole situation felt like it would be a lot easier to handle, although then I had to worry about my mental health again. However, the girl remained. The silence grew thick with tension as she awaited my response while I couldn't understand how in the world I was supposed to handle something like this.

     "Have you been hiding out in my brother's room?"

Best to start simple.

     "Yes." the girl mumbled quietly.

     "How long?"

     "A-About two months now."

     "So you're the one who knocked over the lamp. Merlot was probably lying about his music player being broke too."

     "Yes," the girl hung her head, "Merlot gave me a printout of everyone's schedule so I could know when I could come out safely, but you kept being home at unexpected times."

     "Come out? Come out from where? There's nowhere to hide in here."

     "For the first few days, I hid under the bed. Then Merlot lied about needing space so he could he could get the wardrobe for me to more easily duck inside."

     "How can you hide under the bed though? The sides are way too low. I saw Merlot stuff the wardrobe full too. How is there room?"

     "Here."

The girl led me over to the bed, and, with a great heave, tilted it enough for me to see what I'd never known before. The sides did drop low, but they were only buffers. There was enough space for someone the girl's size to squeeze in. Then she took me to the wardrobe where she opened the doors to show me how now only the high top shelf contained my brother's stuff.

     "The bed worked temporarily, but it's too difficult for me to lift up and roll under with any sort of speed. Merlot only filled up the wardrobe to trick everyone into thinking it was full so no one might think it being a hiding place if they started to suspect someone was around. He just filled it up with empty boxes."

CMW Characters' D&D Classes- Part 1

As I'm still dealing with various situations over on my end, there's still not a CMW update this week. I do have something for you guys though. I've done a post in the past showing off my D&D characters made using this doll maker. I thought it would be fun to take some CMW characters, specifically some from the First Generation, give them classes, and dress them up to match. The classes aren't what the characters themselves would choose to play, but what classes I feel the characters fit given their own personalities, hobbies, and backgrounds. Some came out wonderfully, and some I had to compromise on due to the limitations of what the doll maker provided. Hope you find them fun! As always, click on the pictures to view them in their full glory :)

Color My World Short Story #8 Part Two

I heard the front door open and close, and every inch of my skin cringed. She puttered over to the kitchen, drawn over by the scent of the cookies I assumed, before her heels slowly clacked in my direction. I'd hoped the stupid hope that Dahlia wouldn't come into the bedroom. Perhaps, if I was very lucky, she might have forgotten I existed. That thought seemed at the moment to be the only way to make any of this simpler. However, of course she walked into our room. Of course she knew who I was.

     "Hey." she greeted as she came in.

     "Welcome back. How was the meeting?" I asked, my voice way more cheerful than I felt.

     "Gourd would not shut up, as usual, but the clients appeared very excited with the proposal in the end," Dahlia explained with an eagerness in her voice, "Almost as excited as I am to have some of the cookies. Please tell me you and Ethereal made extras."

     "Most certainly. Once you have to make two hundred of them, what's the harm in making a dozen or two more?" I did what I could to chuckle.

     "Good. Hey, how about this? Why don't we just eat all the extras and say to the girls there were no extras?"

     "Heh, I'm actually kinda cookie-d out. I came in here to get away from the smell."

     "I see. I can imagine after making that many you would be sick of them. I'm sure you ate plenty of the dough too."

     "You know me too well."

Color My World New Year's Special 2018

My first thought...that definitely couldn't be her. That was her voice from our now distant past, but how on earth could I think my name fell from her lips once more?

     "Amaranth?"

Yet there it came again. Unsure but desperate to snuff out the possibility as it hurt my heart too much, I slowly cracked open my eyes. When the first thing I saw was white, I swear I lost all my breath.

     "E...Ethereal?" I could barely manage to creak out.

     "C'mon, bud," she laughed lightly, and my chest fluttered at the sound, "You've had your nap, but it's getting closer to midnight. You don't want to lose out on all your chances to beat Charming in a race before we switch the channel to watch the ball drop."

Color My World Short Story #8 Part One

The overwhelming scent of chocolate chip cookies both delighted and repulsed my nose. On one hand, the treats were the most delicious and tempting baked goods to ever waft their smell in my direction. One the other hand, such a scent had been attacking my nostrils for too long that my senses begged me for a breath of fresh air.

     "Here, let me get the door for you." Allium offered as I finished rolling up the final balls of dough into the tray.

     "We finally made it, Charming. The last batch. I didn't think we would ever see the end of the tunnel." I joked as I slid those last cookies into the oven.

     "Yeeeah, I'll be careful next time accepting the request to make stuff for Holly and Mimi's club's bake-sale. Two hundred chocolate chip cookies didn't seem like it would be a lot."

     "How does two hundred of anything not seem like a lot?" I had to question with a smile.

     "I've always been bad at math," Allium joked along with his trademark smirking grin, "Seriously though, thank you for your help. Since you had a hand in these, the cookies are going to sell like crazy."

     "They'd better. Right now, I never want to see another chocolate chip cookie for at least a year." I laughed.

Color My World Short Story #7

A sigh went around the table as Sunflower pulled out one of her favorite responses for our game of 'Never Have I Ever' we were playing. The rest of us hated it seeing as how she used it each time without fail, and it got all four of us to instantly drop a finger.

     "I feel like you just like rubbing it in- you never having gotten a cavity before." Allium pouted.

He was now tied for last pace with Amaranth. They each had one finger in the game. Unluckily for Amaranth, it was Allium's turn next. Allium could easily get him out if he thought of something good. It wasn't too difficult for any of us to know exactly what to say to screw over everyone else. We knew each other too well. Here we sat around the dining room table in my parents' house that now belonged to my sister just like we had in the old days. I was house sitting while she and her family were off on vacation. Why Ice couldn't understand why I hadn't wanted the house permanently was beyond me. Everyone else in my family thought nothing of the days when it was down in the single digits and we still had to get on our boat to get off our little island. Doing grocery shopping, getting new furniture on and old furniture off, needing to go to work or school when it was storming with thunder and lightning galore...how could it be anything else but a major pain in the ass?

Color My World Short Story #6

Amaranth was the most adorable thing ever.

     "Are you having fun?"

I had asked him that question, and now he beamed up at me the most ecstatic smile I had seen from him yet. Coal teased me often that our son turned my heart to mush, as it did his, and not once had I ever been able to deny that. But, why would I want to deny it? I needed my heart softened each and every day. Work was becoming unbearable.

It had been almost a year since the chaos now. A year since a collection of idiots in our lower ranks decided to band together to undermine and steal from another group that we had momentarily allied ourselves with for a massive project. Not only had the idiots been caught breaking the formed contract, they had framed too much on people Amaranth would now never know- his grandparents. My parents were gone. Coal's parents were gone. The traitors had been weeded out and handed their punishments, but things remained a mess. Coal and I, though we had nothing to do with the project, had targets on our backs from our former allies still wanting retribution for how badly the deception screwed them over. They wouldn't try to take our lives, that would cause too much suspicion from our families, but they could find other ways to hurt us...like stealing away my little boy still grinning up at me. My little boy who blessedly helped me forget for those precious few moments that I was different from everyone else around me.